Christmas Party #2: An Evening of Elegance

If you know me, I work two jobs. My day job is in a financial planning office specializing in life insurance and investments and my second job, I do from home in internet marketing. So again, I had two work Christmas Parties this week, the first one being for my day job which I am entitling "An Evening of Elegance". In the past, we have always had our Christmas parties at my employer's house which included a catered meal and a gift exchange of playing dirty Santa. While these evenings have always been excellent and enjoyable, my boss changed it up a bit and took us out to dinner at a fancy shmancy restaurant about 45 minutes away in the neighboring city of Anniston. The restaurant is the Classic on Noble, and while I have heard of it's exquisite atmosphere and palate pleasing food, I had never been myself. Luckily, we were let off work an hour early so that we would have a few minutes to get home and freshen up for our evening out.

After detoured routes around Christmas parade traffic and finding as close a park as possible we set out down the street obviously overdressed for the parade watchers of the evening. Finally, we walk up to the most beautifully Christmas decorated windows of silver and white and upon entering our destination are escorted to our reserved table upstairs. I'm a little slow to the table as I love the walls adorned with hanging art and am trying to get a look at everything as I pass and am keeping up with our hostess. Our table is topped with a cloth top, centerpieces and actually "set" with more than one fork and knife and complete with bread plates, glasses and a full dinner setting that would have Emily Post exceptionally proud and that you just don't find at any of our Gadsden restaurants.

I scan the menu in a somewhat panic at the prices and the fact that it is riddled with seafood of which I am not a fan, and am left with the only choice which is a steak fillet. I did mention the prices already had me in a panic, right? To be specific, I ordered the 8oz. Angus beef fillet served with pommes lyonnaise and topped with Cabernet sauvignon glazed mushrooms and onions. Sounds good right, oh, and "pommes lyonnaise" is just an expensive term for "fried potatoes". No matter the beautiful menu description or price attached, the meal was of generous proportions and absolutely amazing! Yes, very good and I managed to clean my plate and still have room to split a dessert of peanut butter pie which was equally amazing. It was a wonderful evening in a delightful atmosphere, great company and amazing food. I highly recommend the restaurant for those special occasions or when you are just in need of an evening of elegance.

Elfcapades!

I recently read a hilarious blog by a lady explaining her disgust of the over achieving moms who spend countless time and energy to rearrange closets, undecorate Christmas trees, bake cookies and create unfathomable messes by their Elf On The Shelfs....I am not one of those mothers. I am a wife and mother who works two jobs, has a busy schedule and I an actually life. My Elfcapes are not elaborate, but it hasn't taken exotic measures to excite my children every morning with their elf Ashley. I posted Ashley's first four days in a previous post and here are the rest from her vacation from the North Pole.

Day 5: Friday
The girls had been given a large bag of candy that Ashley stole away from the kitchen and spread out all over the living room.

Day 6: Saturday
Ashley, who apparently has a little streak of kleptomania, stole my husband's hats from our closet, stacked them into a pyramid on the coffee table and hid from underneath them.

Day 7: Sunday
After we spent hours putting up and decorating our Christmas tree on Saturday, we awoke Sunday to toilet paper hanging from it's branches. When I lived in Iowa, we called it T.P.ing, here in the south, we call it Rolling....yes, Ashley rolled our tree. 

Day 8: Monday
Ashley took a little longer to find this morning as she had somehow made her way into our refrigerator. I finally found her hanging on the ketchup bottle of the refrigerator door.

Day 9: Tuesday
We woke to find Ashley having had made a snow angel in a pile of flour on our counter.

Day 10: Wednesday
Ashley wrote her name in toothpaste in the sink of the girls' bathroom. It took a few days afterward of them using my sink before we could convince them to let us clean it.

Day 11: Thursday
Ashley knocked all the movies out from within our T.V. cabinet and spread them all over the floor.

