It was survived

Monday night Adam and I went to our YEN (Young Empty Nesters) group.  We're only young compared to the OG Empty Nesters group in the ward who are our parents' age.

I talked about Valentine's Day at school and some of my friends didn't seem to believe me that it was worse than Halloween.  I don't know why it is, but it is.

Some kids come in with elaborate Valentine's Day boxes and some kids...don't.  They bring Valentines with candy or toys attached, or they...don't.  I was hustling to hand out bags of candy or boxes of Valentines to students who hadn't brought any, depending on what they wanted.  I had gift bags to be their receptacle for receiving Valentines if they didn't have one.

The day was amped up from the beginning.  We had hyper and excited children and boys wrestling and everyone wondering when the party was and when they got the candy.  One girl came in chewing gum and said she had brought blow pops and had "accidentally" eaten one.  I said, "Spit out the gum."

Another girl gave me this:

She hugged me and said, with her adorable lisp, "Teacher, do you know why I got you a red dragon?  Because your favorite color is red."

If that doesn't melt your heart on a frantic frozen February day, I don't know what would.

It was finally time for the party and we had a few parents there to help and we had stations where they rotated and played games.  I was running a bingo game.  Every single student was yelling.  Yelling.  No reason, just excited.

They passed out Valentines at the end.  More yelling.  Most of them didn't have names of who they were for, but stood in the middle of the chaos yelling, "Who didn't get one from me?"

One boy brought lip shaped kazoos, which begs the question, "Does your mother HATE me?!?"

Another girl, who does everything super slowly (think the sloths on Zootopia) brought a box of unopened Valentines.  She needed help opening them.  Then she spread them out, right in the middle of everyone passing out Valentines, and slowly started writing names on them and delivering them.  She came up to me after a few minutes and said she needed help.  I said, "Who have you given them to so far?"

She didn't know.

I quickly wrote names on the cards and maybe people got doubles, but I doubt anyone noticed.  Everyone was eating candy and yelling and needing help or a bag to put their stuff in or tape to close up their fun dip so they could take it home.

It was chaos and anarchy, just add kazoos.

They have specialties last thing in the day and for the safety and well being of the computer teacher, I had them run to the fence and back before going to computers.  They said, "But we need coats..."

I said, "No coats, just run!"

(No coats helped them all hurry along.)

They came in panting and we lined up and managed to walk fairly quietly down the hall.  

Janelle came in and found me halfway through computers.  I was sitting in a catatonic state.  She said, "Are you hiding in here?"

I said, "Yes, yes I am."