Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day to all! The joy of this blog thing is that you can date your post.So here I am Saturday morning, backdating these wishes to Thursday!

On Valentine's Day, my plan was to get up early and make a little treasure hunt for Maelie. Well that didn't go as planned because she was out of bed before I was out of the shower! Fortunately, the little present was already hidden in a good spot.

When we got downstairs, thankfully she had to go to the washroom, so I rushed, and wrote a clue on a post-it note, then rolled it up, tied it with a heart ribbon, and put it in a clean, plastic bottle (yes all of this was on-hand sadly enough!). I set the bottle on the table by the time she was done. She noticed it and started trying to get the clue out. She LOVES these types of games, hence why I initially had been hoping to have more than one clue. SO the clue was something like "look in something that we use for pic-nics" and then again, sadly enough, we still have our pic-nic cooler in the kitchen! even in February! so she read the clue "by herself" may I add.

She figured it out quickly, opened the small cooler and found a frog Webkinz, pink with hearts on it! She loved it!

For those of you not familiar with Webkinz, it is a great marketing scheme for kids. They are little stuffed animals that you buy is stores... usually smaller stores like Carlton cards, Chapters, etc... Walmart doesn;t have any of those. They have a special code attached to them which you enter on the Webkinz website. Once you have adopted this animal, a while new virtual world opens up! you need to take care of your pet, work, play, make a house for your pet, etc... They give you a room on the site, and then you can even decorate it as you like. You can feed your pet, play with him, go to the doctors, get a job, go to school, etc... I know it is awesome marketing to get people to buy the little stuffed animals (and now more merchandise) but it is a hit with kids. Maelie is not one to want more more more, so she is happy to get one, but doesn't ask for more. As much as some people don't like the consumer aspect of the whole game, in our case, with a daughter like Maelie, it is awesome. You earn Webkinz cash and then you can purchase stuff for your Webkinz. (all virtual) It teaches kids how to manage their account because if you run out, you run out. too bad.

Anyway, all of this to say that Maelie was happy with her little Valentine's surprise.

(lack of pics due to lack of taking a pic....)