parenting

Our Funny Valentine Stories

Caleb got himself this awesome Star Wars set. We take our Legos very seriously around here.

Now y’all know I love me some Valentine’s Day. I love any reason to celebrate…..so long as it does not cost me too much money. And Valentine’s Day is just that, an inexpensive holiday full of chocolate and people saying “I love you.” So I mean, really! What’s not to love???

For us, the key is to be low maintenance about it. Everyone gets chocolate as a gift, and I get the added bonus of flowers. No stress.

Yes, we had to do 4 kids’ classes of valentines this year, but we are not high maintenance  about that either. SOME of the parents are, and I just tell myself that those parents clearly just enjoy being crafty or have money to spare, and I do not let that ruin my holiday.

I’ll admit I did feel a little inferior when I saw what John David brought home though….

Oh, pre-school….That big red bag was not the bag to hold it all. That was just another one of the valentines.

You might say I was out-given. That’s okay. I have four kids and little interest in crafts. Here’s what John David gave in exchange for all this candy and toys:

We’ll call it the minimalist’s valentine.

Yeah…..it’s just a card. It was good enough for me when I was a kid, so I figured it’s good enough today. Now, in my defense, it did come with a tattoo inside!

…Of course, I had trouble figuring out how to get the tattoos to stay in the little cards. It took me about 10 cards before I realized there was a little perforated slot for the tattoos. So most of JD’s class actually did not get a tattoo because they fell right out.

Oops. Oh well. By the time I got to Daniel’s cards I had the tattoo slot routine down, so his class got them.

Thankfully, Daniel has a small kindergarten class of about 13 kids because he painstakingly picked out exactly which card to give to which kid .

Daniel’s valentine cards

He was so adorable. He insisted on putting extra heart stickers on all the girls’ cards and extra-extra heart stickers on his sweet teacher’s card.

Daniel is my first perfectionist child, so he had quite a large trash pile of cards that he wrote and then decided that he messed up on because he wrote Daniel in the wrong place or his handwriting wasn’t up to his standards:

hehehe I love these kids. They looked pretty happy when they came home.

Yes, he did pass out on my sofa in a sugar-induced coma.

As for me, I had an awesome day. Alan took a few boys with him to buy my flowers the day before. He said the boys all grabbed arm-loads and arm-loads of the grocery store flower bouquets, and he had to put most of them back. “Whoa! Okay, boys, we love mama, but here. Just a couple.” They brought me home these beauties:

I love them.

Alan also got me my favorite Valentine candy:

I ate them all in a day, except for those nasty flavors.

Unfortunately, Alan actually bought me THREE bags of these goodies, so I gained a couple of pounds last week. Literally. I gained three pounds, one for each bag. Also when I look at sugar-food now I get nauseous.

Now before I go, I wanted to also say a big THANK YOU to all who voted for me for Military Spouse of the Year. No, I didn’t win the grand prize. But guess what!!!!!

I DID win for our local base. So this was a fun thing to be a part of.

THANK YOU for your votes!!!!! Hope you all have a sweet week full of chocolate and sunshine!

aprilmomoffour

April is an upbeat, Christian, blog-obsessed, military wife, and home schooling mom of four little boys. She writes about education, travel, and humorous adventures in parenting. Follow along if you’d like a little bit of encouragement and a whole lot of crazy.

View Comments

  • Good for you for keeping it real - and sane. No need to go out of control. You set the bar too high in K, then where do you go from there? I say you are smart to pace yourself. I've never been big on those hearts, but Cadbury Eggs - THOSE are where it's at for me. Congrats on winning the base award!

    • Oh yeah. Cadbury Eggs are another one of my downfalls. I have many many downfalls...

  • I just have to say that I too was feeling a little inferior on the Valentine side of things. My little girl gave out Shopkins Valentine cards with her name and a sticker (which she affixed, so the kids actually didn't get the sticker to use themselves, lol). I was feeling pretty proud that we had our stuff together and actually remembered the teachers too, but then she came home with some super fancy Valentines and I couldn't help thinking, "uhhh, was I suppose to do something more?!" I got over it quickly though...these kids are never going to remember the fancy (or unfancy) Valentines anyways...In fact, my daughter's are already in the recycle bin!

    • Yay! I'm not alone! And they definitely remember nothing about what was in their Valentine box!

  • Yay you won! This year I only had one set of Valentines to help out with and they were Store bought and put together in about 10 minutes. Winning right there I say :)

  • Congrats for winning for your local base! I voted!
    Emoticon valentine hearts, huh? It looks like after all this time, those are still popular candies for Valentine's Day but it's modern times so they're called "emoticon!" Which flavors are the nasty ones??

    • Thank you for voting!!! And yes, I was surprised at the emoticons too but I am happy to report that they still make the traditional kind too. For the emoticons, pink and green were gross. For the words, orange and green were nasty.

  • I take my Legos pretty seriously also, Caleb and I have something in common. I like low maintenance Valentine's theme in your house April. Chocolate and a gift is enough, what more do you need? Other than flowers, Oh I need flowers for V-Day. I love your roses.

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