My Valentine's Fun!

I read about what these awesome mom's do for their families on Valentine's Day and am always thinking to myself "Why can't I do that?". I see their creativity and have convinced myself that I just have just lost mine. I thought about doing things early in the month, but never had the time or put much thought into a valentine surprise. I bought valentines for my kids for school and signed up to help with Hailey's 4th grade class party. That was all I had planned.

While setting in sacrament meeting Sunday, I looked around at how many widows and widowers our ward has and I thought about how Valentines Day must be such a lonely holiday for them. It then donged on me that we could have some fun, I had Hailey and Alyssa each invite a few friends over for after school on Monday and decided we could make sugar cookies and take to those members of our ward, letting them know that we cared. What was I thinking, sugar cookies are not fun to roll out and make, let alone with two-9 year olds, six- 7 year olds, plus my two side kicks! We did make the cookies which turned out awesome, I used two recipes and my favorite came from http://www.ourbestbites.com/. We did a butter cream frosting and a glaze trying a few different things, but the butter cream is definately the best! If you need a good frosting recipe this is awesome.

Sugar Cookies (our best bites)

2 C Butter
2 C Sugar
2 Extra large eggs
1 tsp Almond extract
1 tsp Vanilla
6 C Sifted Flour (don't pack it in the measuring cup
3 tsp Baking Powder
1 tsp Salt

Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add egg and extract and mix in. In a separate bowl combine flour, baking powder and salt. Slowly add the flour mixture to the butter mixture and mix until completley combined.
Chill the dough in the fridge for an hour
Flour surface, roll out, and press with molds.

Bake at 350 for 8-12 minutes, depending on thickness of dough and how you like your cookies.

Butter Cream frosting(my recipe)

12 oz. butter (1 1/2 cups), softened
1 lb 6 oz Powdered Sugar (about 6 cups, unpacked
2 oz Cream
1/2 tsp Vanilla extract (or Almond)

Cream butter this fluffy and add the powdered sugar slowly while mixing. Beat until fluffy on High, then add vanilla & cream until mixed well.

It was a little hectic but we delivered 10 plates of cookies around the neighborhood. All of those little giggly girls had lots of excitement bursting out of them, but we did crush it a little when we had to forgo delivering the 11th plate due to Alyssa getting the door slammed on her hand. Yes, I did it and didn't know it until I climbed in and heard everyone screaming. Screaming is normal with little girls so I ignored it until they started screaming about Alyssa's hand being stuck in the door. We got it out and while there was many tears, nothing was broken and she was good.

Preparing that was more than I had done the prior years and so I felt that was enough for me this year, and then I woke up! My little girls won't be little forever and definately won't want to be my valentine forever. So, I decided to have a fun day of surprises for these little girls. They started out the day with heart shaped pancakes for breakfast.

Abby and I had a little shopping to do in town before the 4th grade valentine party and so while at the grocery store we bought items to make each girls a surprise box with some of their favorite treats (chocolate covered strawberries, chocolate covered pretzels (shaped as hearts), valentine candy corn, and cinnamon lips). Abby put them in cute little containers and put bows on each of them, which Macey removed.

John was coming home from work so I could go over the Hailey's class party at 1pm and so I wanted to be creative for lunch. Papa Murphey's pizza is one of our favorites and during valentine season, they change their pepporoni pizza's into a heart shape. I picked up a pizza and decided to pick up my girls from school for a fun lunch with mom, plus they needed their little box of surprise treats too!

I live next to the school so I put the pizza in, set the timer for 12 minutes, and ran out the door to the school to pick my girls up. They were so surprised and excited that within a minute of us getting home the oven started beeping and our pizza was ready.

I don't have any pictures with John, but he surprised us by coming home a little early and joining us all for the pizza. I will say that it is wonderful to live next door to the school. Alyssa ran outside and hopped the fence to join her friends playing a recess after lunch and I took Hailey back to the school to check her in for her fun class party. And, let me say 4th graders are crazy!

It was a wonderful day and we had so much fun together!!! Happy Valenines Day!