valentine assembly line

Every year at this time, the kids and I become the valentine assembly line, crafting valentines for all of their classmates. See, the montessori where they attend does not allow store bought valentines, or should I say strongly encourages homemade valentines. Although Schuyler's school does allow store bought, it has become a bit of a tradition to make our own. I find this a bit ironic since I'm really not a fan of valentine's day. I don't really like flowers and, in fact, roses are one of my least favorites and the fact that they mark everything up by 50%. Instead, the Riese family typically enjoys takeout, most often Chinese, my candle light. The kids get a big kick out of the candles and I have no cooking or clean-up! This year, the Chinese new year and Valentine's day are the same day so our little tradition makes perfect sense = ) Back to the homemade valentines. I cheated a bit this year and made photocards. However, we still had to decorate the outside of the envelope. The potato stamper returned and made an appearance, along with some other stamps I had laying around the house from my scrapbooking days. Eli hit his limit at 8 or 9 valentines before he relinquished his duty to me. Mack and Schuyler thoroughly enjoyed the experience, making each valentine unique and special.

I have officially caught the "winter blah". That's my new official term for it, "winter blah"! I would like to ring the neck of Punxsutawney Phil for seeing his shadow and condemning us to 6 more weeks of winter. I need warmth, light and energy to return to my life. Ugh!

Last weekend the girls participated in the Shirette kiddie clinic. This consisted of 3 hours of dance in the a.m. followed by a half-time performance at the boys basketball game. If that wasn't enough, between the 2 activities Mack had a playdate with one of her best friends who she has not seen since August. Later, as we were getting ready for the performance it was very evident how tired she was. As I was curling her hair, I accidentally nicked her ear. From that point forward it was tears, drama and mom could do no right, particularly b/c someone didn't know what she wanted. I offered to put the portion of uncurled hair in a bun or finish curling, etc... All my suggestions were shot down by our little fiery spirit. Eventually she came around and we were able to finish her hair to her specifications. The dance was very cute. For the grand finale, they got to choose the pose they wanted to end in. You will never believe what our miss Schuyler did, jumped into the splits! It blew me away. For the record, her father is extremely flexible for a male being and back in our day, when we used to bust a move, he was known to fancy the crowd with his splits.

Schuyler got her 2nd quarter report card and also recently received a high five award. This is a big deal as the award was presented to her in front of her whole class. I think they give one per quarter. As a prize, she gets a free kids buffet from Valentinos!! She got one last year, too. As you can imagine, we are so proud of her!! Have I ever mentioned that her name has dutch origin and means "scholarly" = )

These days, Eli can be found racing his cars all through the house and crashing them into things. The kid LOVES showers and baths and hops in with mom or dad whenever the opportunity presents itself.