Thanksgiving Countdown: 1 More Days to Go

My turkey is defrosted (on the counter thankyouverymuch). It's below freezing in London and radiator "heating" is a joke, so my kitchen is as good as the fridge, right?

I'll let you know if the three of us end up in the A&E (ER) over the weekend...

Last night, I made a honey-citrus cranberry sauce from a recipe I made up. (i.e. I had a bunch of oranges that were a day away from going bad)

I have the makings for an awesome sweet potato casserole and made-from-scratch mac n' cheese, which is the best when it's THIS cold.

I ordered "Spanish Fried Onions" for the green bean casserole. I have no idea if they're anything like the (good) "French's Fried Onions" we love from home or if I've made a terrible mistake. I decided to just take my chances.

I also ordered some pies. Good moms bake. Smart moms outsource! It's my personal motto, but feel free to use it for yourself. No really. Consider it my gift to you.

I hope all of your holiday prep is going swimmingly as well.

Happy Thanksgiving from the land of the pilgrim oppressors!

Thanksgiving Countdown: 5 More Days to Go

I have a confession to make. I have never cooked Thanksgiving dinner... ever. I've never had to, especially with two families clamoring for our time.

How funny is it that I had to move the England (which is hello, the country the pilgrims were escaping from in first place) in order to prepare my very first Thanksgiving?

As with most ridiculously complicated endeavors, I've been looking forward to the challenge, but putting off the planning.

Honestly, I have an excuse. It's not like I don't have things like deportation and unemployment on the brain. With less than a week to go to "T Day", I finally had to say, "Uncertainty be damned, I'm going to learn how to cook a turkey".

Step one: Find one.

I went to my local grocery store and was told they were out of fresh turkeys. In fact, all delivery of fresh turkeys has been SUSPENDED at our local grocery store until after December 1.

I have a feeling I know who's hoarding the world's turkey supply... UH-MER-ICA.

Undaunted I eventually tracked down a frozen turkey and had the store hold it for me, as I have no where to store it in the meantime.

My British fridge fits about four apples and a quart of milk (skimmed), and my freezer is the size of a crisper... drawer. Just one.

I thought I'd just come by for the turkey sometime next week and defrost it on the counter, except... wait! today I learned that that's WRONG!

Seriously?

Where am I supposed to thaw this thing? (See above reference to British fridge... not hyperbole)

What do you think? If if were to...say defrost my bird on the counter top anyway for lack of options, am I going to kill my family like the Internet says I will?

A Halloween Post-Mortem

Well, Halloween has come and gone and I hope you all had a nice one!

Since the UK doesn't really do Halloween, we attended a "Saints and Angels" party dressed as ourselves.

Only the girls came in "fancy dress" (I love British English) as angels and/or angel fairies (of course). They all sat very prettily and played very daintily while the boys (my son included) charged upstairs to play pirates and cranes. Or was it dinosaurs and swords?

Well, whatever it was, it was LOUD and involved throwing their socks from the top of the beautiful, sweeping staircase in the foyer.

Meanwhile, I found myself in an elegant living room sipping tea with the other mums and trying not to slouch too much. I asked once again if they planned to go trick-or-treating with the kids and they all looked at me as if I had just suggested that we sacrifice a goat and eat the children.

"Halloween is absolutely horrid," one mum informed me. "You go to the store for a costume and it's all blood and guts and gore. For my young children? No, thank you!"

(As a aside, the tiny selection of children's costumes here ARE awful gross...)

Then, she continued on some diatribe about Halloween being in league with Valentine's and Mother's Day as a lucrative conspiracy dreamed up by greedy card makers.

While I don't personally recall ever having sent a single Halloween card in my life, I guess some do...

As the token American and unbidden international emissary of Halloween, I explained that Halloween in my colony country isn't all headless horsemen and slutty nurses... at least, not the kids' version.

In fact, it has the potential to be really, really cute. They dress up as monkeys or lions and we take lots of pictures!

"It really does have to potential to be very nice and quite sweet", I assured them.

"Well, I guess that part of it just hasn't caught on yet in England," she conceded, "but, I still don't want any part of it" and all of the other mums murmur in agreement.

As we're leaving the party, everyone mentioned needing to stop by the store to get candy for later that night...

You know, just in case.

(I, on the other hand, bought my candy days ago. Ha! Ha!)

