weaving the rainbow

Tuesday, February 17, 2009 ;

9:37 AM

Valentine's Day aka Friendship Day.

I remember how they loved celebrating it in Utah. Friends at church and in ds1's preschool all exchanged little heartfelt gifts. ds1's wonderful preschool teacher (whom he still misses and remembers) also let them "mail" each other the cards in school where they each had a "mailbox".

So we began baking cookies from Tuesday. To make it really sincere and meaningful, I let them do the baking, and thus used Betty Crocker cookie mix to make it simple.

They took turns to beat the egg, measure out milk, butter and mix everything together. Then they scooped and shaped the cookies. I had to help with that because otherwise all the cookies will turn out in weird shapes.

ds1 made a card for me at school. Actually it was addressed to all 3 of us: Daddy, mommy and ds2. That's the cover and back.

And the inside:

Daddy of course at once asked, "what about daddy?" The diplomatic ds1 said, "I was going to write about how much I love you but time ran out and we had to tidy up!" But actually I think it is the truth. ds1 really loves his daddy and brother too. He is missing his dad so much now when Dh is away at Shanghai and Suzhou.

The cookies were not enough for all of ds1 and ds2's friends because ds1 had 27 classmates in the 2 kindy classes (they celebrate together and I cannot possibly give only his class), while ds2 had 25 classmates in Nursery alone. Initially the teacher said there were 19 in Pre-K too, but I really didn't have enough stuff for so many kids.

So cookies are for the teachers and teaching assistants and special people, since they made it themselves. The friends, who probably won't care if it is bought or homemade, will get other gifts.

ds2 gave out ABC Animal candy. He arranged the candy from A to Z first and he tried to match the letter to his friend's names, but we soon found out that it was impossible. Too many friends' names begun with the same letter while some candies had no takers.

So we did the rest randomly, and stapled his love notes onto the candy. Should have done more and made it nicer but there was not enough time (story about that in another post).

ds1 worked faster and he had more meaningful friendships, being in school for longer hours too, and being older. So I rolled out fondant and we both cut hearts out of pink fondant and stuck them onto Oreos. We didn't have enough Oreos too! argh!

So the rest of the friends got hearts on the cookies he baked.

Then I was left to wrap each cookie in sandwich bags and staple on the love notes. Cos the 2 kids had to sleep by then and the poor mom worked till 1am on Thursday night. Could have been earlier but something cropped up that shook me and occupied me the rest of the day so...

Fortunately the boys drew and decorated their teachers' gifts earlier on Wed. 2 treasure chests for each of ds1's teachers.

And 2 magnetic star wooden boxes for ds2's teachers.