Valentine's Day

This year, Valentine's Day has been one in which we've been preparing for quite some time in this house. Not that it's a particularly special Valentine's Day, it's just that this year is the first year that James is understanding what these holidays are all about. At school they've been talking about kindness and love and helping others and the librarian came down to read them stories about Valentine's Day and one story that James loved about a little mouse who celebrates Valentine's Day. So one day when Doug was working late and dinner was in the oven cooking, we had about 30 minutes and I asked James to pull out some construction paper and I brought out the hole puncher. The photo at the top is what we created! When Doug came home I asked him, "Isn't Valentine's Day decorating the best?" The amount of sugar in that statement shocked even myself but it's hard not to get in the spirit when you have hearts and sparkling string as your centerpiece and a child that loves it. We also scored these over sized XOXO pieces at Michael's - James and I *may* have had an excursion up to Michael's for Valentines supplies :)

Here's the little man getting crafty.

And today - OH TODAY - I've been waiting since the beginning of the month for these bad boys - today we made sprinkle cupcakes and decorated them - just me and James. It was awesome and James was an amazing helper.

James poured the mix in the bowl

And the water and oil

And helped Mom with the mixer (LOVED this part ... he could have mixed batter for ever)

delicately putting the wrappers in :)

Yum

Helping sprinkle

James thoughtt his was hilarious that the cupcake was upside down ... notice please the plethera of sprinkles on the counter ...

Delicious

Ordered these M&Ms especially for James on Valentine's Day - he loves them. They say "We love you" "We love you James" "Hugs and Kisses" and "XOXO" and they are orange ... James' new favorite color :)

Yesterday James had a Valentine's Day card exchange at school. This is the little bag he made.

When we got home from school yesterday, we read through all of his cards (almost all of which were homemade!!) and he felt so loved and special :) Here's the one from Toni and Mary.

Happy Valentine's Day!!!! I hope you get to enjoy it with your loved ones. On behalf of James, I'd like to wish all of you a very Happy and Loving Valentine's Day :)