Valentines Day Party

I know it's a little early, but we had our Valentine's Day party with our homeschooling friends from church today. We were going to have it on Wednesday, but I thought we were going to go the the CHEER party (CHEER is the homeschooling co-op that I joined), but I didn't hear anything about the CHEER party until last week. I finally emailed the director of CHEER and said we weren't going to be able to make it and she sent me the email the she had "sent out" (I guess to everyone but me!) and it said we were to bring 80+ pre-filled Valentines, plus craft supplies, plus some type of sweet snack to share...forget it! I don't care a whit about Reilly getting 80 Valentine's that are To: A 'Friend' From: A 'Friend' and I sure as heck don't feel like sitting down and making her fill out 80 cards! I'd rather her be involved in forming close relationships with the people that we know already. So, we're not doing the other party and it doesn't break my heart at all.

Heck, when we get together with The Regular Friends Homeschooling Group (from now on referred to as The RFHG, or, if you say it out loud, RuffHug!) there are 14 kids, ranging in ages from 12 years to 10 months, and everywhere inbetween, so it's not like we're a small bunch! If that's not socialization, I don't know what is!

All of this to say that we had the Second Annual RFHG Valentine's Day party today, hosted at Jenn's house this time. It was great fun! We let all the kids play until it sounded like they were going to tear the walls down, and then gathered them up to decorate their Valentine bags. I forgot the glue, but luckily we had plenty of stickers and crayons.

We were a wee bit surprised that the bag decorating only took them about ten minutes, but it was enough time for them to re-set and calm down a little bit befor our next activity. We divided them into two groups, which conveniently happened to be into The Boy Group and The Girl Group and one group decorated heart-shaped cookies downstairs and the other group made heart-shaped window decorations with contac paper and tissue paper. I'm not sure exactly how that one worked because I was conveeeeniently on the cookie decorating supervision committee. Much more tasty, you know? Someone has to lick up...er, I mean CLEAN up all the spilled icing, right? The funny thing was that the boys all sat and very studiously iced and sprinkled their cookies, then ate them up completely, and then only two boys went upstairs and actually made a heart craft. Declan had NO interest in making one at all! He just wanted to get back into the Spiderman suit that Ethan had! The girls had fun doing both activities, though, and after they were done, all the kids passed out their Valentine's. I think we'll definitely have to figure out a better way to do that next year because it was WAY too hectic! We had them lined up on the fireplace and it just seemed too out of control...but maybe that's just the 31-year-old old lady in me talking! It didn't seem to bother most of the kids!

We had all brought our own lunches, so we ate those in shifts (3, to be exact! We joked that it was like a restaurant!) and the kids all played and The Moms talked. It was a really, really fun day. I'm so glad that we homeschool and I'm so glad that the Lord has blessed me with such good friends as Julie (mom to Hannah, Lauren, Rebekah, and Kyrsten), Alison (mom of Alana and Zane), Shelly (mom of Kyce, Korbin, Kallie, and Kendall) and Jenn (mom of Ethan, Emma, and Marica) and has blessed my kids with such good friends as their kids!

Long live The RFHG!