Valentine's 2024

Happy St. Valentine's Day!

Last night our Little Moon Girls went all out with making little goodie baggies for their classmates. Here's a photo of their table where they were working.

Each bag had little fun things alongside punny valentine's cards.

This is something they wanted to do for years. We described it as "Upgrading our Valentine's". 

Back-Back Story:

My late mother's birthday was on St. Valentine's Day. This holiday wasn't a commercialized silly thing for me, it was always a time to express love for her. 

A bit about my mom:

❤️ Her favorite color was red.

❤️ We always made the day special.

❤️ We put our decorations up early and took them down late.

❤️ Hearts were hidden in the decor all over our home.

Here's a photo of my mother cuddling a baby.

Since my mother passed away in 2015, this holiday has been a special day to remember her, and share love abundantly - in her honor. Special. 

More Recent Back Story:

Unprompted a few years ago Phoebe started planning for Valentine's about a month in advance. I did not realize what she was doing until she had already knocked out half of the Valentine's. During playtime she got out ziplock bags for every child in her class, tried remembering all of their names, learned how to write them, and slowly found "treasures" to fill each bag. She was so very thoughtful and loving with each frayed ribbon, piece of crumpled aluminum foil, and hand drawn scribble. As time went on she added some handmade friendship bracelets. She wanted everyone to feel special and loved. She had so much fun making these precious things. The day before Valentine's she brought them all out, compared them to the list her teacher sent home, and felt ready. We added in some small candies and I rewrote some names so they could be easier to read.

Seeing that pile of Valentine's and all of the work it represented made me overwhelmed at her compassion. But it also broke my heart. Because... what if those friends saw these as garbage? I messaged her teacher and she reassured me that she would encourage everyone to be gracious and appreciate the gifts, no matter how humble. I'm thankful for that teacher.

Since that year I really understood what this holiday meant to my daughters. I have tried to do something special with it. But we never put together those special fancy gift baggies that Phoebe so tried to emulate years ago.

This year I realized that financially we could swing it. So we picked out our very favorite party favors and packed them up in shiny iridescent bags.

The kinds of things we chose:

- Silly pens and pencils 🖊️✏️

- New packages of crayons 🖍️

- Bubbles 🫧

- Stencils 

- Unicorns 🦄

- Dinosaurs 🦖

- Squishy stress balls

- Tiny slinky 

- Lip gloss 💄

- Mardi Gras Beads 

- Fancy lollipop 🍭

They mixed and matched, figured out what everyone might like, and they were SO excited to put all of them together. Then we loaded them up in our wagon so they would be prepared to walk to school. 

They went to bed a bit later than usual, but they awoke refreshed, so excited to cart their treasures to school. Here's a of them with their wagon, leaving our home on the way to school.

Note: St. Valentine's Day falls on Ash Wednesday this year, so they're celebrating a day early at school, on Shrove Tuesday / Mardi Gras.

Valentine Heart Lesson

Want a lesson about the heart? Here's a blog post from a couple of years ago: https://steamma.blogspot.com/2022/06/know-your-heart.html