Valentines!

Are you doing anything fun for Valentines? We did already...we decided to Heart Attack our neighbors! We haven't done anything like that in forever, and I always thought it might not be well received here. But lately the morale has been low for the employees at Joseph's school (seriously, people being fired left and right over nothing) so we thought it might be nice to raise some spirits.

When I was a kid, we often made plates of treats to bring to our neighbors for this holiday. We would leave them on the porch, knock, and then run and hide! We did that once or twice with our kids when we lived in Utah, but we've never done it the three years we've been here. I love the idea of teaching the kids that Valentines is about loving everyone, not just in a romantic way.

I had mentioned the idea of decorating people's doors with hearts earlier that week, but the kids were only marginally interested, and were reluctant to put the work in first. Then Joseph used the idea, having his class decorate another class’s door in secret. (He then had to go explain what it was about to the other teacher, because they'd never heart of heart attacking before.)

For our own experiment, Jonah did reasonably well following the lines I drew; you could at least tell his were hearts! I was actually surprised. Eli was throwing a fit at first because he wanted scissors too. Finally, I handed him a scrap of paper and the hole punch. He held the tool backwards, so that the handles were facing the paper, but he was convinced they were scissors, and he was perfectly happy the rest of the evening. He kept carefully sliding the pink paper between the two handles, and every time it would whisper against one side or the other, he was convinced the paper had been cut and he would exclaim loudly, holding up the paper to either me or daddy. It was cute.

We didn't make any elaborate designs as we've done for our own decorations in years past; there simply wasn't time for that. Mostly we drew on them with crayon, (Elora made lots of flowers and hearts) or wrote words on them. Elora wanted to write “You've been heart attacked” though she misspelled “heart” and “you've”. Later Josh was trying to think of something to write (he really wanted to put his name on one, and it was hard to convince him he wasn't supposed to.) Elora suggested he write, “Have a nice heart attack!”

When they were all ready, we taped the finished hearts to the back of a cookie sheet,so they’d be easy to transport and ready to stick on a door. First Joseph took Jonah to the nearest neighbor, a lady with blonde hair who lives by herself (one of the people recently fired used to be her roommate). We watched them through the kitchen window , though we didn't have a very good view. Jonah only stuck three hearts on her door and was ready to come home because it was so cold. It was only 16F outside! The pan was really freezing too.

Then Joseph took Elora and Josh out. They went first to Elora's teacher and her husband. (The husband was recently fired too.) Jonah, Eli and I watched them through the kids’ bedroom window, with all of the lights off. They weren't there very long before we saw them scurry off the porch and run away; Joseph told me later they thought they heard the man coming, though they never came outside. Then they went to the house behind ours, where two teachers live…another school employee lived there with them too, but I’m not sure if she’s still there, since she's been fired and rehired several times this year. (Yeah, what the heck?)Anyway, we watched them stick some hearts on the door, then again they hurried away and hid behind the house.

Joseph says they could hear the house's occupants talking right on the other side of the door the whole time! They didn't hang very many there either, because Josh was sure they were going to come out and he wanted to leave. I was disappointed with how many hearts they hadn't hung- the whole point is to cover someone's door with the hearts so that they're overwhelmed with them, not just leave three or four.

I suggested we leave the rest on another nearby neighbor's door, a lady who is older and single, whom I rarely see out talking to other people. So the next day while everyone was at school, I took Jonah and Eli out and we hurriedly decorated her door. There were at least 12 to 15 hearts on her door, a much better showing than the others we did! It still would have been fun to get all of them in one place.

Later we learned that everyone was thrilled with the surprise they found the next morning, and it really lifted their spirits! Yay!

So yeah, I didn't take pictures. However, I do have pictures of the valentines I'm giving Joseph this year. Personally, I think cards are a waste of money, but they're really important to my husband. We didn't buy one the last time we were in the city, so I printed some off of the computer, and have been hiding them in his stuff today, and will tomorrow as well. If you like Harry Potter, you might like these!

I know this isn't very big, but here's the link to the original picture, if you want to see it bigger. http://iwastesomuchtime.com/on/?i=24677

Happy Valentines Day!