Apparently, a critical step in the making of valentines is the hiding. We spent yesterday afternoon working on valentines and now they are squirreled away throughout the house. I just know that, come the day in question, someone is going to come to me in tears because they can’t find the card they made for Daddy, and we will scour the house and come up empty handed, and then six months from now I will find it nuzzled inside a sleeping bag as I am getting out the camping gear.

I tried to watch all the hiding that was going on and keep track of what was where, because one of my chief duties in this house is the ability to remember where every little thing is at any given moment. Pop quiz, hot shot! Where is the Buzz Lightyear action figure, not the big stuffed one or the medium sized soft plastic one but the little hard plastic one from McDonalds? If we don’t find it right now, there will be a breakdown! You have 10 seconds…go!

However, there are just too many valentines, and not enough brain cells remaining. I’ve been trying to train for World Trivia Night, but it’s becoming increasingly clear — and increasingly frustrating — that I just do not have the ability to remember stuff like I used to. My brain is too full now with kid-related information. If World Trivia Night features a set of questions on Hi-5 song lyrics, or quotes from Pixar movies, or where in my house the Buzz Lightyear is located, then we are going to kick ass.

So to save me some sanity, I hereby record…

The Captain has hidden his classroom valentines in his bedside table. His card for Daddy is there too, and his card for Mommy is in the office where we keep the photo albums. His card for Gal Smiley is in the baby food part of our pantry, but that’s no secret as everyone sees it there every day and Gal Smiley asks for it all the time. His valentine for the Wee One is…dammit. Forgot already. Memo to self: check the office drawers and see if it turns up.

Gal Smiley’s half-finished classroom valentines are hidden in the office where we keep the photo albums. She made a few other valentines for her family but she’s really into cutting right now, and she could not resist cutting them into tiny shreds after we had spent an hour painstakingly gluing on hearts and glitter, so I had to throw them away. Oh well!