Fairhope’s 2009 Christmas Parade

This year I was not alone with five kids, three of which were in the parade. That made things a bit easier, in some ways.

I did have to check all three of mine out of school early for two doctor’s appointments. Gama stepped up and took Tori to her appointment (THANK YOU, GAMA!) and even went shopping for a turtle neck and parade throws after. Tommy stayed with Pop Pop while TJ and I endured a 95 minute pulmonology appointment. (Yep, you guessed it, complete with two chest xray views and full breathing test.) His lingering cold and increasing need for his rescue inhaler prompted this visit. We have the oral steroids on standby, but decided to hold off a bit longer. The films simply showed some lingering viral gunk, nothing more. Yay. But.. BOO… Doc did have a come to Jesus with me. Every so often he does sit me down and makes sure I get the the point that TJ has persistent severe asthma. We are on all these drugs to manage it, keep him feeling good and to make the best of his lung function.

After the appointments I dropped TJ to the green house, grabbed Tori and we went to pick up the pizzas for Red Shoe. Yeh, ooooooops. When I triumphantly arrived downtown with my 8 pizzas I found out I actually was supposed to get 21 pizzas. Er… insert curse words of choice! It took quite a bit of weaving, dodging and a bit of begging with police (and numerous ‘THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!’) to get out of the area and then back in. But I managed. Go me.

Pop Pop walked the boys to me from the green house…

Tim then came and snagged them so he could get TJ situated on his Boy Scout Float.

Tim and Tommy watched the parade, while I walked with the Red Shoe girls this year. Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Thankfully I had some hot chocolate with a little extra something in it. AND hand warmers. YAY.

I did really enjoy walking the route from street point of view.

My favorite scene of the night? Four nuns with Mardi Gras beads all scrambling to catch some peppermints. Yeh, that was awesome.

Tired

TJ and I have a yucky cold. Or I should say, I have a yucky cold, TJ has a yucky cold and/or Fifth Disease. By the way, it was Tommy that had it Fall of 2008. Yay, I don’t have an oddball kid, just a bad memory.

His rash is spreading but he’s fine with it. Playing and fighting (quite loudly) with his brother.

For dinner I decided homemade chicken and stars soup would be tasty. Eh… it was okay.

Now I am having a hot toddy, extra hot and heavy on the toddy.

More pics from Atlanta maybe on Tuesday.

Later.

PS Let’s not forget Tori, she is hacking too. Sorry, Love. Tired momma head.

On the road again

Yes, before anyone asks… TJ does have a rash on his face. Once again it looks like he picked up Fifth Disease, which is kinda odd because kids don’t usually (usually being the operative word here) catch it again once they’ve been exposed. But the administration  sent home the note the other day it was going around his school, and he has the telltale rash on his face and trunk…So, I’m saving the $30 co-pay and making a mom dx.

So there.

PS We are now back home in Fairhope. Yay.

Black Friday Nails

Late Friday afternoon Gamma decided to take Tori, Katherine, Susan and me out for a mani or pedi. (M chose to stay home with the boys.) We had a nice time getting girly nail stuff done. Then we stopped by Ross and both girls found awesome dresses for the Christmas dances. Love a bargain…

This was all the Black Friday shopping this momma did. Not a big fan of the insanity shopping that day.

Happy Thanksgiving from Atlanta

The kids and I had a great day with Don, Susan, Dan, my parents, and the cousins.  The amazingly tasty turducken was my downfall. Mmmmmmmmmmm. Yumminess.

And the shot up turkey from last night was fried…

ALIEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Gah.

Uncle Dan had a few issues with the nasty canned cranberry crud…

Uncle Dan’s Chocolate Bourbon Pecan Pie was TJ’s MOST favorite… by far.

This afternoon we spotted quite a few deer out on the golf course.

Tonight Susan, Dan and I took the kids to see Disney’s A Christmas Carol. In 3D

Uh… DUDE!!!!! I think I am going to have nightmares. Seriously… I had just told Susan that if the movie had aliens it was all over nightmare-wise for me. Ten seconds later… the last ghost pulls back his hood… that skull looked AWFULLY alien to me. Just saying…

Oy.

Hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving. Love to all those dear to me.

Prepping for Thanksgiving

The kids and I have arrived safe and well, not sound after that traffic. But a strong Rum and Coke fixed the lack of soundness on my part. I think…

I wandered down into Don’s basement to find Tommy jumping up and down with excitement. Uncle Don had promised that Tommy could do the ’shot’ for the turkey. After Don explained about giblets (with a pointed laugh in my direction– yeh yeh there was an INCIDENT in my early 20’s involving giblets. Shhhhhhhh!) the boys got down to business.