By 5:30 (because it gets dark here at 4 in the afternoon), we already had four groups of kids and one meter reader come by. Only a few more came around while we were having dinner and the meter reader made fun of me for answering the door with a huge bowl of candy, but otherwise it was a slow night.

Oh well. More candy for me! Me! ME!

Putting the Kibosh on Christmas

I am the Grinch-in-law that decided no gifts this year... in September.

Okay, not entirely... I suggested that we just do gifts for the kids this year.

JUST the kids, as in the 6 and under crowd, and only because I think it's fun to get them stuff (I'm not a completely heartless and uncaring killer of Christmas.)

In my e-mail to my sisters-in-law, I cited the outrageous cost of shipping internationally... blah, blah, blah... possible custom charges... blah, blah, blah... ridiculous, ridiculous... So let's just NOT this year (ever again), mmm-kay?

A completely reasonable offer considering we're the ones that moved out of the country and stopped spending Christmas with them since... oh, about 2005.

However, the truth is I REALLY don't want to shop for them anymore. I'm not very good at it and at the risk of sounding totally callous and ungrateful, neither are they.

I don't need another Banana Republic sweater/snowflake dessert platter/seasonal bath salts., and my husband never wants anything that costs less than a mortgage payment.

Instead, he usually get a sweater too, which he will never wear and keep IN the box until the following Christmas when I'm looking to reuse the cardboard...

Likewise, I doubt my brother in-law wants another shirt and tie or his wife, another random silver bracelet and matching earrings, but we're just not close enough to know that about one another.

In fact, we're not close at all, which makes gift buying that much more of a chore and an obligation, instead of finding something that you know they will just cherish and enjoy.

I love Christmas, but giving my in-laws lame gifts just to "check them off my list" totally sucks the joy out of it.

A Wedding Story

One of the qualities I love about my best friend is her ability to spin the most stressful of situations into an amusing story and tell it like it's no big deal.

She find the good in everything, or at the very least, the punchline...

I also love that she is one of the few girls I know who isn't drama. She has no need to make things any more complicated or emotional than they need to be.

Naturally, one would imagine that planning a wedding in a foreign country and in a language with its very own alphabet would have shaken that.

After all, my traditional and in town wedding was horrendous enough to plan, but that's because I'm related to crazies...

Even when their wedding date had to be postponed (a few times), international travel had to be arranged, and the reception venue fell through at the last minute, my best friend kept her cool and good nature through it all.

Talking to her, you'd never know all the hoops that they had to jump through to get their marriage recognized and certified in both the US and Greece.

Being the Greek-speaking one of the couple, her fiancé sorted a lot of the details, and as if that wasn't enough work, he was still concerned about our plans--making sure that our hotel was on the up and up, that we were getting good fares , and that we enjoyed ourselves.

Of course, how could we NOT enjoy ourselves. I mean, just look at where we were...

Unfailingly gracious, both of them (and their families) kept thanking for coming "all the way to Greece" for their wedding and telling us how much it meant to them that we were there especially considering that our life is in a complete upheaval at the moment...

Like we would have missed the biggest day in our best friends' lives for anything. Their wedding could have been over a trough in a barn in Kansas and Hubby and I still would have been happy... nay, THRILLED to be there.

Fortunately for us it was on a balcony overlooking the Mediterranean at sunset and it was gorgeous.

The bride was completely radiant and the groom was so handsome as their spoke the vows they had written in English, then again in Greek.

My best friend was a bridesmaid at my wedding and my roommate at the time. She witnessed the whole fiasco front and center from the arguments over the length of my veil to my mother and mother-in-law competing for "biggest pain in the ass".

Still my best friend's only recollection of that entire process was how I looked the day I got married- the expression on my face when when I walked down the aisle and the quiet, nervous moments she and I shared before.

She and her fiancé ended up catching the garter and bouquet at our wedding, which was extra funny since they actually met the same night Hubby and I did. It makes for a great story at dinner parties, but it's hardly ever the one that she tells.

Instead she tells everyone to story of how happy and amazed and excited she was for me that day. She says that she'd never seen me that calm and peaceful before and she was completely moved by it. Of course, I always took it as more of her good nature.

I've been a guest at my fair share of weddings. I've cried. I've gushed. I've forgotten all about it the next day, but this wedding was different.

