Harmon Hershey, Chocolate Kisses

Chocolate Kisses

Today was a day of treats, surprises and sugar ... all good things right?!  Cole and I started our morning with a word puzzle ... he is learning his alphabet and so we decided to do some word building- he did great and we thought it appropriate to take a picture of his word maze to show Daddy later tonight!

During the boys baths, I decided that I couldn't let their hair get any longer- after Cole tried desperately to keep his hair in a hat yesterday with no luck, it was time to have a little trim. Two haircuts later, it was time for our mailbag surprise.  Today was all about kisses and we were going to make our own chocolate kisses!!

Each of the boys had a funnel and bag of chocolate chips in their mailbags ...

and Braydon was super excited to find them, little did he know they would be melted down- but he did get a few!

We planned to make 3 chocolate kisses.  To make sure the chocolate didn't fall through the funnels, we taped the openings ...

and then we found size appropriate bowls/glasses to hold the funnels level.

We melted the chocolate in the microwave at half the power for 2 minutes.

We then scooped the melted chocolate into the funnels and tapped them down to make sure there weren't air bubbles.  We did this for all 3 funnels.  Both bags of chocolate filled the 3 funnels.

The first bag of melted chocolate filled the 2 smaller funnels, so while melting down the second bag of chocolate chips for the larger 3rd funnel, Braydon decided to taste the bowl and spoon ...

by the time he was done, he was a chocolate mess!!

Once all the funnels have been filled to the brim, place them in the refrigerator to harden.

To ensure that they have hardened through, leave them for at least 3 hours.  Since we had a lot of time to kill we began by reading our new book, I Lost My Kisses.  

Cole wanted to paint today and asked specifically to paint a picture of a happy sunflower and a fish.  His reasoning was that he and Grammie's song is You are my Sunshine and Papa likes fish.  You know how it is with toddlers ... you just go with the flow -the task wasn't a difficult one, so I drew the pictures and he painted away.  

Within a few moments, Braydon joined in and just as quickly he stopped since he started licking the paint brush instead of painting with it ... that's Braydon in a nutshell.

The finished products

Yes, I know, I am a proud Mommy- but I was pretty impressed that Cole wrote his own name!!  

As we still had quite a bit of time before our chocolate kisses were ready, we walked to the mailboxes and sent our Valentine's Day cards.

Hooray!! Grammie called and asked if she could stop over with a Valentine treat for the boys since she wouldn't see them this weekend ... presents, balloons and Grammie -what a wonderful surprise!

Within moments Braydon popped his balloon -soon he will learn to be gentle with his balloons and not hug them so hard!  The boys got a new book ...

... and the new Veggie Tales movie!!

... AND 

chocolate hearts from See's, sugar cookies made by Grammie and hershey kisses ... how appropriate since it was chocolate kisses day!!

While Grammie was visiting and the boys watched their new movie on LOVE, we prepped our chocolate kisses from the refrigerator.

We gently loosened the chocolate from the funnels, and the chocolate kisses dropped right out.  We then wrapped them up in foil and inserted our Harmon Hershey tags inside to share our treats!!