Valentine's Party Plus Shows

Saturday, February 13

Emma requested a Valentine's party this year. I think I kind of secretly wanted to do one as well. Last year a friend from church invited Alice to a Valentine's party and it was SO AWESOME! The party attendees were a bunch of adorable 3 year olds and their moms and the mom who planned it did an incredible job. I was blown away by all the fun activities she had planned and how easy she made it look by how calm and collected and obviously prepared she was. I've since thought it would be so fun to do something just like that! 

The party wouldn't be starting until eleven though, so here's a few pictures of our laid-back morning (as you'll remember, Dallas and I stayed up WAY too late last night making WAY too much stuff).

Alice and Lucy played with the babies while Dallas and I tried to catch up on sleep.

They are such sweet sisters. 

The babies are escaping! And I love Lucy's front ponytail.

And Alice's candy-cane outfit that also works for Valentine's. And the happy, festively-dressed babies!

Meanwhile, Emma was downstairs, diligently working on making "menus" for her friends. 

She made a menu with each friend to find out what they would like on their pizza - cheese, pepperoni, olives.

The table is set, the room is decorated and we are ready for some friends!

Dallas did a great job rolling out all these crusts. Unfortunately, our oven did not do a great job NOT burning them. Oh well.

I didn't get any pics of the actual party 'cause you know, I was probably running around like a chicken. But here is the schedule I put on the whiteboard so I would have some sort of plan.

And I did at least get a pic of the END of the party! Here's all the cute kiddos.

Once the party was done, we put Lucy and the babies down for naps and then, Dallas got to work on his pie. We wanted something valentines-y so we decided on cherry. I've had my doubts about a cherry pie. Probably because I love fresh cherries SO much, I can't imagine sacrificing a flavor-bursting scrumptious cherry to be cooked into a pie. They are just so perfect how they are. But, it was Valentine's and we've already made a strawberry and cranberry pie, and Dallas REALLY wants to always try new pies, so cherry it is! 

I guess I didn't get a picture of the girlies watching the shows, but I just wanted to share some of the "shows" we've been watching with them. 

At Christmas we watched "It's a Wonderful Life" and they LOOOOVED it. We watched it over several weeks and had lots of "pausing the show" so I could explain what was going on. They loved it so much that on new years, when trying to get a feel for some of their "favorites" for the year, Alice said her favorite movie was "It's a Wonderful Life" and Emma said her favorite was "Newsies" (I told Dallas and the girls to get me "Newsies" for my birthday and we watched it quite a bit last summer). It was a proud mama moment for me. I think Lucy was asleep when we had that conversation...otherwise I am pretty sure Lucy would have said "Frozen 2".

Anyway, our current "oldie but goodie" show that I have introduced them to is Anne of Green Gables. It is taking us forever to get through all three DVDs (front AND back!) but the girls are so excited to watch it every weekend. So that's the show we watched with them tonight.