New collages from the past few days.

My kids are passionate about Valentines Day. Every year they spend a lot of time hand-making valentines. In years past it has seemed, when the valentines came home from school, that mine were among the few children around here who did this, in that most or all of the other valentines were store-bought.

This year, about three weeks ago, I bought a ream of red paper and since then the house has been awash in sheets of red paper with their hearts cut out. Usually, in the home stretch, I carefully shepherd the kids through organizing their creations so that everyone they intend to give to gets a valentine. This year, the flu has been circulating in the house in the five days before Valentines Day. (Apparently there's an epidemic.)

(Also, I should admit that last fall when I was trying to round up flu shots for me and the kids, I wasn't persistent enough. The only one in the family who had this season's shot is David.)

This morning began with tears. It seems that while both kids had spent a lot of time and paper making Valentines, in her exuberance, my five year-old had regarded the products of my ten year-old as raw material for her art. Most of his Valentines got recycled into hers. I was only vaguely aware of this until this morning when it was too late to do anything about.

Next year we'll all get flu shots. And next year, I will orchestrate the festivities more carefully. Oh, well.

(Above left: a Valentine Peter made for his father in art class at school; above right: one of Elizabeth's lavish creations.)

Did the dog eat that box of chocolates you bought? Or is your love on a higher plane of existence than can be expressed by mere candy, champagne, diamonds, lingerie, sonnets, teddy bears, flowers, and fine dining?

Then Wolfram Research has just what you need: Equations for Valentines from the Wolfram Demonstrations Project!

(What other Valentine comes complete with source code?)

(Via Walking Randomly and the Wolfram Blog.)

UPDATE: See also A Valentine's Day Surprise.

We've had a day of snow, sleet, and freezing rain, so we've spent our Valentine's Day indoors together. Here are the valentnes my kids made for me:

Elizabeth's (the big heart is me and the little one is her, she said):

And Peter's:

For their valentines from previous years, see my Valentines category.

Last year, Peter made these amazing monster valentines. Here is my favorite:

The whole set is up on his Monster Gallery (petersmonsters.com) along with more of his monster drawings.

For this year's Valentines, he scanned in interesting fabrics and printed out the patters on paper and then used them to make Valentines. Herre's a shot of the one's he's organizing now:

  Valentines my kids made for me. 
  Originally uploaded by Kathryn Cramer.

My valentines made by Peter and Elizabeth, displayed on the breakfast table.

Peter, who worked hard on his valentines over the weekend, woke up this morning with a sore throat and a fever and so can' go to school today. Here is one of the pictures hedrew for his valentines. (There are more in his Monster Gallery.)

(I've spent so much mental energy on figuring out the ins and out of moving sites around that I find myself with little brain space left to compose blog enties. I hope this phase will be over shortly.)