Valentine's Fail

People who read my blog often tell me things along the lines of "I don't know how you do it all" or "you're amazing".  While I completely appreciate the compliments (thank you, by the way), I feel like the blogging world leaves the reader with only a "partial" view of me as a person, wife, mom, teacher, etc. and sets a precedent that we all need to "have it together".  I can assure you, I don't "have it all together".  I'm hoping that by sharing my Valentine's fail story, you will see that I am just an average mom.  I make dumb choices, don't always think things through, make mistakes, say things I shouldn't, have kids that sometimes run wild with disobedience, eat too much sugar, drink too many homemade lattes, and don't exercise enough.  I'm your every-day mom.  Truly.  What you see on my blog just so happens to be a lot of the good and fun stuff ;)  Here is my Valentine's story:

Valentine's is my absolute favorite holiday (well, I suppose I like Christmas a bit more).  This year, I had 3 classes of kids to prepare Valentine's for: my Kindergarten class, Ellie's preschool class, and Zoe's preschool class.  I cut out foam hearts several days ahead of time and wrote "Happy Valentine's Day" on each one.  I felt ahead of the game.  I planned to make homemade marshmallows (colored pink) and cut them out with a mini heart cookie cutter.  This plan sounded easy and fun as homemade marshmallows are super easy (and I've made a gazillion batches before).  I made my marshmallows, as usual.  I poured them into a thin layer on the cookie sheet and let them set.  They never set.  They tasted just fine, but they were gooey.  This was the night before Valentine's day.  I have never, not once, ruined a batch of marshmallows until now.  I was irritated.

It was at this point that I decided I was tired of marshmallows and would prefer to do something different for our Valentine's.  It was also at this point that my husband should have said something along the lines of "are you nuts?".  But he didn't.  And I moved on.  To homemade candy hearts.  Did you know candy hearts require 24 hours to air dry?  I did.  I've done them before.   I didn't care.  So I made candy hearts.  Candy hearts are mostly powdered sugar.  By the way, did you know that the powdered sugar bulk bin at Winco is under the mini M&M dispenser bulk bin?  Yep.  M&M's were in my candy heart dough.  At this point, I declared "this sucks, I should give up", to which Ben replied, "yeah, you probably should".  It was also at this point that I kept going, wasting more and more ingredients to get my dough perfect.  I cut out a whole bunch of candy hearts and placed them on a tray to air dry.  Oh, did I mention that they still would need to be written on, bagged, and tagged before I left for work at 8:30 the next morning.  Hmmm.  I didn't think that one through.  Next is where Ben chimed in with "wouldn't it have been easier to have gone to the Dollar Store and bought a couple bags of candy?"  Why, yes, babe.  That would have been much easier.

This is where I said "change of plans!" (again).  Heart stickers were quickly cut up and attached to the heart Valentine's with a paper clip.  My food markers were packed up and I had decided to let my kindergarteners write on their own candy hearts the next day.  I've decided not to add up the total monetary cost of the wasted ingredients...it would only make me angry. 

Guess what?  Kids love stickers.  They wouldn't have cared that I made "homemade" marshmallows.  They didn't even think homemade candy hearts were cool. 

Next year, I'm hitting up the Dollar Store.

As an additional note, I spent Valentine's evening at a child abuse & neglect class.  Romantic. 

As an extra additional note, my husband surprised me with a brand new iPhone 4s.  I can now be cool as I talk to my phone and tell it to text my husband that "he's hot".