We wish you a Merry Christmas

Parents every year are summoned to celebrate the holiday season and revel in their offspring’s mediocre (but often adorable) talent.  Moms make last minute trips to department stores to buy fancy special occasion clothing and shoes that will only be worn a few times.  Dads quickly ransack the house looking for camera and video chargers.  Kids are too excited and nervous to eat.  Yes, you guessed it - I am talking about the annual elementary school Christmas program. 

I have sat through over 50 school performances over the past 10 years.  This includes not only the Christmas programs, but also the spring, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and Thanksgiving programs.  If we threw in all the preschool/elementary/middle/high school graduations, talent shows and school plays that number would be closer to 75.  I consider my husband and I school program frequent flyers. 

Christmas programs are my favorites.  Not only do they provide another event where my kids can wear their overpriced taffeta dress and scratchy polyester pants to, but they never fail to provide great entertainment.  “They” are the spectators who attend these events. 

Below I have listed a few of my favorites:

The Disengaged Teenager

This member of the audience is often a very unwilling participant.  They have been forced to attend this event because: A) Their parents want them to show support for their younger sibling or B) If left at home, they would most likely get into trouble.  If you could read their mind, you would learn that they are desperately searching for a fork to stick in their eyeball to break the monotony.  If they have some freedom (or they have made their parents so miserable that they release them) you can see them wandering around the back of the auditorium and meeting up with a group of other teenagers dressed up in their festive attire of hoodies and jeans. 

Last night, I saw one.  She was about 12 or 13, dressed in a silver sequined tank, tight jeans and high heeled boots.  She had full make-up, hair done and was sporting a nice fake designer glittery bag.  We saw her continually pacing around the gymnasium, appearing as if she had somewhere important to go after the program was over.  Perhaps the red light district?

The Camera Hog

This guy (or gal) is the one lugging 2 huge bags of camera equipment and a tripod.  He is moving around the room holding a tremendously large and expensive camera taking pictures in various positions: sitting, standing, standing on a chair, on one knee, on both knees, squatting, crouching, leaning to one side, bending over, on tiptoes or laying on the ground.  He is concerned with capturing as many angles of his wonder child as possible, because these pictures are going to be featured in People magazine.  Most likely these shots will remain on the memory card not to be seen again until 2025.

We saw a remarkable specimen the other night.  He wore a tight t-shirt that tightly hugged his stomach as it cascaded over the top of his jeans.  He was everywhere, and when I didn’t see him I assumed he was lurching underneath a chair or hanging from the ceiling.  I am sure his best shot was the one he took holding the camera up high above his head while those around him found out if he wore deodorant or not. 

The Fanatical Parent

These are my favorites.  They flail their arms about, practically having a conversation with their kid from their seat.  They are beaming with ridiculous pride as if their daughter or son has made it to Broadway.  These parents are more likely to have a child below the 3^rd grade, because (let’s be honest) the cute factor peaks in the preschool-1^st grade range.  The entire extended family, including relatives flown in from Florida, take up about 2 rows for this 1 hour show (of which their child appears 10 minutes).  These are the types of parents who definitely have a child-centered household.  You gotta love these newbies – they are so darn cute.  It’s hard to resist the temptation to explain the hell of adolescence that awaits them.

Last night I saw a new warped variety of the fanatical parent that I did not like.  In the 4^th row of the audience, a mother did all the arm and hand motions while standing up, blocking the view from those behind her.  I wasn’t sure if I wanted to sedate her or throw a shoe at her.

The Rude Ones

It continually amazes me that in this day and age, many people have not figured out how to behave at a school event.  Has everyone forgotten their manners?  Or are we so self absorbed that the consideration of others is an afterthought?   My husband would say that it’s because the Democrats are in charge and that whole “entitlement” attitude has taken over.  Parents are the main culprits, of course.  It’s always an eye-opener for the teachers when they can witness for themselves where Johnny gets his obnoxious tendencies from. 

I have seen it all:

·        Parents who continually talk in loud voices

·        Parents who insist on bringing their cranky and noisy infants/toddlers to an event they don’t care about and will never remember

·        Teenagers who get out of their seat and come back about 100 times

·        Parents who don’t remember to turn off their cellphone ringer

·        Parents who talk on their cellphone (at the most recent event I attended on Thursday a father actually stood up in the 2^nd row during the 1^st grade song while talking on his cellphone.  It is at that moment I realized I needed to bring more shoes with me to these things)

·        Teachers who stand right in front of your kid while they perform

·        Kids who like to kick the back of your chair

·        Parents who come to the event drunk

·        People who bring their handbag dog

·        Single moms who flirt with married men

·        Parents who do not wear deodorant (see Camera Hog)

·        People who wear ridiculous big hair or hats and sit right in front of you

·        Parents who continually lean over you to talk to the person sitting next to you during the show

·        Parents who walk out before the entire program is over (this is excusable in emergencies, but I can assure you that rushing home in time to watch the latest episode of Grey’s Anatomy doesn’t qualify)

I do really try to concentrate on the show, honest I do.  But if I can’t for some reason I can always view the video later :-)

Mad for Mug Rugs

Recently, I found out about these great little things called mug rugs.  They are like mini quilts to rest your mug upon and they are fabulous.  I made a few...

