Love Hurts.

No, really.  I should have included a bandaid in the girls' Valentine's this year. 

It was that time of year again.  Time to make things more difficult than they should be.  Time to wait until the last minute putting stress on the entire family.  Time to over extend myself to the point of total meltdown.

Yep, it was time for Valentine's. 

I turned to Pinterest and picked what seemed to be an easy yet clever Valentine.  My girls like to make theirs.  I am always tempted to buy the boxes.  I peruse them and caress them.  I think of how wonderfully simple those things would make my life around this time of year and then my day dream is spoiled with sounds of giddy girls excited about getting crafty.  I place the box back on the shelf and wipe a tear from my eye and bid farewell to what could have been.

Let me get this straight.  There is nothing wrong with boxed Valentines.  I absolutely loved picking mine out each year.  Loved it!  I just started a tradition that just won't die and well, oh well.  We made our Valentine's again this year.  I'm over it.

Here is the inspiration:

Tutorial found here. 

I didn't use her template and just made my own so I could personalize it with their names.  Microsoft Word is the spawn of Satan.  I had everything looking perfect and when I printed, all the words that I created using "word art" were jacked up.  It took me an hour to reconcile this problem.  I was on the verge of tears and punching our iMac. 

I got them all printed out and the cutting commenced.  We were all cutting.  Even Levi.  After cutting came stapling.  And by stapling I mean repeatedly poking my eyes out.  I bought them little staplers to use and under estimated the hand strength that staplers require and that my tiny people don't have.  As you can see...it's a lot of staples.  So, I stapled most of them together leaving the top open. 

Wait, no I didn't.  Mia started out wanting to do everything on. her. own.  She wasn't keen on listening to instructions or steps or anything, really, and so she began stapling them together with the back print on the inside.   This incident grew my self-control and holding of the tongue.  I decided that 4 people would not get to see who it was from until they tore it open.  The end.

They stuffed each one with a piece of candy, a sticker, and a mini-eraser.  

 I stapled the tops together and we called it a night at around 10:00pm.   Yes, I know.  Let's just move on.   They sort of kind of look like the example.  As you can see they tried their hardest to get those staples to go in the right places.  Jules kept saying,  "Darn it, this stapler is so stubborn!"  She didn't give up until she was at her wits end. 

 

Levi bought them doughnuts for breakfast for a good sugary start to the day and I gave them their annual Valentine stuffed animal.  Levi also bought them a box of chocolate from a chocolate shop in Downtown Fort Worth on Friday and they actually saved it until today.  I was impressed.  With both their will power and Levi's awesomeness. 

They each had a party and had a great time.  It was at Jules' party that I began to re-think our Valentines.  I realized that they might be darn near impossible to tear open b/c I used heavy card stock and that they might poke their fingers on the one million staples in each one of them while trying so hard to tear them.  By the time I worked it all up in my head I wanted to shout "WAIT!  Nobody move!  I need to take up Jules' Valentine's real quick and open them for you.  Please???"  But, in the end it worked out.  We just have one kid who might have been planning some questionable activities after pulling all the staples out of his and piling them up on his desk.  Oopsie.

 

Oh, here.  Did you want a close up of Mia's Valentine's bag?  As I was looking at the sweet hearts and rainbows that adorned of all the little girls bags it brought me back to my child hood.  Then Mia flashed this naked guy in a diaper in front of me while she gleamed with pride.   Yes, it's cupid.  I get it.  But it was a bit of a shocker, that's all I'm saying.  Being a mother to a free spirit is nothing if not shocking.