Valentine's Recap

We here at Purple Brick Road were all about the Valentine's spirit. From the songs we sang (Skin-na-ma-rink-a-dink....) To the foods we ate (peanut butter & celery with pink sprinkles anyone?) to the paper we used in our crafts... we were all about love.

Even our peanuts got into the spirit. Tyson found this while he was eating one of my "quix mix" snacks (which is basically a trail mix that I throw together with whatever I can find, then serve in coffee filters because they are oh-so much cheaper than paper plates and so much easier to clean up than real plates - Thank you for the tip, G-ma! Wow. Run-on sentence much?) Anyway, he looked down & said, "Hey, Mommy? This peanut is a Valentine's peanut." I said, "Um, okay. Whatever floats your boat. I guess we can call this the 'Valentine Mix'." Then he said, "No, no, no. I mean, it has a heart on it." I said, "No way." And lo & behold (don't you just love saying that?) it actually did have a heart on it. Cool.
(Please try not to notice my terribly dry and ugly cuticles. If you played guitar and washed your hands about a bazillion times every day your cuticles would be crying out for help too. For the record, I often paint my nails on Fridays, so they can look pretty until Sunday night...)

I came home from bootcamp Saturday morning to find my boys gone to tennis, and this waiting for me on the kitchen table:

This was the cute card that Ty & Riley picked out. I suspect it was more Riley's choice since that boys does love a rubber duck. I won't share the message they wrote inside, but it was super-sweet, and bears Riley's first-ever signature. (which he had a lot of help with, but still.)

Aren't these beautiful. I'm so sad that my camera couldn't accurately capture their beauty.
It sort of chugs & chokes along when I'm trying to photograph anything up close. But I promise that now, almost a week later, those roses are still gorgeous. I think they might make it the whole week!

And, in the fridge was a tasty treat:
Strawberries! (Since I am trying in earnest to dump the junk food.)

Oh, but these are not just any strawberries. These are ginormous, mutant strawberries that must have been grown near a nuclear power plant, or Bruce Banner's gamma lab, or something.


I really must say that I noticed some interesting things this Valentine's Day that I had not realized in Valentine's Days gone by.

#1. Even the craft-foam hearts at my son's school speak "tween." At this point, I'm just thankful that I knew what "LOL" and "BFF" meant without asking. I feel so out of touch sometimes...

#2. Valentine's Day with boys is weird. Little boys are not into cute cards, sparkly hearts, and fluffy bears like little girls are.
Apparently, boys are into eyeballs. Gummy eyeballs. Which are meant to be eaten.
And also, little boys are into cows. Oh, yeah. I can hear you saying, "What? Cows? That's a cute cow. And very appropriate for Valentine's Day if you live on a dairy farm."


Well, here's the thing. We do not live on a dairy farm (although ironically, both my maternal and paternal grandmothers grew up on dairy farms... but I digress). Also, this cow is noisy - it moo's anytime you pick it up, bump the table, or cause a slight breeze to brush past it's general vicinity. And it is full of candy. "What's wrong with that," you ask? Well, true to the interest of adorable little boys, one must lift the tail of the cow to get the candy out, if you know what I mean. (For those of you who don't know what I mean, the cow poops out the candy!) Which boys apparently think is hilarious.

Who knew that living with boys would be so... unusual?