Oh my. I realized I never mentioned what we did for Mom and Dad's birthdays! They both turned 50 this year. For new readers, my parents were born only 9 days apart.
Anyhow, we wanted to do something special for them since it was their big 5-0 for both of them, but we didn't really want to throw a big party or anything because that is just too much work and costs too much. Lol. Soooo, we decided to contact a whole bunch of people and get them to send them cards for their birthday. We wanted 50 people to send them each a card, so they could get one card each day for the 50 days leading up to their birthdays. Ho-ly cow. We had no clue how much work it was going to end up being. See here, the problem was that we couldn't just have people send them cards any old time because we didn't want them getting 10 cards on one day and no cards for a few days. So we decided that we needed to tell people to send them BEFORE the 50 days started, so we knew we would have one for every day. Just coming up with 50 people for each of them was quite a chore. And we had to figure out 50 people for each that we knew we could even contact. Ay yi yi. What a mess. Here was the problem- people couldn't send them to our house or else Mom and Dad would see them before the 50 days started. And we couldn't have them all sent to my school mailbox because my mailbox isn't that big and isn't terribly reliable since I do share a mailbox with someone. And they couldn't go to Jen's school because the secretary might find it a tad suspicious that Jen was getting 100 pieces of mail in a short period of time. Lol. Besides, we had two school breaks (Thanksgiving and Christmas) in that time and wouldn't have a way to pick up the mail during that time. They couldn't go to Nana's because that would be too much work for her. So what do we do?
Here comes Christa to the rescue!!!! Sweet Christa graciously agreed to have all the mail sent to her apartment. She felt mighty popular for several months, getting so much mail addressed to her.
Then we had to have people write on the envelopes under her name c/o Jean or Mark so she knew it wasn't for her to open and so we knew which person to give it to. Then since I see her each day at school, she comes to our house many evenings a week, and I see her each weekend at church, she had plenty of opportunities to give us the mail! I collected it all at school so that way Mom and Dad wouldn't find it. We had to be sneaky about some of it when she would bring it to the house with her to give to me. She would slip it to me behind the couch or something. Haha. Then some people just gave us their envelopes directly to us at church or sent it through the currier to Jen at school. We had to be sneaky at church, too. So that big ole purse that some of you teased me about came in mighty handy for hiding envelopes! When Jen and I were compiling lists of people and their e-mails and such the one day in Jen's room, Mom came back the hall and caught us on Jen's computer when we were supposed to be cleaning our rooms. She started chewing us out over it, but we just told her that we were being productive and doing something important. She wanted to know what. Uhhhhhh... So we just told her that Christmas was coming so she couldn't ask questions.
We had to use that excuse several times during this process! It's a darn good thing their birthdays came right after Christmas!!Anyhow, after much drama, effort, blood, sweat, and tears (okay, not really those last 3), we pulled it off. And it was totally worth it. Mom and Dad LOVED their cards and notes. Some were rather generic birthday cards, some were sweet, some were sentimental, and some were funny, but all were loved. We had requested that people share a favorite memory or something they appreciated about them in the cards, so those were fun to read. Mom was reduced to tears over several of them.
We were happy they felt loved. Dad's friends are a bunch of slackers, though. Haha. We were rather stressed out with his cards because they weren't coming in after awhile! We had to keep bugging them about sending him cards. We kept saying that Mom's friends were much more responsible and on top of things. Lol. But then a lot of them are teachers, so they kind of have to be. She had plenty of cards coming in. Dad...not so much. But in the end, he had close to 50 cards. Some of his friends kept saying they'd send a card and never did, but that's okay. He still had 40 some cards to enjoy. :)
Some of Mom and Dad's favorites were from Peyton, Ashley, Delaney, and their parents. Yep, they really came through for us and gave 4 cards to each! Each of the girls made 2 cards and then Heather and Darrell went together and wrote Mom and Dad each a really sweet note. I should get those cards and share the messages from the girls- they made us laugh. We even got some of our closest Michigan friends from when we lived there to send cards! Mom and Dad were so surprised and loved them! We had such fun giving them a new card each day! On the days when we were too busy or forgot to give them a card, Dad would jokingly say the next day that he cried himself to sleep since he didn't get a card. *rolls eyes* Haha!
Oh, so since Dad's birthday is 9 days before Mom's, we started his 9 days earlier obviously. Mom didn't catch on for awhile that she was going to be getting 50 cards, too. Whew! Dad got it, though, and almost spilled the beans!
Thankfully, Jen and I were able to cover up what he said and move the conversation in a new direction. Lol. So yeah, all in all, it was wonderful. And Mom and Dad were very pleased with their cards. Except I just remembered that I never did give Mom my card for her! Haha! I better do that tonight! Oh, and people are still coming up to Mom and Dad and telling them how sweet that was of us to do that for them. Jen and I were just pleased the whole thing came together and all the hard work paid off.
Alrighty then!
We gently told him that MIGHT not be quite the right message to send to Mom on her Mother's Day. We then explained that horrific was like the word "horror." Not a good thing. Terrific WAS a good answer, though, for letter T. Lol.
Thankfully, he didn't notice that b/c I pulled my coat down over my lap, waved to him, and drove away. Haha! I finished pulling my pants on as I pulled away. Then I parked, raced to Loew-Bren, ran down the stairs, hid around the corner, whipped my dress shirt off, pulled on old t-shirt, dropped bag outside classroom, and made a lovely entrance into class 10 minutes late. Not a problem, though, b/c I had told my prof I'd be late with the observations. It was art day, which is why I had to be in old clothes. Then I had to attend the mock interviews for Kappa Delta Pi (education sorority thing I'm in) last night. Then Christa and I sat in her truck and talked for an hour afterwards. People were looking at us weird as they walked by. Lol. The windows were all fogged up from our talking since it was so stinkin' cold outside. Haha!
Alicia and I were on FB at the same time around 3 in the morning, being a support group for each other. Lol. We talked some about her wedding, which was fun. That night I was writing up a lesson plan and was dozing off during it. Again. And when I reread my lesson plan, I had written about Jen walking a dog. 
She cracks me up. When we talked over Christmas break (when she was at my house until almost midnight and I was half-asleep as she talked at me- haha), she was going back and forth between black dresses and light blue. If she went with black, we would each get to use whatever black dress we wanted. Either way, the dresses would be short. I was secretly cheering for black b/c I already have a black short dress from high school. So that would be just swell if I didn't have to buy another bridesmaid dress! Let's see if I can find a picture of it on here... Ah yes, this was the Christmas Dance my senior year. Sorry the pictures are sideways. This was back before I knew how to flip pictures on here. Lol.
