The French Family: Happy Valentine's Day

What a fun-filled day we had today. Our Valentine's fun did not start today though, let me back up to this past weekend and show you what all we did.

I sat down with the kids at the computer a week ago and asked them what type of Valentine's they wanted to give their friends at our homeschool group. I showed them a few options and also told them we could buy them at the store too. They all opted to make Valentine's to give our friends and then we brainstormed ideas and finalized plans.

First, we started on Finn's. Shawn's parents were in town, so Shawn's mom was a big help and we had an assembly line going. The conversation hearts I bought were a big let down. The quality of the printing was terrible on them and half of the sayings I did not care for at all. After about 20 hearts I decided to just turn them around and "glue" them onto the bears with the blank side showing. Before starting I knew that my surface are was super small on the bears and hearts, so using a spoon was a no go. I happened to think of using this syringe and it worked perfectly. I simply heated up white almond bark and glued the hearts on the bears. It was pretty simple and straightforward.

Now this was the tough part: getting Finn to sign all 24 of them! He was a trooper and I ended up paying him with m&ms. Hey, a mom's gotta do what a mom's gotta do! He did well over half of them and I chalked it up as a win! Here's Mae helping herself too!

I like you BEARY much! I added some m&ms and mini marshmallows as filler and they turned out cute.

A few rounds of Tenzi were played while making Valentines!

Next, we worked on Jase's Valentine's. I thought these turned out cute! A {square} Stacker Mallow, two graham cracker squares and a mini Hersey's chocolate bar.

I saw someone on IG with these glasses and they mentioned they got them from Walmart, so when I went there to buy our supplies for the Valentine's, I scoped it out and found them. These glasses came in a 4 pack for $0.98, so pretty cheap. I bought a few packs and when I came home I tied up the loose ends on what the tie-in would be for the Valentine's: I only have EYES for you!

I was waiting on part of our supplies for Ally's to come in the mail, so when they did on Sunday, we knocked them out.

Valentine, you're the BOMB, I mean BALM! She loved them!!

Of course I had all the scrapbook paper and washing tape. #hoarder

We also made some fun treats for our party. Strawberry creme wafer dipped in almond bark.

Homemade snack mix drizzled with almond bark. {are you catching onto my almond bark theme? I mean, you can't go wrong!} In this mix I have: Corn Chex Cereal, Chocolate Chex Cereal, Honey Nut Cheerios, Pretzel Sticks {broke in half}, and m&ms. There was no precise measuring going on. I tried to use equal amounts of all the cereal I had {maybe 2 cups each}. I had very little pretzels and I might have used half to a whole bag of m&ms. I mixed all of these dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl and heated up {maybe} 6 squares of almond bark in the microwave. Once melted, I poured it into the bowl and mixed it all up. After it was all coated, I poured it out onto foil, sprinkled some fun red sugar sprinkles and let it set/dry. {I was out of wax paper and parchment paper, so this was the next best thing and it did not stick at all, so yay!} Once dry I broke up the mix in pieces in various sizes. This filled up my largest round Rubbermaid container that I own. It is pretty tasty; that sweet and salty combo does not disappoint.

So, I was in charge of Valentine's Day party. Does that surprise you!? Ha! Our director said to keep it pretty low key, no big activities, just food and fellowship. Instead of big group activities, I decided to print up some Valentine's Day related sheets {on half pieces of paper}: word search, coloring pages, mad libs {great for our middle school kids learning all about English grammar}.

And I knew I wanted a Bible verse visible, but I wasn't exactly sure how I would do that. Then over the weekend it hit me to simply write it on the table cloths. I looked up verses that dealt with LOVE and wrote them on there with a Marks-A-Lot marker.

I really like how it turned out. Simple, but profound.

We had pizza delivered and we all pitched in and brought goodies and drinks. It really was a fun time and the kids LOVED it! Can you tell what Valentine's of ours was a big hit?? Mae's glasses were a favorite for sure!

Ha! This is the only picture I took of her and of course she would be licking her lips and not looking. She did look super cute today!

Another funny one!! I snapped this right after Allyson tried to put chapstick {BALM} on Finn!! He did not want "Girl lipstick" on him! They were sitting down, going through their Valentine's!

The plan was to give some of our neighborhood friends a Valentine that we had made from this weekend, but somehow we ran out at our party. #badmath #sorrykids No need to worry, we had plenty of Almond Bark Snack Mix left, so we {I} decided to make up some Cupid Crunch bags for our friends! Thankful for a printer with ink!

I'm only showing you this selfie I took today because I thought my leggings were super fun! I bought them last month at a "party". They are LuLaRoe leggings. I heard about them last year from a friend who started selling them, but I am just getting around to jumping on the bandwagon! I own 2 pair and they are super comfy. Definitely a win in the legging department.

Look how fun!

Still with me? Yes, I know, long post. Well, it was a busy and long day! But a good one! Daddy and the girls went to a Daddy/Daughter Sock Hop Dance tonight. This was organized by her AHG troop. We do not own a poodle skirt and with our tight schedule, I really did not have time to make one, nor did I want to buy one for this one event. So, we improvised and it worked out perfect!

Look at this girl!! Do they come any cuter!? She is so full of life; I love her to bits! Can you tell that she was looking forward to this night with her Daddy?

Daddy and his girls. Mae did put her shoes and bow on before the dance! This little girl is a pistol when trying to talk her into wearing something she did not pick out. She has been doing this for quite some time now. You literally have to make her think the outfit is her idea. Crazy!

Here is Maebry looking on as Allyson participates in the limbo.

Watch a short clip of Ally doing the limbo! She loved it!

While the girls were with Daddy, Jase started asking me about my favorite restaurant and where I liked to eat! I knew where this was going. Then he told me that he wanted to buy me dinner! He said that Dad gave him the idea along with $20! So sweet. We decided on Rosa's Cafe, a fast-food Mexican restaurant, but it is yummy! Our meal ended up costing over $20, so Jase used the his own money to pay the balance. {He doesn't know, but I put that money back in his wallet tonight.} I caught the tail end of him paying for dinner tonight.

Did you catch what he said at the beginning? "Keep the change!" What a good guy he is. I'm sure he has heard his daddy say that on occasion. What is funny is that the change was $0.02. It was perfect though, he was so sure of himself and confident. Makes me think of Proverbs 22:6: "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." I think this verse can be applied in several ways, with the main one being the Christian faith, but I think manners, kindness, etc can easily be inferred.

Oh Finn, he has a love for Mario Kart 8 on the Wii! And he is getting pretty good too. I'm surprised at how well he can maneuver the remote at 4 years old! Here is a clip from this past month of him beating Jase!

Here is another 1 minute clip of Finn telling me all about the new Raccoon Suit for Mario tonight! He can go on and on about it and in this video I let him! I wish I could bottle up this 4 year old!