I never really understood what she was always fussing about until I saw the expression on her face as they exchanged their vows. I'll never forget how that felt. It was the joy of seeing two people you really, really love so happy and so in love on the most special day of their life...

It was something I'll probably never stop gushing about either.

I love you, "Beppie" and "Ricki", and I wish you all the best and happily ever after.

Fishing Boat Wanted

About two years ago, my best friend since high school got engaged while vacationing in Puerto Rico.

Then, as if THAT wasn't exciting enough, she and her fiancé decided to get married in Greece, where the groom is from, but not just Greece. Oh no! They decided to get married on Santorini...

So, you know that image you get of when you think of Greece?

Amazing sunsets. White-washed buildings with bright blue roofs. All of it set against an even brighter and bluer sea and sky... That's Santorini.

When they first told us about their wedding plans, Hubby and I were brand new parents at the time. I had just decided to quit my job and money was really tight but, we decided go anyway. In fact, we planned to spend an entire week in Greece with the wedding finishing off our vacation.

"Why not?" we thought, "Who knows when we'll be able to get back to Europe again..." HA! Okay, so we all know the punchline to that joke...

Incidentally, our week-long vacation had to be reduced to a weekend since Hubby couldn't take that much time off from his new job... which was fine, since I had a house to sell and a house to find.

Having made our flight and hotel arrangements well in advance, it took some doing to rearrange everything. That's a whole other post in itself, by the way...

The earliest we could leave London was Thursday night after Hubby got off work, which meant a 3 AM layover in Athens and arriving in Santorini at the crack of dawn.

We were crazy delirious and seriously sleep-deprived, but it was ALL worth it.

Santorini was even more breathtaking that I ever imagined. If my son wasn't waiting for me back home, I never would have come back.

As my postcards read:

We're trading in the station wagon for a fishing boat. We plan to spend the rest of our days sailing from island to island, eating whatever we catch along the way.

Please don't bother forwarding our mail. We just don't care anymore...

(To be continued...)

Haiku: S.W.A.K and Written By Mommy

Whew- hew! To all who
hung through birthday installments
one , two, even, three.

Then, there were the posts
all about the planning, too!
So many details!

Boy! I'm glad that's through.
Even though you still came back,
no doubt, you are too!

With that behind us
there's just one more thing to do...
Say "Thank You", of course.

I love stationary --thank you cards, invitations, note cards, lined envelopes, etc. If it's personalized, customized, and paper, I LOVE it!!!

I also (secretly) enjoy writing thank you cards as if they were penned by my son. (My two-year-old son...) I write them as I imagine he would talk to another toddler, print and use big letters, and even sign them with "Your Pal, A----".

If I had received something like this before I had a child, I would have rolled my eyes and pretended to gag. I would have passed it around the table at happy hour and made all my childless, single friends read it and they would have gagged, too.

I realize it's dorky. It's silly. It's clearly very obnoxious (even though all of my mommy friends do it, too), but nothing amuses me more. Fortunately, I get to write plenty of thank you cards following the windfall that was my son's birthday!

Ha-Ha, and you thought I really wouldn't bring up my kid's birthday ever again... Okay, last time. I promise.

So 'fess up. Are you obnoxious, too?

For more Haiku Friday, check out A Mommy Story and Playgroups are No Place for Children.

Birthday v2.0: Part-ies

If you missed the first installment, you can find it here. The second installment is here. For those of you rolling your eyes, I promise to find something other than my son's birthday to blog about soon...

So yesterday when I said that our ride on Thomas the Tank Engine with his six friends from playgroup was supposed to be my son's only big birthday celebration, I wasn't lying... exactly. In an effort to keep things simple, it was supposed to be the only thing...

Before I heard about "Day Out With Thomas", Hubby and I considered taking a family trip to SeaWorld in San Antonio over his birthday weekend. While it probably would have been just as expensive as throwing a party (or two parties in this case), it would have been LESS insane to plan for...

You see, I actually abhor the "bigger is better for birthdays" philosophy. We have just as much fun at parties held in a backyard or at the park as we do at Chuck E Cheese or the Wiggly Play Center. With so many parents turning their noses at big-budget kid's parties, it’s more of a statement if you don't have one too.

I feel absolutely no need to compete with any of the other parents we know. If anything, they would have to compete with us, because no matter how much we say that we want keep things low-key and small, we can't help ourselves. The word "simple" just isn't in our vocabulary.

