Glutton For Punishment

I often times ask myself "what were you thinking???" It is usually after I've done something without thinking fully of the ramifications it will have. Several weeks ago I received a call on my cell while I was waiting for Kori to get out of school. It was from a parent of a student in the class. She was the coordinator for the "Winter Party" and was getting things set up. Great! Could I help? You betcha? A craft? A game? What do I say you ask? I reply, "Whatever you need me to do, tell me and I'll do it". Why I didn't pipe up and offer to do the game I don't know.

At any rate I began my quest for the perfect craft. I scoured Walmart, Michael's etc. All of the pre-cut kits in the craft foam were Christmas trees and Santa Claus. That violates the terms of the "Winter Party" guidelines. It has to be non-denominational for those that don't celebrate Christmas. Okay, no problem. Snowmen are easy. Uh, yeah, only there weren't any pre-cut snowman kits. So I poured over the web to see what I could find. I finally found a cute little snowman idea and figured I'd poke a hole in the top and thread a pipe cleaner through and it could hang up for an ornament, door hanger etc. No problem!

I buy the foam. I figure it would be easiest to to ahead and pre-cut the pieces so there wasn't a lot of scraps, mess etc. It was a project that ideally should take about 10-15 minutes of the class party time. Life has been a little crazy and I didn't get an early jump on getting the pieces cut out. I prayed for snow and lots of it to get the party canceled. By Thursday I figured that wasn't happening and I better get started. I get my little template and cut out 26 snowman head circles (25 for the students in the class and 1 for my display piece). Then I cut out 26 black top hats. Then 26 carrot noses. Then 26 hat bands. Then 26 hat buckles. By now I have a serious cramp in my cutting hand, not to mention a pile of static charged foam pieces that stick to everything!!!! I passed on the 52 holly leaves and 78 tiny holly berries that were to further adorn the hat. Those would have been brutal. I've now had to stop to fix dinner, clean up dinner, play with kids, finish homework, bathe kids, get kids in bed. Shower myself. **Sigh**

It's now 11:30 p.m., back to cutting. The 52 eyes I have to cut took forever! Ideally the mouth was to be comprised of 4 small (dime size) black foam circles. At this point it's after 1am, I am tired. I am dang near crippled from the 7 hours or so of cutting I've been doing and really to be honest, I'm over it. I have proclaimed loudly to myself that I hate snowmen! If I EVER see one again it will be too soon. These F-ing things are for the BIRDS!!!!! Once I pull myself together, I decide that these snowmen will have red pipe cleaner mouths. My husband told me the dot mouths looked better. After I not so politely told him that he could come home from work and cut them out his own d@mn self, he decided the pipe cleaners smiles didn't look so bad after all. What a good idea.

Did I mention I put glue dots on all the pieces so the kids didn't have to go all glue crazy like they did at the Fall party. 25 first graders with Elmers glue...wow! We're lucky we weren't all stuck there until the Winter Party. The glue dots worked great, but added to the teadiousness of the whole thing. Anyway, I packed everything up and crawled into bed at about 2:30 a.m.

The crafts were a hit. The party was done. Winter break has begun! It was a half day too so that was even better!

Jason's dad and step-mom are here from Iowa, as well as his sister and her family from Cincinnati. We'll celebrate Christmas and Kori and Phil's (Jason's dad) birthday tomorrow. It is FREEZING cold here so we'll be hanging out here. With wind chills -30 it's too cold to do much of anything else.

Guess I better wrap some presents this week too, since I've done NONE!