The Lee Family: Sofia's Valentine's Party

Sofia wrote the following to describe her party:

On the day before Valentine's day, Sofia went to school while Olivia stayed home. Sofia got a lot of candy in her hot air balloon card/candy collector. Olivia played with the plastic toy horses in the living room. After a couple of hours it was time to go to Sofia's valentine party at her school, so I put Olivia in the car and dropped her off at Adventure Kids, then headed to Sofia's school. At the party me and the other moms helped out with guessing games, sundaes, bingo, minute to win it, freeze dance and snacks. Sofia said good-bye and I hopped in the car and picked up Olivia and we went home as Sofia went to specials. After one hour Sofia came home from school on the bus and played.

A few days before Sofia's Valentine's Party, I showed her several ideas on Pinterest of Valentine's Card Containers we could make. Sofia was actually home sick with strep but feeling well enough to help out. There were such cute ideas, mostly using an old shoe box or similar-sized box. However, there was one that was a "hot air balloon" made with a balloon, wide ribbon, and a little basket. It was so cute and I realized we had all of the things to make it! We cut off the handle of an old Easter basket that we had, attached the balloon (which Sofia blew up) with straws and hot glue and then decorated the balloon with wide ribbon and Valentine's stickers. It was so cute although it kept wanting to tip over so we had to add a rock to the bottom of the basket! Weeks ago she decided to make each of her classmates a bookmark with Valentine's stickers and cute paper and ribbon. They really turned out well. Of course this morning I woke up in a panic realizing that we are not allowed to have any balloons at school due to possible latex allergies kids might have. I wondered if we might be able to attach a small soccer ball, but then remembered that we had a few paper lamps left over from when Connie threw us a surprise Luau. One was yellow and white striped and perfect! I quickly removed the balloon and attached the ribbon and straws to the paper lamp using craft tack circles and the Valentine's stickers and before I knew it we were done! It really turned out so cute!

Sofia's school Valentine's Party was so much fun! Sofia was super excited to see me and gave me a big hug before showing me her desk. The fun started with all the kids writing a sweet note to Mrs. Livingston for all that she does. Sofia absolutely adores Mrs. Livingston (CK and I do too) so she really spent time on her note and drew her a picture. After everyone was done, the kids each were able to guess how many candies were in three different containers and then make their sundaes. I scooped out the ice cream and they all loved putting sprinkles, caramel and fudge sauce on before finishing it off with whipped cream! Yikes! Following the ice cream sundaes, the kids played Bingo and Freeze Dance. Freeze Dance was adorable with all the kids really getting into it! It was so much fun to watch them all dance like crazy and act silly. Sofia actually made it pretty far into several of the rounds and really had fun. After all the fun activities, it was time to finish up and head out to specials where they ran around and played to get the huge dose of sugar out of them! I stuck around and helped Pritha and the other room moms clean up and then picked Olivia up from Adventure Kids. What a fun party!

The Valentine's Card hot air balloon before....