Sweet Day

Valentine's Day is a funny one to me, especially when it comes to celebrating with children.  I don't actually remember what my parents did for me on Valentine's Day, which leads me to believe that it wasn't that much of a big deal other than the excitement of getting all of the cards from my classmates.  Sadly, though, I also recall how painful it could be when I opened up my little bag of paper treasure to find that some of the cards were the ones with the frogs on them, or the dogs, or the not-flowery-sweet-girly ones.  I don't remember if those came from boys entering a stage of bashfulness around the opposite sex, or if they came from girls entering a stage of cattiness and cliques.  But that was always hard, my young brain not mature enough to understand either of those concepts or the idea that a box of Valentines only had so many flowery-sweet-girly cards and a whole bunch of the others, so someone invariably ended up with them.

I'm a little torn about how much to do for Sammi on this day.  It's not a big deal, in all honesty.  But since I feel like I lack a little bit in the setting-of-traditions for her (partly because most of the time she couldn't care less), I wanted to make this one at least a little special for her.  Steve and I got her cards and chocolate candies (oblivious to the fact that she won't eat them - M&Ms are her only candy poison, a fact that hit me as I was leaving Target yesterday with the mini-assortment box...), and I picked up a pink mermaid Barbie doll/bath toy.

At the last minute (read: yesterday) I remembered that last year I'd made Valentine's cookies for her teachers, so after she went to bed I raided the cupboards and googled a recipe, and came up with these babies:

Ridiculously easy, I realize now why sugar cookies are likely the most popular cookie to make - they contain ingredients that anybody who eats food should already have in their cupboards and refrigerators.  I made use of the heart-shaped cookie cutters I bought for a buck or two at Target after Valentine's Day last year as well as the heart-emblazoned treat bags I had the forethought to buy an extra pack of at that same time.

To make Samantha's day a little sweeter, I put a cookie in her lunch box along with her ham and cheese sandwich and a little heart-shaped note to tell her Happy Valentine's Day. 


I leave you with an appropriate quote this morning from the "Believe" book that Sammi's teacher gave me:

Believe that passion persuades.

 

 

"...everything in life responds to the song of the heart."

           ~Ernest Holmes