Valentine's & Soccer

B came home from school with a class note from her teacher a week or two before Valentines.  The note  said the names of all the students and instructed that the children could bring in a Valentine box but there would be no contest that year.  Contest, I thought.  How fancy can a Valentine box get?!  Well, was I in for a surprise.  The night before the 14th  I showed B paper & stickers & boxes that I had on hand and I instructed her how to put the paper on the box and she picked out some embellishments and made her design.  Quick, easy, done and she loves it.  I didn't want to encourage an over-the-top, spend-tons-of- time-on, stay-up-late and get-stressed-out-making-it-fancy box.  Then at school the next day I was completely unprepared for quite the over-the-top boxes.  Airplanes and basketball hoops to name a few.  Since when is Valentine's this crazy?!  Well, I don't know what will happen next year at Valentines, whether my kids will now want over-the-top boxes that will take them hours to make or just a sack with stickers but I'll leave that up to them.  I know for sure that I won't have the shock I had this year!

I surprised the kids this year with balloons & cute paper pads and cookies.  Balloons may not be repeated because two of them were popped within a few hours.  I had too much fun secretly making the cookies though!  J came upstairs just after I had finished and asked what that smell was.  I feigned ignorance and said perhaps cinnamon from oatmeal that morning?  He wasn't convinced and suggested it be cookies.  "Cookies? speaking of cookies how about we eat lunch Backwards today!"  and handed him a different kind of cookie he and I had made on Sunday.  He was appeased but as soon as he was in the door from school & saw his surprise he said, "I knew it!" with a big grin on his face.  

See the cute grin.  I love his smile.

Here's that cute smile again!  We got out the soccer goals!!
THANKS UNCLE T & AUNTIE B!!!

Little Miss Pinky as the goal keeper.  

Little J wanted to play soccer so I initially got out the cones but there were some disagreements about whether an airborne soccer ball went on the inside or outside of the cone.  So, I figured the two goals we got for Christmas would fit downstairs and as long as we had the rule of using a small, soft ball then I would be fine with that.  I got out the goals & got to work putting them together.  We had just enough time for a couple short games before getting little J lunch & off to school.  

Daddy came home and wanted to play too

Fun times on the soccer "field"