Valentine Parties

One week until Valentine's Day – and it's still cold. Grandkids are still out of school, much to their parents' chagrin. Older daughter is probably starting to count up how many days will be added to her teaching days at the end of school. Younger daughter, on the other hand, is flying into the face of winter – she's headed to a meeting in Rochester, New York, this weekend. As for me, I actually got out of the house for the first time in over a week. Hubby wanted to take the vehicle out for a drive this afternoon, so I went with him and dropped our tax papers off.

Valentine's Day was always a time of both fun and anxiety during elementary school. We were all supposed to decorate a box at home and bring it in for Valentine's Day. That always presented such a dilemma for me, because it wasn't always easy for me to find a box to decorate. Hopefully I could come up with a shoe box or an empty oatmeal box. The next dilemma would be not having stuff to decorate with. We didn't usually have construction paper or tissue paper on hand to decorate with. So I had to be creative – and sadly, I didn't have an artistically creative bone in my body!

I usually felt a little embarrassed about my Valentine box, but it was what it was. Because Mom always preached to me treating everyone equally, I was careful to make sure I had a Valentine for every person in my classroom, including the teacher. Everyone used that same theory – but for some reason, I was afraid every year that I wouldn't get many Valentines. I always breathed a sign of relief when I opened my box and found Valentines from everyone in the room.

I would look through my Valentines over and over at home. I got a lot of mileage and a lot of enjoyment out of those few pennies' worth of cards! They would hang around for a long time after February. The one that hung around the longest was my first “real” Valentine that I got my junior year of high school. It was a beautiful old-fashioned Victorian style and I hung onto it for several years.

I didn't enjoy Valentine's Day as much when the kids were little. They always wanted the Barbie cards, the Star Wars cards, My Little Ponies, or Ninjas – whatever was popular for the elementary set. I don't know why those always had to be so expensive. The kids usually ended up with run-of-the mill Valentine cards instead of the fancy ones.

One very memorable year when they were all in grade school, I missed noticing that I had been put on as Room Mom for the Valentine's party for all three grades. The lists were put out at the beginning of school, and I should have traded with someone. But somewhere around the beginning of February, it was brought to my attention that I needed to get on the ball – especially since I was somehow the Room Mom in Charge for the kindergarten party!

I lucked out by having some really good parents on the kindergarten committee with me – including one couple who hadn't had their only daughter until they were in their mid 40's and who also had plenty of money. Yay! By the time they figured out everything they wanted to do for the party, there wasn't much left for me. Those lucky kindergarteners had fresh hot pizza delivered for their party, we did part of the party in their gym because there was a huge pinata that was stuffed full of all sorts of goodies for everyone. I think they even made up party bags for each kid to take home.

As I worked up to those parties, I tried to figure out what I could make as treats that would spread over three classrooms and not be too time consuming for me. I finally had an inspiration and made what they called “finger Jello” - jello that was made with extra unflavored gelatin so that it set up to a thick consistency that could be finger food. I made red jello and then cut shapes out with heart-shaped cookie cutters. It was so much quicker than cookies or cupcakes for three classes!!

The day of the parties there was a snowstorm – but school went on and I slid the car out of the garage and almost got stuck in the alley, but made it to the schools with the kids and their party treats. A good time was had by all!