We look at it this way... We have been blessed with so many wonderful friends and an awesome family, we LOVE throwing parties, and we adore our son. So what better excuse to invite all of our friends to a party for our son than his BIRTHDAY?! And that's where things start to unravel...

Next thing you know I'm stressing over the societal implications of our party favors, staying up late to mix party CDs, and antagonizing my local bakery...

Amidst the frenzy of planning and preparing, I kept asking myself, "who am I really do this for?" I mean, here I am dragging my son along to pick out birthday hats and balloon, instead of taking him to the park... "Is this really worth it?"

All it takes is this happy little face to know that it was!

"Thank you, Mommy. You throw a great party and have such shiny hair!"

But still... Next time when I promise to keep things smallish, simple, and low-key, do me a BIG favor and please hold me too it.

By the way, Gymboree did a FANTASIC job with the 12 two-year-olds, 3 baby sisters, 2 big brothers, and 1 five-year-old cousin that ended up making it to the party, as you can probably tell from the photos.

They were so imaginative, warm, and engaging. The best part? They took care of everything once we got there, which means no messy colored frosting on my walls and kitchen floor.

Birthday V2.0: Part II

If you missed the first installment, you can find it here.

As you smarty pants out there have probably figured out, there was just so much birthday stuff to blog about that I decided to do a series of posts versus one very long one. This is probably fitting since my son's birthday has pretty much consumed my entire existence for the past two weeks... at least.

If that sounds like the equivalent to other people's vacation photos to you, then please feel free to tune out this week. I will totally understand. Totally.

Now where was I? Ah, yes... So, guess what rolled into town but only for a very limited engagement?

Ummm, only an opportunity to ride on Thomas the Tank Engine ON my son's birthday.

We just HAD to go. I booked our tickets four months ago when I first heard about it and convinced my playgroup to do the same. It was supposed to be my son's ONE big birthday celebration with his friends. HA! (But more on that later....)

Planning that far ahead of time with a group a two-year-olds is always very dicey. I've been known to cancel outings the morning of, simply because my son woke up with a 'tude. Usually it's not a problem when the activity in question is playing in the park or dropping by a friend's house, but these tickets cost $60!

In my book, that's a lot of money to just say, "Pfff... I guess we'll just stay home if you really don't want to wear pants today..."

The ride itself was pretty uneventful. I believe the highlight for my son was being in a moving vehicle and NOT confined to a car seat. Frankly, he and his friends looked a little stunned to be there the whole time...

We were one of the last groups to get off the train, so by the time we got to the front there was a huge line to get your picture taken with Thomas. We braved it anyway, but just as we were about to take our turn Thomas had to leave for another "adventure".

This is Thomas pulling out of the station... and although, you don't see it, my son and I yelling and shaking our fists. "25 minutes until the next photo op. Peep! Peep!"

Bu-bye-bye, Thomas. You jerk!

In the meantime, there were other photo ops available. This Sir Topham Hatt with not-my-kid...

My son and his friends wanted nothing to do with Sir Topham Hatt. I mean, just look at the size of him in comparison to an "average" kid! I wouldn't want anything to do with him either. Furthermore, we wanted nothing to do with the line to take photos with him (especially not after our experience with Thomas.)

...and this is Sir Topham Hatt telling me to get back in line and stop...

ahem! ahem! "...causing confusion and delay...."

hehe! Yeah, I couldn't resist.

I'm a little embarrassed to admit this (to the whole Internet), but I think I was actually MORE excited about our adventure with Thomas than my son or any of his friends...

We eventually got our "official" photo with Thomas.

See, that's our family on that day our son turned 2!

Tunes for Two

Sick of the hundredth kids' CD featuring school children signing an ear-splitting "Old MacDonald", I put together a compilation of "kid-friendly" tunes from my personal music collection for my son and gave it out as party favors for his first birthday party. This year, I decided to make it a birthday tradition.

Since I exhausted my collection last year, I've been compiling music for the last two months. There is a whole lot of music out there, just not a whole lot that really "works" for a two-year-old's birthday party...

So, it's no big surprise that I ended up with Laurie Berkner, Justin Roberts, and of course, They Might Be Giants and The Beatles.

