So the kids arrived at 1 after hours of A waiting and anticipating. Other mothers told me their girls were doing the same thing. All day. It is so hard to wait for a party when you're 3 or 4! The kids started in the playroom dumping out all the toys until we called them up to decorate their Valentine bags to put their Valentine's in. I had moved the couch and chair and rolled up the rug so there would be a large open space for them to use the floor. It worked out great. Except for the 9 months pregnant part. We worked through it alright though. I had a couple of mothers who stayed and they were invaluable. There's no way I could have done it all myself. Heather was especially helpful. She got right down on the floor with the kids to help them stamp and color and cut hearts and so forth.
After decorating bags we made little headbands with pipe cleaners going up and attached eyes on hearts to the pipe cleaners. They made cute little Valentine aliens. We were going to dance but it really wasn't necessary with all the running around that was happening. Plus we needed to move into snack or we were going to run out of time!
Snack was fun. I remembered an idea to put frosting in little cups so kids can have their own frosting - thus eliminating the frost-lick-dip-frost-lick-dip cycle in the communal frosting bowl. I also saw an idea on Pinterest to cut apple discs and decorate them like cookies. So we did. We had apple discs and peanut butter cookies. Each kid got three little cups. One had frosting, one had peanut butter and one had sprinkles. The sprinkles were a hit, and a mess. It was genius to only give them each their own little cup with a limited supply of sprinkles. This way I still have sprinkles left in my container and there was no squabbling about someone hogging the sprinkles.
After snack we had a very chaotic passing out of Valentines. Only 12 kids but it seemed very difficult for some of them to get the one in each bag idea. A had it down though! She climbed up on the table in the middle of the bags and checked each bag before dropping her Valentine in. It was so adorable. If only I'd taken pictures.....
We finished out the party by playing Valentine Bingo. The kids were a riot. After every card I called out they would shout, "I have it!" Since every card had every picture on it...... yeah. But they had fun. Some of the younger kids weren't quite sure about the Bingo aspect of the game and just put candy on their cards. Oh well. No one was crying or upset so I count that as a win!
In fact the whole party was full of smiles and laughter. It really was a super fun party. I'm glad we did it. I'm also glad it is over. By the time we got done with party clean up I could barely walk - my hips were so tired. Doesn't seem like it stimulated any labor though. Darn.
I'm trying out something new. If you want to see the Valentine Bingo game I created try clicking here. Let's see if this works!
I got the idea for K's Valentine from here. But I made my own variation that uses less ink. If you want to see/print it click here. (We glued Starburst candies in the center of the star.)
The idea and printable for A's Valentines is from here.
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