Frogs & Valentines

How's that title for random. We're getting Bruce ready for V Day, making valentines, chocolate flower lollies (didn't have heart molds left at Michael's), and making heart shaped cokies. Kids got a real kick out of making the chocolate lollies. Juniper ate (stole) an enormous amount of white chocolate! BTW, white chocolate doesn't melt as nice as semisweet, even if it is Ghiradelli's. Next time I'll try making my own candy fondant for the parts that need color. I was so proud of how Bruce wrapped each lollie almost by himself. He also stirred the chocolate while it melted and put all the little sticks in. Juney gobbled up anything not nailed down.Juney and Bruce made valentines to send to their grandparents in Florida. 15 minutes of relative fun and sanity amidst a sea of insanity yesterday morning. I was really impressed with how well Bruce did. I gave him 2 sheets of paper to made cards. He picked the red one for his grandpa and the pink one for grandma (no suggestion from me). He decorated grandma's with a procession of ladybug stickers because, "Grandma likes ladybugs." On Grandpa's we signed his name with stickers and he put them on in the correct order although sometimes a letter was upside down. On Grandma's I wrote his name for him and he had a total cow when we got to the E (he did write the U himself). I tried it big, little, on different paper, in a different location but no matter what I did it was wrong and he wouldn't do it himself. I wrote his teacher about it and she said they were starting to dabble with handwriting but so far they'd only done F, but they were going to do E that day and she described the language they used to cue how to draw the letter. After school I tried using their language for the E. Bruce got very upset and said I did it wrong. He took the pen and drew an F and said "G is for fish" :) and THEN drew an E and said "E is for elephant." I guess he wanted me to end his name with an F instead of an E :)

Yesterday evening while I was on one of my very rare MNOs, Gillian and Bruce made valentines for his class party on Friday. They were sooo cute. Gilly showed him how to fold paper and cut out a heart and he did about half of them (you can tell because they are cut with a series of straight lines to make the heart). She then stenciled the other childrens' names on each card and drew some hearts. Bruce then traced each child's name inside the stencilled letters and colored in the hearts. They also used torn paper to glue on 3D flowers on the front. Gilly is so clever! I was so impressed by what she was able to get Bruce to do and how lovely they came out.
I made a checklist (w/ little boxes and everything) so Bruce could keep track of the 3 things he needed to make for the V day party Friday. He was so excited to check off the valentines and lollies. All that is left are the heart shaped cookies or brownies (haven't decided on which to do yet - maybe both) but think we'll save those for Thursday.

Now for the fish. The tank is finally completely stocked & up to: 1 tadpole, 2 Amano shrimp, 1 albino bristlenose pleco, 1 betta, 5 green neons, 3 harlequin rasboras, and way too many snails (they breed like rabbits). I tried to get a picture of the tadpole's little hind legs growing in (2nd photo). See if you can spot them. The first photo shows the 2 shrimp on a rock and a few of the neons.