My heart is aflame...

Last Friday was a dream day for a kid. It was the Valentine's Day party day in class. It was the Olympic Torch relay passing right by the school on its way to Granville Island. It was the Olympic opening ceremonies evening, plus the last day of school before a long weekend (Monday is a PD day). Phew.

The days (weeks) leading up to Valentine's day at school were filled by Finny dragging me over to the calendar in her classroom to point out how many days she had left before her valentines needed to be done. EVERY DAY she asked me to take her out to buy supplies to make them. Apparently, the store bought variety WAS NOT going to be an option for our family. No Strawberry Shortcake drugstore specials. Nope. Glue and construction paper was clearly in my future. So, as with so many things that involve Finny...if you can't fight them, join them. I found a really cute valentine idea in a magazine and went out to get the glow stick bracelets we needed. Of course, Molly wanted in on the action and suddenly we were making 39 Cupid arrows for school. And gummy flowers for the party.



You know when things seem like a great idea in the abstract? I want to be the kind of mother who does this sort of thing. I imagine myself, with the children gathered in a semi-circle around me, lost in an afternoon of crafting and laughter. Inevitably, these fantasy events devolve into a chaotic free-for-all that has highs and lows of giggling, squabbling and massive messes.

Despite breaking the crafting into two nights, I spent Thursday evening in the kitchen with a glue gun while the kids slept upstairs. I was finishing up affixing the heart arrow tips onto the "You make my heart glow" glow sticks, wondering to myself how I became the stereotype. But the girls were happy.



I stayed with Finny's class for their party, but since I took Lukey along as well, he ended up as an unofficial kindergartener. He had his own plate of food and sat proudly alongside his sister.



He was totally loving it.

One of the teachers at the school has a sister who was a torchbearer. She volunteered her official torch for a photo fundraiser for the school. All the kids and each class had their pictures taken with the torch.



Here is Finny with the torch.



I popped out when Molly had her picture taken and she insisted that Lukey join her with torch. She gave him a flag to wave.



After school (and all the parties) were over, Lukey and I picked up the girls to walk down to Granville Island to see the torch. Molly and I had seen it the day before up by Children's Hospital. There was such a neat energy in the crowd of people waiting by the curb for the millisecond that it took for the torch to fly by and I knew Finny and Lou would like it.


We hightailed it down to GI and got there just in time to see the torch pass by RIGHT in front of us.




We managed to cross it's path again before we rushed to the water to see it go past on the dragonboat.








The girls practiced their torch run the whole way home. Over and over. I have video that I will spare you. There was much passing of the white tube balloon. Many directions were shouted between the two of them. They got pretty good.