I downloaded all of the music from iTunes, and I had hoped I could share it with you using playlist.com. Unfortunately, they didn't have most of the songs; not even just my very favorites.

If you know of another site or service I could use to post my playlist, please let me know. In the mean time, here is my son's second birthday playlist:

1. Stroller Town - Jonathan Coulton

2. I'm Gonna Catch You - Laurie Berkner

3. Snack Time - The RTTs

4. Good Day Sunshine - The Beatles

5. Where Do They Make Balloons? - They Might Be Giants

6. Dance Around - Ralph's World

7. Top Of The World - The Juliana Theory

8. Island In The Sun - Weezer

9. Jungle Boogie - Kool & The Gang

10. Hooked On A Feeling - Rusted Root

11. Boogie Shoes - KC & The Sunshine Band

12. Me and Julio Down By The School Yard - Paul Simon

13. My Brother Did It - Justin Roberts

14. No! - They Might Be Giants

15. It's Your Birthday - Justin Roberts

Happy Birthday V2.0

Okay, I'm back from the weekend o' birthday extravaganza and I am officially POOPED!

My son's birthday started with a BANG and a KA-BOOM... quite literally and at 3:30 in the morning... That's when we awoke to find our house being pelted with hail and a terrified birthday boy stunned and terrified in his crib. While Hubby went to comfort him, I flipped on the TV to find a local news broadcast.

I hate the local news, by the way, and here is why...

The only channel NOT broadcasting infomercials at 3AM had up a weather map indicating that a TORNADO was coming towards our neighborhood. Not our general non-specified area. Not our county. Our neighborhood and OUR HOUSE!

Next thing I know the nearest tornado siren starts to wail. It's less than a mile away, so we're talking LOUD here. We grab pillows off the bed and head to the only "secure" location in the home, our closet. (The same closet where I hid all of the birthday gifts still unwrapped, by the way...)

Turns out there wasn't a tornado spotted AT ALL and they freaked us out for nothing. After it hailed for about 5 minutes, it rained. Just RAIN and only about an inch or so at that.. but, you know, anything for a sensational sound bite for the demo reel/promos...

I hate the local news.

We allowed our son, who was entirely too shaken to go back to his own bed, to "sleep" the rest of the morning in ours. Not that anyone really got anymore sleep. It took a long time to calm him down only to wake up ONE HOUR later with him perched ON my head, trying in vain to turn off the alarm clock we've been ignoring.

My husband, long since kicked out of the bed by a pushy toddler, was sprawled on the floor and we were ALL running very late the first of the birthday events, "Day Out with THOMAS" (the Tank Engine). Peep! Peep!

To be continued...

In the meantime, read up on Anglophile Football Fanatic's post about their experience at "Day Out with Thomas" a week before.

Oh, how life has changed: Birthday Edition

My husband was out of town for a conference, so my friends invited me over for a casual family dinner of gumbo. It was a great idea, except that may have quite possibly been THE most disgusting sounding thing in the world to me.

The gumbo, not the friends and family time...

There were supposed to be a bunch of other people from college there too, including my best friend. It was mostly folks who we hadn't seen a whole lot since they got married and had babies... lots and lots of babies.

It would have been so much fun to see everyone again, but I just wasn't up for it. I gave my regrets and spent my evening channel surfing on the sofa.

Turns out I didn't miss much. My best friend (A.K.A. the only single adult there) called to check on me as she was leaving their house. There was fear and panic in her voice. The kids outnumbered the adults, which, at the time, definitely would have scared me too...

"It was SO crazy. The KIDS! They were all over the place and so insanely LOUD! And, oh my goodness! Their house! Their house! It... was... covered... in... TOYS!" she said. "Man, you and I should be glad we're not pregnant, right?"

"Actually.... I am." and after a brief pause, we both started screaming, "Ahhhhhhh!"

That was 2 years and 9 months ago, and I haven't looked back since.

Today is my son's 2nd birthday. In the calm before the celebrations, I can't help but ponder how those days when I first blurted out the words, "I'm PREGNANT" to our family and friends seem like a distant past but yet, not so much....

You know that saying: "the days are long, but the years are short"? No truer words have EVER been spoken. I can hardly account for all of the late, late nights and way-too-early mornings, photo ops, diaper changes, bedtime stories, frantic phone calls to docs, sweet kisses, tantrums, adorable belly giggles... and the much, much more to come.

