Burritos, Pigs, and Rainbows

Last week was a very long, very busy, very exhausting week.  The week consisted of Fred traveling, Religious Ed classes (Tuesday is always a crazy day/evening for us), helping Elisabeth make homemade valentines, a First Communion retreat, selling Girl Scout cookies at a booth sale until 8pm one night in 20-degree temperatures, and staying up until 9:30pm to finish Allison's valentines for her Friday class party.  Never a dull moment, and never a free minute!

This year, Elisabeth decided to make homemade heart crayons for her valentines.  It was a lot of work --  but a lot of fun -- and her valentines turned out great.  Her cards included the phrase "You color my world!"  She got lots of compliments on them!

We made some special crayons for some of our favorite Spartan valentines.  (Disclaimer:  since I am too busy, none of our valentines got mailed out on time; they will all arrive fashionably late.  The good news is the Spartan edition of our homemade valentine is perfect for the upcoming March Madness tournament!)

For last week's grand finale, Allison was diagnosed with double ear infections on Friday evening, which threw a little wrench into our weekend plans.  We had been planning to spend the weekend in Steamboat and had our hotel room booked for some time.  Well, Allison refused to take the antibiotics (sound familiar?) so I told her she wasn't going anywhere.  She and I stayed home while Fred and Elisabeth headed off to Steamboat for some skiing.  I am bummed we didn't make it to Steamboat, but it was nice to bum around after such a crazy week.

After I finally bribed her into taking her medicine, Allison and I had plenty of time to play 'burrito':

Allison decided we should pretend it was my birthday again.  She sang happy birthday to me, and also made me a lovely cake out of play foam, clementine slices, and a sucker candle.  It was the most delicious cake I never ate.

We also did LOTS of baking.

Whole-wheat heart-shaped soft pretzels.  My name is Lynn and I'm a carb addict.

Chocolate covered pretzels with extra sprinkles a la Allison

Blueberry and lemon poppyseed muffins

This week is yet another crazy chapter in the story of FLEA, but not as crazy as last week.  This week, we are celebrating our talented artists.  Elisabeth's mixed media "Pig in a Mud Pit" artwork was selected to be displayed at the school district administration offices.

Allison's "Hearts and Rainbow" artwork was selected to be displayed on our refrigerator:

And last but not least....we are celebrating the fantastic news that Allison was selected via lottery for all-day kindergarten!!  YAHOO!!!  We were really hoping she'd get into all-day K since we did not have a solid Plan B, so this is fantastic news.  She already has a backpack and lunch box picked out, and can't wait until she can go back-to-school shopping for colorful clothes rather than red, white, or blue attire!  I asked her if she could show me what an excited kindergartener-to-be looks like.  This is what she showed me, bananas and all:

 Happy Valentine's Day from FLEA!