Be My Valentine

We have this really lame little board book, based on the Corduroy books by Don Freeman. In seven chunky pages, Corduroy hosts a little Valentine's party, gets his paws dirty eating cupcakes, delivers valentines greetings to over sized mailboxes, and receives a pile of surprise valentines under his door. The book has no title and no author. Would you believe that Eva (who has contentedly listened to most Anne of Avonlea) loves this book?!?

Well, she does. And this book formed the basis for our first ever kid party, last Thursday, in honor of Valentine's Day. Together we picked out an evite invitation online, Eva narrated the words to me, then I emailed the invite to four of her friend's mothers. We were thrilled to find out that her little friends could come, and we planned a few simple details to make it fun. I had no idea what to expect since, as I mentioned, we have never hosted any sort of kid party.

The morning started with some forced room cleaning, which did not go well. Happily, three and four year olds don't really care if their friends have good housekeeping skills. As the girls arrived, they were all smiles wearing pretty dresses in shades of red and pink and carrying handmade valentines for Eva. The hostess, of course, insisted on wearing her black and white polka dot dress, but I did convince her to throw on red and white tights.

The girls played for a few minutes while Heather (mom of two guests) and I finished lunch preparations. Lunch consisted of PBJ sandwiches, cheese slices, carrots, apples, and water. Fancy!

The day before, Eva helped me make these cute little heart cakes. Of course I had altered the cake recipe a bit, and I wouldn't say the end result was worth repeating. That didn't matter though, because all the girls cared about was the chocolate frosting and sprinkles!
After lunch we played a quick outdoor game of Simon Says (always a preschool favorite!). Following our game, we returned to the table for some valentine crafting. Aside from the scissors tiff, which resulted in Eva throwing the undesired scissors across the table, the little ladies managed to share all the supplies well and create some visual works of art. Lots of glue stick wielding, scissor "passing", sticker stamping, and practice writing their names. Girls and craft supplies amaze me. They could've sat there for another half hour at least (which is a long time when you're three)!

The party was short and sweet, ending with Eva passing out the gift bags she had been drooling over all week. I gave her specific instructions to bring each girl a bag, hug them, and say, "thank you for coming to my party." I was surprised when she followed these instructions to a 'T', given her ornery attitude after the scissors incident. The gift bags contained two miniature containers of pink play doh, a heart shaped recees peanut butter cup, and a sticker. Simple.

Hugs and gift bags (above), but I'm not fast enough to catch the moment!

It took an extraordinary amount of effort to get everyone happily settled on the couch for a group picture, but here's what we have!

(L-R) Eva, Emmi, Brianna, Kara, and Katelyn.

The party was a mere two hours long, but I am not ashamed to admit that I took a much needed nap after things quieted down. Keeping up with these girlies, and Hope and Ella, left me pooped! I have to add, the party would've been a real drag without Heather here doing crowd control. It was an altogether FUN day though, and I think we'll do it again (maybe a year from now!).