For Halloween:

For Fall:

 For Christmas:

Halloween Treats

I know its November, but I wanted to share these fun Halloween mini-totes I made from Quilts and More Magazine Fall 2010 issue.  We gave them to kids in the neighborhood....they were super easy and fun to make :-)

Haunted Happenings

Ever since we moved to the midwest, I have missed the apple orchards and pumpkin farms of the east coast. Despite all the corn fields here, there are no corn mazes I know of, nor are there any places to get a good cup of cider. Yet, I have not stopped my quest to find some kind of fall fun activities here in Green Acres.

We recently attended a local state park event called "Haunted Happenings". It was by chance that we heard about this from some new friends, and when they mentioned there were hayrides I was sold. Tickets were $10 each, but included a hot dog meal, a hayride, kids games and a haunted trail walk.

We took our 3 kids and joined another family of 6. It was your typical small town event. On the park grounds were a cluster of historic buildings that were strung with lights. We immediately put our names on the waiting list for the haunted walk. We were group #27. We arrived at about 7:30pm.

CLEAN WEENIES?

We then went on to the weenie roast where we each got a bag of chips, soda can and a cold hotdog wrapped in a napkin. Right outside were 3 or 4 small campfires with a stack of branches available to roast your weenie. The branches were sharpened at the end to skewer your hot dog and then you hold the stick over the fire. This scene kind of disturbed me. First of all, any open fires trouble me. Being a Californian native, my instinct is to douse any fire not in a grill or fireplace immediately. I did not see any fire extinguishers or buckets of water on hand in case one of the campfires went wayward, but there was an elderly man keeping an eye on things, so I convinced myself he must have some sort of fire expertise in order to be in charge of this potential forest fire.

The second issue I had with the weenie roast was the use of branches to cook food. I did not know if these branches were sanitized and worried that some kind of raccoon spit or deer poo residue would still be on them. My husband, who inspects the spoons in our kitchen as if he is going to perform surgery with them, seemed not to mind the risk of catching rabies, so I tried to be at ease with this prehistoric cooking utensil. I was OK with it all until I realized that when you are done with the sticks you are to put them back in the pile to reuse. WHAT? I then imagined all the gross things people could have done with the branch I used, like eating their hot dog off it and drooling all over the branch, or dropping it in a pile of dirt. Ew.

THANKS ORIENTAL TRADING

We took the kids to the large red barn where they had several carnival like games and face painting. When we entered the barn, we were given a stack of tickets to use for the games. While the kids ran amuck, parents stood around and chatted. My kids with faces painted, proudly showed me their bags full of candy and assorted plastic tiny "toys" that would most likely fall apart or find their way inside the crevices of our car seats. But they had tickets left to spend, so off they went again. After about an hour we decided it was time to move on, but the kids still had tickets! We later found out that random older kids were handing them their tickets, so we could have been there another 2-3 hours.

These games are nice ideas, but I have to think about the complete waste the prizes are. There was a time when I thought that the 5 minutes of fun they provided was worth it. But after 17 years of parenting experience I can say without hesitation that it is not. These cheap little Oriental Trading Co. trinkets are poorly constructed and have no practical purpoe. They will not raise my kids' IQ nor will they spark any creativity. No thanks, I'd rather save for that $100 Lego set.

DUCK! (NO NOT THE BIRD)

On to the er, hayride. We climbed into an open trailer with bales of straw attached to a pickup truck. The driver took us on a paved road around the park in the dark. He was driving kinda fast and swerving a bit which was a little alarming. However, we quickly became frightened when several passengers narrowly missed getting hit with low hanging branches and road signs. It then got really terrifying when we hit a large rock. The trailer stopped briefly, perhaps to check to see if anyone was flung from the trailer, but more likely in order to open another bottle of beer. After our arrival back to the park and upon close inspection with light from our cellphones, we could see that not only did we have two flat tires, but the outside rims were badly mangled and dented. Needless to say, the guy who greeted us(possibly the owner of the trailer?) was not a happy man.

BEWARE OF KIDS WITH WATER BOTTLES

It was 9:30 and we still had not heard our group being called for the haunted walking trail tour. Our friend Aaron convinced the staff to let us go early because we had so many little kids who were getting tired quickly. We lined up to go and I immediately worried about Bryson, my 7 year old, and if he was going to be able to handle this all. I did not worry about 9 year old Brenna, because I thought that since she was a pretty smart kid, she would get that these were only people in costumes and think the whole thing was silly. Boy was I wrong.

We were led by a man with a latern who took us to several "stages" that included an insane asylum, laboratory, coal mine and a graveyard. They were actually pretty well done for a small town. I kept checking on Bryson to see how he was doing, and surprisingly he was handling it really well even after his friend Braden, who was not doing so well, almost hit one of the monsters with his full water bottle. Luckily his mom grabbed it before anyone was seriously injured. Brenna, on the other hand, was freaking out. She was shivering and had a death grip on my hand. I tried to explain to her that it was all in good fun, but she was not buying it.

All in all, it was a fun night. I did not catch any intestinal disease and Brenna did not have any nightmares. We went with a great family and survived the hayride. We would definitely go again.