Bet that is going to be a goooooooood turkey.

An interesting way to close out the 2009 Fall Show

This morning getting to the Civic Center took a bit of  cutting through back streets. Why? A very distraught drunk man was barricaded in his restaurant… a mere half black from where we were. (And for irony’s sake I’d like to point out he had barricaded himself up literally across the street from the police station.)

ANYWAY. He was threatening to shoot people, blow up the city block… etc etc etc. So, for safety reasons the morning show was canceled. To the girls’ credit, they were well behaved. I wasn’t every truly concerned for our safety, but it was still stressful.

Eventually we put on a movie to keep them busy. (WHY did they pick ‘Mean Girls’ is beyond me… we needed warm and fuzzy with the situation outside.) The girls did not realize it but we were basically in lock-down mode. No one in or out.

Being the intelligent woman I am… I wandered the halls. At one point I encountered one of Fairhope’s finest who, on the condition on anonymity confided the whole thing would be over very shortly.

Sure enough, about 15 minutes there was a loud explosion and it was over. A SWAT team was able to enter the back of the building and detain the man when a concussion grenade was tossed in the front window in a classic Berta move: LOOK!! PUPPIES!

I imagine instead of puppy kisses he still has some ringing ears. Ouch.

Here was a view when we eventually wandered out to the corner to meet the lunch delivery. Tad surreal to see this is sleep little Fairhope.

And then… as the say…

The show must go on.

And it did.

—————–

Thanks to Celeste for letting me in on the tradition of entertaining the younger children preshow with slippers under the curtains. The girls had such a fun time making the little ones giggle hysterically.

Then of course it was time for the Circle. Loved learning about the tradition of the Circle in the theater. Very cool to watch them do this each time.

Waiting for her intro

And the final cast picture

Oh wait… don’t forget us BAs — Backstage Angels (or as one mom put it: PMS – Pagan Mosher’s Slaves ) I really enjoyed playing my small part in the show and look forward to many more years with Tori in the Fall Show.

Dress Rehearsal

All

Day

Long

Weeeeeeeeeeee.

PS That is Tori’s costume for her “Giant’s Daughters” dance.

Interesting, no?!

Freezer Paper Stenciling

Tori and the other half of the cow, Brittany, decided they needed ‘got milk?’ tshirts for the after-show meet and greet with the school aged groups. I thought the idea was pretty darn funny.

I originally planned to do iron text, but… as usual decided to complicate things a bit. In my defense: the printer is acting ugly. So I HAD to get crafty.

I have heard a few crafty bloggers making noise about Freezer Paper Stenciling for a while, but resisted the temptation. Not so today: armed with instructions from “Neither Hip Nor Funky” I was ready to stencil.

I bought a big roll of Reynold’s Freezer Paper at Wally World. And then cut two pieces the size of regular 8.5×11 paper. I created an outline of the text I wanted in Photoshop (Yes, J, still using the ever ancient 7.0 — shhhhh) and then printed on the NON waxed size of the paper. By the way, I used the CgPhenixAmerican Font (and just stretched it out a smidge to make me happy.)

Carefully cut out the image. Be sure to save the insides of the ‘O’ etc. You’ll iron those on later as well. Don’t lose them!

Iron the template onto your shirt. (Don’t forget those pieces you saved!) Obviously, iron everything on wax side down. I also ironed a piece of plain freezer paper inside the shirt to prevent bleed through.

Paint away! I used a matte fabric paint that I bought at Hobby Lobby. It was like $1.50 for the bottle. Cheap.

Let dry completely. (Hard to wait, but don’t cheat. Trust me.)

Remove template, it just peels right off.

Tell yourself how cool you are.

You can tell my knife was getting dull on the ‘Got Milk?’ shirt. Boo. Make sure you totally fill in the area with paint. I could have laid it on a bit thicker.

Looking forward to doing NON text projects with this… soon.

Have fun creating some cool stuff. I have all SORTS of ideas for Christmas. Some nice, some… not.

Some pictures from today’s practice

From here on out I’ll be back stage changing backdrops, so I took the chance to grab a few pictures today.

The girl needs to quit peeking out at me!

Today’s rehearsal had a lot of down time, and that costume gets HOT. (And the stage lights weren’t even on… uh oh.)

Really, what sort of secrets can your lower half share?

Finale…

Look forward to seeing the whole show. They are all working so hard.