To say having a child changes everything would be a severe understatement. While I haven't been a mom for very long, it's still strange to think back to a time when every dinner went smoothly, cleanly, and uninterrupted. Happy hours weren't just for my monthly "girls' night out" and weekends revolved around "hmmm, now which jello shot workout class to take"...

I wish I could say that I miss life before becoming a mom, but to be perfectly honest... I don't. My simple, suburban life may be less than glamorous to most some people, but somehow life just doesn't seem quite right without my son (and all the craziness he brings) in it.

These days, I'm the one with the messy, chaotic house full of toys and barely making it to see my old friends. (Sorry, but sadly it's true) As for my best friend...

She and her fiance are my son's godparents, and they're getting married this summer. Oh, how life has changed!

Then and...

Now and Loving every minute of it.

Party Planning: Part II

My son's big birthday weekend is coming up. The BIG 0-2 and there's so much to do!

But, what am I doing? Nesting, apparently...

This past weekend, I busted out the ladder, ammonia and vinegar, and the hose and insisted that we clean all of the windows- inside and out, front and back, top to bottom. So, of course, it's been raining on and off all week...

I also cleaned the oven, polished the hardwood floors, and bleached the washing machine.

None of which has anything to do with the twenty family and friends coming over for dinner on Saturday. A dinner that is happening after the Gymboree party with the sixteen two-year-olds, by the way.

In fact, I'm trying NOT to think about the twenty family and friends expecting me to feed them something other than "nuggies'n mac cheese" (as my son's best friend calls lunchtime at my house...)

A few nights ago, it occurred to me to order my son's cake. It wasn't really a big deal since the party was still a week away at the time, but I figured I should at least narrow down which licensed character to have on top of it...

My son has been into Bob the Builder and Thomas the Tank. Well, not so much Bob since he saw it dubbed in French, but he still gets pretty darn excited about Thomas the Tank.

Even though the last two birthday parties we've gone to were Thomas-themed, I should probably just go with it anyway. However, truth be told, my son's most favoritest show EVAH is actually....

THEEEEEEE... PRICE... IS... RIGHT! This lights. The colors. Drew Carey's charm and enthusiasm. My son is so engaged. He even claps and smiles when the contestants win their showcase. It's VERY cute.

*************************************************************************************

Update: So, even though my son is totally into the "Price is Right", and boy-howdy is he ever. I didn't think anyone else would "get it"; maybe not even him looking back on the photos twenty years from now. Plus, everything that my son seems to like about the show (the lights... the colors... etc.) doesn't exactly translate well into cake form...

I decided to go with Gymbo the Clown, Gymboree's lovable, but not exactly well-known mascot.

Naturally, I set to work drafting a layout of exactly how I want to cake to look, complete with multiple reference photos of Gymbo taken from different angles.

Did I mention that this is for a cake... for a two-year-old's birthday party...

Yeah, why am I so anal?

Party Planning and Other Social Issues...

I am incapable of throwing a small party. There! I said it.

My son's second birthday is fast approaching and I've been planning his party for weeks. By planning I mean trying to make a guest list comprised of his multiple (yes, I said "multiple" as in more than one) circles of friends (and their parents) and the obligatory family members appear low-key.

Problem is... we're anything but.

By necessity, we limited the guest list to just kids my son's age, and even then, just the kids who...

a) ...he actually plays with,
b) ...on a regular basis,
c) ...and actually gets along with...

...and we still ended up with a "B-list".

As soon as someone declines, another invitation drops in the mail. I know that sounds obnoxious, but what can I say, my son is popular.

By the way, can you see how this only makes his own grandmother blowing off the party THAT much more preposterous?

Last year, we had his first birthday party at our house. Actually, we had TWO parties for him at our house. The first was afternoon sandwiches and cake with friends and family. The second was a brunch and cake with his playgroup...

Since that meant cleaning cake off of my sofa, tables, chairs, and kitchen floor not once but TWICE in the same week, I decided to just pay the big bucks and find a venue other than my home this year....

Some place bright, cheerful, and colorful and that my son absolutely LOVES. Some place that just sounds HAPPY and FUN, and more importantly, where they'll clean the cake off the walls for me.

Where else but... GYMBOREE!!!!

