Pre-Valentine's Day Celebrations

Valentines Day has never been a huge celebration around our house, but having a little one who is old enough to take part and get excited bumps it up on my priority list quite a bit.

So last week, Jayce and I got busy making Valentines. We colored paper, stamped hearts, drew lines, and then cut our paper into hearts. I got a few sweet pictures of my little guy, printed them out and attached them to the cards. Then we put them in the mail to our Valentines.

We also started what might be a new Valentine tradition, sort of a spring version of our Halloween tradition, and took cookies up to Chris' class. We always do this in the fall, and apparently some of the students in Chris' spring class were asking if Jayce could deliver Valentine or Easter cookies, and though I was slightly annoyed at first (they can't ask for them, geeze!), I got over it quickly and decided that we would oblige. The original idea behind this was that since Jayce was too young to celebrate Halloween with his own class, that he could dress up and celebrate with dad's class for a few years. But I'm a little worried that next year when Jayce is in preschool and can take cookies to his own class, that Chris' class will be requesting them too and I'll be making cookies all day long. Oh well, I guess I have plenty of time to practice up.

Jayce was the happiest little helper. I was not the happiest cooker by the end of it. On this day, Jayce decided not to take his nap, and it was one of those days where I really needed him to!! But that also meant I didn't get to roll out and cook the cookies while he was asleep, so he "helped" with every single stage of cookie-making from scratch. Mixing ingredients, rolling out dough, cutting shapes, icing and sprinkling. His enthusiasm and energy definitely surpassed mine that morning/afternoon.

But we did end up with a huge beautiful batch of cookies for class. I have been trying out lots of different sugar cookie recipes these past few years, and this year I tried Patrice's recipe, which you can see here, and it was the best by far!!

When I mentioned to one of my friends that we were taking Valentine cookies to Chris' class, she asked, "So, what is he going to wear?" which I hadn't even thought about. I have never given him a Valentine shirt before, but he had never been a Valentine cookie delivery boy before. I knew he had a red t-shirt that was about to be too small, so I pulled that out and made this cute little "boyish" Valentine shirt. I showed it to Chris and explained, "I know that it's red with a big heart, but it has trucks all over it, so it's boyish. It's like it says, 'I love trucks'." Chris was not convinced, but I was. And he was the cutest delivery boy ever.

Jayce carried the cookies in a little Valentine bucket, ran across the classroom to Chris as soon as he saw him through the door, stood on the table in the fornt of the class and told them all, "Happy Balentine's Day!" several times. It was great.

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Trick or Treating

I am unhappy to admit that I didn't really get a good picture of Jayce in his adorable and hilarious hamburger costume!  But some friends came over to trick or treat with us and Jayce was just too excited to run around with their little boy to stand still and let me snap a few shots. Oh well, these will do for now.

Jayce was a little expert trick or treater!  He would say a little slowly and timidly, "trick or tre-at," but he got it out at each door along with a thank you, which I was happy with.

Last year there weren't that many people on our street participating in trick or treating, but this year almost everyone was.  It took us an hour just to do our street, and by the time we got back to our house the buckets were full and it was cold outside, so we headed in.

Jayce handed out candy to all of the kids who came to our house as well.  As soon as the doorbell rang, he would run for the door, grab the bowl, and then hand out 1 piece of candy to each kid.  He was so deliberate about it, it was really sweet.

He was excited to light the candles in our pumpkins at home, and insisted on touching the pumpkins at every house that we went to for candy when we were out.

In keeping with our tradition from the past few years, we took cookies up to Chris' class the day before Halloween with Jayce in his costume.  Since Jayce doesn't have a class to share Halloween treats with, we share them with his dad's class.

Last year Jayce handed the cookies out to each student, but this year the icing wasn't quite set and I was a little worried about how messy the situation might get.  So instead the students lined up, filed in front of Jayce and he would tell them which cookie they should get.  Seriously.  They would say, "Which one should I take Jayce?" and he would point, and say "This one. Here. That one."  It was pretty funny and he was really pleased with his power.

We also got a surprise Halloween night when a group of students showed up on our doorstep around 9:30.  They were all dressed up and apparently just "visiting" the homes of some of the professors to wish them a happy halloween.  One of the students was dressed up fairly accurately as one of Chris' colleagues, which sent Chris into uproarious laughter, which woke up Jayce.  They told us his was the best reaction of the night.  I'm just glad that they knocked on the door to say hi instead of toilet papering the house!

Jayce also got to go trick or treating at the school, since they have an open dorm trick or treat night.  So now we have a house full of candy and a little trick or treating hamburger pro.

 

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Any Christian Standard Readers?

Still playing catch up here a bit, but has anybody been reading the Christian Standard this past August?

If so, I hope you caught 2 different articles penned by Chris and his father Andy. There was The Pastoral Call of Corporate Leaders in the August 15 issue, and Why Some Corporate Practices Should Have A Home in the Church in the August 29 issue. I was so proud to be sitting in church by my husband, and reading his writing in a magazine that I had grabbed off of the church's magazine rack! :)

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