Heart Day Prep

This is the first year that Quinn has had an inkling of what Valentine's Day is about. Thinking back I'm not sure we made a big deal of it until last year when we made a big paper heart for his Daddy and put stickers etc. on it. This year, however, we planned a project since we were having our friend, Valerie, over for dinner.

So off to Michael's we went. This is fast becoming one of our favorite stores - so many fun and cheap things that let us be creative and learn new things. This year we found some wood figures, one a train (for Daddy) and a cat (for Val) and got a few heart-shaped buttons.

We got to paintin'. We practiced moving the brush in one direction instead of back and forth. We practiced staying 'in the lines' with the colors. We made great progress.


After a lot of giggling and artistic discussion, this was his finished product:


We used an old shirt and pants to paint in, not knowing how messy we were going to be. I have to admit, I spent some time slapping paint on his shirt, just to keep busy.

Who knew that the paint would seep through??

We had planned on a nice Valentine's dinner. I roasted a chicken, made butternut squash soup (oh man, yum), gravy and mashed taters. Just about the time Val was supposed to leave her house to make her way across town in rush hour traffic, she called. It's a loooonnnnng story, but her cat was being sick all over the house and because of some recent events, she needed to keep an eye on him. So, she wasn't coming over. We were all disappointed.

But, the chicken was done and asparagus just doesn't wait, so we sat down to our fancy table and dug in.


After dinner, Quinn presented Erick with his gift. Notice the hearts in the window of the train - the hearts are the three of us - Quinn's idea. Awwww.

We made the card and Quinn did most of the writing. Can you tell which??