Surviving Valentines Week

Wow! I can not believe how crazy the week of Valentines is when you have young children in school. The entire week was filled with parties, making valentines, decorating boxes and even a Valentines day singing performance by my daughter's kindergarten class.

I used to think Valentines Day was just another opportunity for gold old fashioned money spending but I was wrong. It is actually a booming, all encompassing marketing enterprise. This is definitely one of those get them when their young scenarios.

My five year old daugther had to have the most beautiful decorated box in her class. We spent several days fine tuning it to perfection with beads, silk flowers, pom poms, doilies, crystal stickers, ribbon and fairy dust glitter.

Her box was probably the prettiest but there was a box in her class that was much more clever. This other clever Valentines box was actually a dinosaur where the shoe box was the body and it had an extending head and tail. I was totally caught off guard by this dino box. Now, a decorated shoe box has become old school and a three dimensional creature mailbox is now a neccesity. I want to point out that the child with the dino box was sick but his mother was sure to bring it up to school for the party.

Now the actual Valentine cards that go in the box was a separate issue. My little blooming artist insisted on hand making each Valentine for the twenty kids in her class. We spent over a week each evening coloring these little cards. When we got to school on the big day, all the other cards were store bought with loads of candy attached to them.

The other shocking development is that my five old year has been claiming that she has a "boyfriend" and it turns out to be true. She received a very special gift from him on Valentines day.

This gift was a heart shaped box of chocolates and a ceramic bear figurine. This is scary to me that this stuff starts so early. This little boy received not one but three Valentine cards from my daughter.

This gave me an immediate flashback to when I was in junior high. On Valentines day, you could buy carnations and either personally give them to the people that you liked or you could have them delivered by student council members. It was such a stressful day for a girl or at least for me. Never really knowing how many if any you would receive. God forbid you did not even receive one and had to take the walk of shame down the hall empty handed.

After all of this, I had to think about my husband and what I was going to do for him. Who has any time or creative energy after all of this?