Hearty

VALENTINE-Y:  February 14th. Also known as Valentine's Day. Here in America, this day often involves the exchange of cards or gifts with classmates, and often tokens of love or appreciation are exchanged among adults. 

Though they don't go to a traditional school, CJ and Annabelle are lucky to be part of a learning community that celebrates special occasions in a big way. The myriad of decorated boxes was amazing, and they got so many super cute valentines. 

CJ and Annabelle spent probably three to four hours building and decorating their valentines receptacles. 

Annabelle went with a unicorn motif. 

 CJ opted for a dragon.

As super poor planning would have it, I don't have any finished photos of the handmade valentines the kids made for their friends. Oops. 

Annabelle designed a graphic for her Valentine's cards. She went with a teacup theme, and cut a slit in each cup top. Through it, she stuck a tea bag's string and tag, and then the teabag was on the backside in a tiny sealed bag.

CJ worked hard folding over 50 'cootie catchers' (also known as fortune tellers) for his Valentine's cards. He folded them from Boise to about Hood River on our trip back from Idaho last Thursday. (And yes, I consider that a parenting win that we were organized enough to have them all printed out and ready to fold on the trip, putting that down time to good use!)

Here's a link to the mini gifts CJ produced: http://brendid.com/valentine-joke-teller/.