Valentine Fun

I thought Eleanor would really enjoy getting a little crafty with Valentines this year, so Friday afternoon, we worked on our project (or "projeck" as she says it) together.

Here she is gluing hearts onto the paper. We made "love bugs." I did one so she would have an example.

We cut out the hearts together. Eleanor loves to cut paper. I thought she would just do her own thing with paper and scissors while I cut out hearts, but she wanted to make hearts just like me. At first, I helped her guide her scissors around the curve while I held the paper. Then, she wanted to do it herself. I let her give it a try, but then she wanted more help. She had me hold the paper while she did the cutting. She did pretty well. These are some that she cut out except the top one. She cut the inside heart out of the top one.
After we cut one heart, I told her I just wanted to cut off a little pointy part that needed rounded out. After that, there wasn't one heart that could be unfolded without her cutting off the pointy part. I had to convince her the bottom point was supposed to be there, but the other end of the heart was fair game.
Here's the example I made. We gave it to Daddy.
This is the first one she did. She did a great job.

She had so much fun, and so did I, watching her enjoy herself. We told Daddy it would be a surprise when he got home. She kept saying, "We are making him a party!"

Here's the second one she did. She included some of the shapes she cut out. The far left is a butterfly, followed by a bat.

That night, Phaedra and I went shopping for a while, and we came home to this:
a sweet surprise

"Will you be my Valentine?" Seeing this messy faced girl ask me to be her Valentine sure made my day.

Grant and I even got to go out on Valentine's Day. My mother came over and watched the kids. We tried to go to a movie, but the show we planned to see was sold out. So, we joined the crowd trying to get into the Olive Garden for lunch together. It wasn't as long a wait as we thought it would be, and we had a really nice time. We realized it had been a really long time since we went there without kids. It's a whole different experience when you can actually just sit and talk during the meal.

Hope you all had a fun holiday remembering the people you love.