Why, hello blog. How have you been? I must have thought of you a thousand times.
We've been busy for the last...um...few years. But my kids have recently been enjoying reading about their preschool-aged exploits in your archives And, quite frankly, I had forgotten what life was like with a bunch of preschoolers (yikes...reading this has been good birth control!). So I realized that even though I don't necessarily want to make the time to write long and amazingly witty humor posts, I do still want to capture a few moments along the way. So, hello again. This is me (and Adele) wishing you a hello from the other side. Let's see where this goes.
Valentines Day 2016
Of all my kids, only Eliza was explicitly required to bring in a Valentines box this year. But Lily was the first one to get to work on hers. She decided to use perler beads. The first day, she made 5 letters before getting distracted. Two days later, another two. Four days later another two. I feel like I haven't put the iron and parchment paper away for two weeks. She was very proud of her box. I am proud that I hid the pearler beads in a really good spot, so hopefully no one will ask to do a project with them for a long time while my therapist and I work through some things.
Eliza wanted a Harry Potter themed box. (Not a big surprise.) This one came together quickly. Which was good, because her Valentines did not.
Eliza chose to write each classmate an acrostic poem. You know, like this inspired one I just composed on the spot, with all my experience this past week of helping Eliza think of good adjectives:
Magnificent and practically perfect in every way
Outstanding at helping her kids with over-the-top projects
Modest, but also the best at Valentines projects
We discovered that sometimes it's hard to get good adjectives for a letter. Like Y! I dare you to try thinking of "Y" adjectives that don't have to do with yodeling. And, for the record, Eliza was a champ about re-doing one Valentine, when I insisted that she couldn't leave "Yeasty" on as the final word in her classmate, Emily's, name. (Darn the free online dictionary that suggested that "yeasty" meant "exuberant.")
In those cases, I recommend you ditch the adjectives, and just go for phrases. Such as...
May go crazy if anyone thinks of any more Valentine ideas
Obviously deserves a raise. Or two.
Might have already bought Dollar Tree valentines with suckers for 2017. So there, children of mine.
Sage has always been a fan of the personalized Valentines. (Remember her "You can't beat me" Valentine?) This year, to ensure that we never needed to put the iron away, Sage made an individualized pearler bead creation specific to each child's personality in her class. She made a Harry Potter lightning bolt, a frog, a skateboard, a basketball, and many, many more.
When Sage announced, the night before the big end-of-the-world-if-I-don't-win Valentines box competition, that she wanted to do a vending machine Valentines box, I wanted to cry. But since she had spent so many hours creating personalized perler masterpieces (hey--that could be the title of her future etsy shop!), I took pity on her, and helped her with her Valentines box. Okay, fine. I made it all. But that was so we could all go to bed by 1am instead of 4am.
At first, I covered a box in black paper and I positioned all the candy on top. Then I crossed my fingers, and presented it to Sage. Her delicate response was, "Um, Mom, that looks good, but I was kind of hoping the candy could be underneath some plastic or something." Darn, darny darn.
So I pulled out the big guns and got to work. (For the record, the big guns=10 more hot glue gun sticks for the box and sugar for me.)
Lookin' good. Especially considering how sleep deficient we all were.
The only complaint about this box comes from Christian--who was desperate to have the contents of B3. He was upset when he put his hand in the "drawer" that he couldn't reach up into the candy section to whisk away those orange tic tacs. What do you think I am, Christian? An actual engineer? Nope! Just a hot glue gun maestro.
Sage did win "Best of Show" for her box. Which almost made it less painful that she had to leave school at 10am with a migraine. Probably from lack of sleep. Or maybe from excess perler bead activity. Yeah, that's it. I think we might need to ban perler beads from our house for...I don't know...a year or ten? You can never be too careful with these kinds of things. : )