Okay, so we are still technically having two parties for him again. The afternoon party for the kids is at Gymboree, then we're having a family cook-out at our house later that same evening. However, the adult-to-toddler ratio with be about seven-to-one, and there will be significantly less cake to be smeared...

I found the cutest invitations at Tiny Prints and am presently on the hunt for fun, creative, non-craptastic, yet inexpensive stuff for the goodie bags. This is where I need your help, Internet...

At Wal-Mart, I found some cute, colorful, plastic water "squirters" Okay, GUNS. They are water guns...

At a dollar for six, I thought it would be SO MUCH summertime fun for the kids. I was about to grab with intent to purchase, when I my husband asked, "Um, do you really think it's appropriate to have toy GUNS in a two-year-old's birthday bags?"

Ummm.... can you tell he's the one of us that didn't grow up in Texas? (hehe)

We're talking plastic and bright orange, blue, purple, and pink, and they look absolutely nothing like the real thing.

So, what do you think?

Will putting water guns in the goodie bags mean that I'm a bad mom promoting violence and social ills among the toddler set?

The Thrill of the Hunt

This past weekend, we attended the ridiculous huge Easter Egg Hunt put on by our parish. Armed with two cameras and the camcorder, Hubby and I were super (dorky) excited about taking our son this year. We skipped this event his last two Easters, so this was his very first Easter Egg Hunt... ever!

He, on the other hand, was totally confused by whole thing. That is... until he accidentally popped opened one of the plastic eggs and discovered what magic it held inside....

"CHOCOLATE! Now I TOTALLY get the meaning of Easter!"

Yeah, he caught on quick and there was no stopping him after that. He was the last kid to leave the playground and go into the party that followed, where we encountered one more surprise....

Let's just say that he was less then impressed with the (adult-sized) nightmare fuel Easter Bunny, who was present for photo ops...

Yep, there's a classic photo.

This Takes The Birthday Cake

Okay, I've resisted bitching about my in-laws on this blog for several weeks... Lemme tell 'ya, there's been a LOT to bitch about, but noooooooo, I was determined to be a gentle wife and...

LET....

IT....

GO!

But this just takes the cake and I simply could NOT resist any further, so here goes.

My mother-in-law is BLOWING OFF our son's second birthday to get some plastic surgery done.

PLASTIC SURGERY!

I'm so livid that I can't stop laughing...

Holiday Memories... Worth Keeping?

Beside my desk is a shoe box full of cards from Christmas '06. On top of that, there is another box filled with cards from Christmas '07...

I've put aside the favorites. If it's handmade, especially personal, from Grandma D, or just really funny, I keep it. Anything that shows no more effort than being stamped and sealed gets "boxed".

Christmas letters are tossed immediately. If we do more than exchange cards at the holidays, I already know what's in it. If not, then I really don't care what you're up to, now do it? Harsh I know, but I'm a busy person...

But what about the rest... like the photos of the kiddos and cute babies. I feel bad about tossing those, but I REALLY need to do something about these boxes. They can't just keep piling up year after year!

What do you do with all of those Christmas cards once Christmas is over? Any creative solutions out there...

The "Santa" Clause

Dishes are piling up in the sink, bits of wrapping paper still linger in the living room, laundry continues to pile up, and every inch of the house is littered in Christmas excess--clothes, books, a lovely blue iPod Nano (Thank you, Hubby), jewelry, strange electronic things my husband requested, and toys, toys, toys... but I couldn't care less about cleaning up because...

HUBBY TOOK THE WHOLE WEEK OFF OF WORK!

...and so did I, apparently. For the past week, the three of us have been sleeping (and eating) like people on vacation. That is to say, excessively.

We've been so relaxed that all of the catty, short-sighted things my mother-in-law calls to say have mostly gone ignored. Noted, but ignored. Something about not spending Christmas at their house or some such... I don't know (and I don't care!)

Last year was our son's first Christmas and we plead what I like to call the "Santa" Clause... as in "how would Santa ever find us at your house... Tsk! Tsk! It would be a SHAME to deprive our son of his very first Santa gifts on CHRISTMAS... " (snort!)

Well, this bit of malarkey actually worked, and my in-laws agreed to make the three hour drive to visit us for once, but NOT on the same day my family was coming over, for NO LONGER than 12 hours, and ONLY if they stayed the night at a hotel that was an hour and a half away to be that much closer to home the next day.

