All you need is LOVE

Our Valentine celebrations stretched out for a week this year.  Geo and I always go out on a date the weekend before V-day to beat the crowds (and make sure to have a babysitter).  I know that means we are old, but we ate at the KOA Pancake House diner to make it official.

We also attended the annual Valentine dance for our church.

Cole thought it was the funniest thing to run to the edge of the stage and watch everyone freak out to get him before he "fell".  When someone got close, he'd run the other way and chuckle.

Preschool Valentine Party

I put a cute little heart in Elise's hair and she was ticked off about it (screaming, crying, etc) ... until her friends and teacher liked it and Lucy said she wanted one too.  *sigh*

Elise gave out Valentine rings, Austin did paper airplanes, and we gave those divided plates from Target, "May all your Valentine 'dishes' come true."  They turned out cute, but I'm glad the kids only had a few Valentines to give out.  Austin lost focus every other letter in writing his name.




One fun idea I got off pinterest (and actually did) was making Valentine's for doors.  I was intending to do one each day (that didn't happen) but everyone did get a bunch and the kids joined in the fun.  This idea might be a keeper (except that Cole gradually removed more and more of the lower notes :).

For Valentine Eve, we again went to the Hakuoah University Handbell Choir concert at Windward Community College.  Jake flew in the night before, so he got to enjoy it with us!

Valentine breakfast

Grandma Liz flew in late on the 13th, so we were happy to have a full house for a Valentine breakfast!  We bought these fun "food face" plates for a Valentine gift, but I didn't really cook a breakfast they could use them with.  Oops.  We had orange cranberry muffins and smoothies.  At least it was yummy!

The kids went to library story time with grandma and Jake while I got things ready to help with Lucy's class party.  Kaui and Stephanie were on the party planning committee with me and I also had great ideas from friends (thank you!) and pinterest.  In the end, we had more ideas than we could use.  We had four stations:  cookie decorating, photo booth, blind(folded) by love game (like pictionary but blindfolded) and a cupid's arrow station (the one I did).  I thought the whole thing turned out great!

 For the cupid station, we had jumbo straws as our bow and q-tips as our arrows.  Two kids had to put cupid wings on and shoot as many arrows as possible into a container in one minute.  They thought it was great fun!  We also did some minute-to-win-it games with candy hearts - using the straws to move them into a container (boys vs girls) and stacking the hearts.  Those were fun too, but the "arrows" were the definite favorite.  Here are some more pics from the party, taken mostly from the class website.  (With the photo booth, there were 250+ pics - ha!)  It was lots of fun!

Lucy chose to do a butterfly for her Valentine box.  It turned out really cute, but she was pretty particular on what she wanted it to look like (wonder who she gets that from?  :)

 We had yummy Chinese food for dinner.  I usually do lip shaped jello jigglers, but I forgot all about it.  Good think Easter is coming up - jello eggs are coming up!

Here I am with all my Valentines right before they went off to bed and I dashed off to the airport.  There's a whole lotta love I feel for this handsome guy and these little cuties!

Happy Valentine's Day!