Lots of Heart(s)

Hubby is away this weekend for Winter Slam, the annual ski retreat weekend with the youth group kids.

Surprisingly, today was not a train wreck. The Fries grumbled about their assigned chores, but they did them. Hubby called late morning and everybody was able to talk to him.

We had such fun that Medium Fry couldn't believe we'd had all three meals today when I told her that it was time to get ready for bed. "What about lunch and dinner? We didn't eat!"

I reminded her that I'd made mac and cheese for lunch, and then sandwiches for dinner. "Oh, yeah!"

After lunch today, I collected the things I needed for the little craft project I'd been promising to do for several days. We were going to do it on Wednesday, when the kids had an ice day (we got two inches of ice; I was grateful they canceled school). But the my plans went all agley, as Robert Burns would say, and we weren't able to be crafty.

Last week, I was happily killing time on Pinterest and found several pins for heart-animals. Moons ago, I remembered doing a similar craft with my mom. I could recall heart-shaped lions and pandas and I knew there were several more that we made. I just didn't quite remember how.

So I got together scissors and glue and construction paper and Google. I pulled up lots of images, but didn't find anything that I knew the kids would just loooooove until I saw a piggy made of hearts, glued onto a lunch-sized paper bag.

Bingo!

So I pulled out pink and red paper, and got to work. Small Fry squealed with glee when she saw what I'd made:

And, of course, as soon as Medium saw it, I knew what she was going to ask for.

I wish I'd counted the number of seconds it took between Medium seeing the piggy and asking for a duck. I wouldn't have needed more than one hand.

There were no duckies made out of hearts. I didn't figure I'd find them; ducks are Easter and spring. Piggies, by their being pink, are more easily associated with a red and pink holiday like Valentine's Day. But...hmmm. Yeah, that might work!

A duck!

Not to be outdone, while I was mid-duck-creation, Large Fry piped up, "I want a unicorn! Do you have white?"

"I have white."

"I want it to have a white body and white head and pink feet and a pink nose and a pink horn."

Oh, by all means, let's not tax Mommy's artistic ability.

I finished the duck, to Medium's great delight, and then searched among heart-animal images, trying to find something I could use to as a unicorn model.

Nada.

So I gave it my best shot.

Large loved it.

Medium went on to make another duck, and two more piggies, before deciding she wanted to make a cheetah. I felt I'd pretty much taxed my animal-creation muscles with the unicorn, so I told her I wasn't sure how to make a cheetah. I figured she'd go back to something else, even when she had me cut out several orange hearts.

Silly me.

Nope, she tackled the project herself.

Meanwhile, Large created this owl without any help from me:

Medium got frustrated when she couldn't make the paper take shape the way she wanted to, and when I gently reminded her to ask for help if she was stuck, she did just that, and brought over a large orange heart with a tail attached to it, small hearts glued all in a row.

"I wanted to make a cheetah, but I can't get the rest right!"

I was impressed with what she had so far. I cut out another orange heart to make the body, and a smaller one for the head, and then smaller hearts for the nose and to stack for the ears. And cheetahs need  spots, so I made hearts for those.

Medium was having trouble with the eyes, so I'd agreed to help with those too. However, bedtime snuck up on us, and I'll have to wait to put eyes on until I know what Medium wants.