Can't you just tell that this did more damage than good? Sigh!

Well, this year we just let the invitation to our house remain "understood", but not actually spoken. I must say, the wonderfulness of this past week only further supports our decision to stay home for the holidays from now on- free of responsibilities, but more importantly free of drama.

The Very Merriest to You and Yours

We've attended ten parties, including my husband's birthday dinner and a wedding, in past two weeks. TEN!

I provided some sort of food or drink for three...

...purchased gifts for seven
...dressed up and did my hair for six
...dressed down for two
...didn't even care for one

...and only wore the same thing twice. It was a fabulous cocktail dress that rendered many compliments and several unsolicited comments about my boobs, so really... I didn't mind AT ALL!

That number, however, does not include my husband's office party and some dinner invitations that we've had to regretfully decline due to prior commitments/exhaustion. It's been a LOT, even for us, and we're officially partied out...

It's not that I am not grateful for all of my friends. In fact, I think I've thoroughly covered exactly how very grateful I am for all the wonderful people (and even the not so wonderful people) in my life in NaBloPoMo Parts 4, 12, 15, 18, and 27. Hubby and I love you ALL! We really, really do.

Earlier this week, I found myself exchanging a number emails with a casual acquaintance. I've known her and her family for over three years. They're very nice people and we've always been cordial with one another, but I really never found much common ground between us.

We had been at a party together, where we discussed her recent bathroom remodel. I guess she didn't get to finish a humorous story tied into how much it cost to do (because yes, someone actually asked), so she emailed me the rest of it. That led into a discussion about the punch I had made for the party, followed by an exchange of the recipe, and ended with holiday greetings and mutual "it was great to see you..." Blah, blah, blah-blah, blah, blah.

The next day we received a Christmas card from their family, to which my response was "Oh crap! Are we FRIENDS now?! We don't need any more friends!" Tongue in cheek, of course, but it's become a private joke between Hubby and I.

Unfortunately, Hubby decided to share this easily misunderstandable sentiment with some of our other friends at the wedding of another friend last night. It was met with a chilly response and I just about nudged him. I couldn't say anything though, because not two minutes before I had wondered OUT LOUD (and half drunk), "Why are all the bridesmaids the groom's high school and college friends and not the bride's..." and we were sitting with her family at the time. Ouch!

I was discretely told later that the bride didn't have anyone to ask so... Double Ouch!

I obviously didn't know the bride at all, so I have no idea if this is entirely true, but I can't even imagine a life without friends and our (Oh-kay, mostly my son's) busy social calendar.

I decided right then and there to embrace the this holiday season for what it is, a time for loved ones, and stop being so "busy". All of this celebrating should be considered a pleasure, not an obligation. I should stop bitching on my blog and enjoy it, right? Well, I plan to do just that for the next few days.

Have a very MERRY CHRISTMAS, Everyone.

Now, if you'll excuse me. I have Sunday brunch, Christmas Dinner, and a New Year's Eve party that we're hosting to prepare for... Yikes!

My pretty Christmas wreath

Handle With the Least Bit of Care

Five years ago, a couple we know started a hilarious tradition called the "Crappy Gift Exchange". Occuring shortly after New Year's, its stated purpose is to inflict "crappy" holiday gift on to your friends "Dirty Santa" style.

They knew they were onto something when people were anticipating which relative or co-worker would be providing the crappy gift weeks before the original Christmas wrapping had been shred...

People are also STILL talking about the last party when one couple brought this hideous winter wonderland snow globe. When it was unwrapped at the party, the new recipient turned it over and found that there was a personalized and sentimental inscription to the couple from the husband's folks.

Well, the wife was just flabbergasted and mortified, and begged to have it back. To torment them further, the gift was stolen several more times until it was deemed "frozen". In the end, the final owner gave it back to the couple. The hideous snow globe went back to their house and the story went down in "crappy gift exchange" history.

Personally, I have an unopened, unused, and definitely unwanted fondue set to unload this year. It was a gift from my sister's ex-boyfriend of many Christmas' past...

Let's just say it's lost its sentimental sheen and there hasn't been any distant second cousins' weddings on the feuding side of the family lately...

Not that I ever re-gift or anything (cough, cough, cough...), but for all of you desperate holiday shopper out there, here are a few tips on re-gifting with style and grace. It can be done, people.