Valentine party

As a child, there was just about nothing more fun than getting a big pile of valentines from my friends, and eating all the candy that went with them. I loved the hearts, the pretty crafts, the reds and the pinks, and of course, the chocolate.

As a homeschooling family, we don't get to have all the fuss at school, so since I had nothing much to do these days (did I just say that?) I decided to throw a valentines party for the kids and their friends.

We rented a room in our community centre, and enlisted the help of auntie melissa to help decorate and supervise. True to our do-it-yourself genes that run so strongly in this family, E and Z made their own valentines to give out, spending the whole day before the party carefully crafting them and waited very impatiently all week for the upcoming celebration.

When all the children arrived, they stuffed their valentines into the bags that we made for each child, then ran around the room that was decorated with pink streamers, heart, doilies and balloons. The average age of the children at this party was probably 4 years. The oldest was 8 and the youngest was 2 months old. Including the babies, there were 23 kids there.

We began the afternoon with a craft that looked like this (except we used paper, not wood), and then the kids burned off some energy in some games. First we played the special heart game, where the kids all gathered around a bedsheet with lots of cut-out paper hearts in the middle.

Like a parachute game, they each grabbed onto the sheet and shook it up and down and made the hearts dance on the sheet, until I said "HIGH!!" and then they shook them up really high so they scattered around the room. Whoever found the special heart (one wrapped in foil) got to pick a prize out of my bag.

They thought this was lots of fun and we played it three times. The third time, I told them whoever found a pink or purple heart could also pick a prize, and they were SO excited to all find one. They just about knocked me over while trying to claim their winnings. After this, they played duck duck goose, Mrs. Valentine says (like simon says), hide and seek (as demanded by the masses), and freeze dance.

We settled everyone down at the tables to drink punch out of plastic wine glasses, and eat some yummy chocolate cupcakes, and as they left, they took their bags of valentines home with them, along with some of the decorations off the walls and tables so I didn't have too. It was a little noisy at times, but a nice diversion from our normal craziness.