Day 12: Friday
Ashley helped herself to an individual cup of our cherished Blue Bell Sundae ice cream, ate the last Oreo cookie that the girls saved for me the night before, was drinking coke from a little Christmas snowman mug and had surrounded herself with a few Christmas globes that had been in the girl's rooms. Yes, Ashley obviously spent the evening binge eating.

Day 13: Saturday
Ashley found a box of Dots candy and wrote her name with them on our kitchen counter.

Day 14: Sunday
Ashley wrapped herself up in a string of beads. This was probably a good thing being that she didn't make a mess with her arms confined.
Day 15: Monday
Though she took a little longer to find, we finally found Ashley sitting atop an arm of our kitchen chandelier.

Day 16: Tuesday
Ashley found our mismatch sock bin and dumped it into a small pile in our living room floor. After a thorough search, Ashley was found beneath the pile. 

Day 17: Wednesday
Apparently liking not only making messes, but just hiding, Ashley was found amongst the leaves of an indoor plant. 

Day 18: Thursday
Elves Rock The House! Or at least that's what Ashley thinks as she wrote it out in Cheerios.

Day 19: Friday
Ashley stole some of my lipstick and painted her nose. The girls woke up to tell me that Ashley had made herself to look like Rudolf. I happen to know that Ashley not only painted her own, but also lipsticked the girls' noses in the middle of the night. However, my children not being the stillest of sleepers, had no evidence of Rudolf noses in the morning. 

Day 20: Saturday, Christmas Eve
Ashley moved all of our wrapped presents from beneath the tree, pulled out the wrapping paper, tags, boxes, tape and scissors and had cut a row of paper elves, instead of dolls, out of the wrapping paper. This gave McKenna something to work on all day as she wanted to make her own paper elves.

It's Christmas Eve and Ashley won't be making any messes tonight. This is her last night in our house and with the entrance of Santa's gifts comes the exit of our little mischievous friend. The girls will wake up in the morning to what Santa brings them along with individual personalized farewell letters from Ashley. Within the letters Ashley tells them how she had to go back to the North Pole for the yearly birthday party they have for Jesus on Christmas Day. While she is excited to get back home and get a start on preparing for next Christmas, Ashley explains that she will miss the girls so much and can't wait to see how much they have grown when she returns next year. She gives the girls instructions on what behaviors to work on and to show a little more patience to each other as having a sister is so special and closes each note by telling them how much she loves them.

While having an elf adds a bit more to the nightly routine of a parent, I have to admit that it has been fun having Ashley around. Some nights I have racked my brain to stretch my creativity for her elfcapades, while some mornings I have woke in forgetful tooth fairy mode as I hurry to do something quickly before the girls wake up. Either way the girls' giggles and smiles have made each morning with Ashley a rewarding experience. While I am not the over achieving Elfing mom, I am the mom that has thoroughly enjoyed making this Christmas memory for my children.

Our Family Addition

Last week I posted a blog entitled "We're Expecting," a title I thought would generate some interest which the blog stats confirmed as it is my highest viewed post thus far. While it does thrill me to see the stats and know that I have readers, if you are just joining me, please continue reading as I believe there are much better posts. Yes, the title was a little deceiving, but does prove the power of how important a good title is to generate interest. No, we are not expecting a baby as I'm sure this is the conclusion many a readers would jump to, but if you read, we were expecting an Elf On The Shelf to come stay with us until Christmas. When I posted last week, I had an Elf waiting for me on hold at a local gift shop until I could make it in and was in a desperate search for an Elf Skirt which turns this elf into a girl with the simple cling of Velcro. In a score for the mommy team, I found the skirt four and a half hours away at the Christmas Tree Shop in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. No, I did not drive all the way there for an elf skirt, nor would I, no matter how many mommy points that would generate. No, we were there for the weekend and as my determination was quickly turning into desperation, a Google search of Elf On The Shelf retailers led the way and the skirt was purchased by my husband in a covert undercover mission while I diverted the girls attention to other areas of the store. While I toyed with the idea of letting our before named Ashley Elf appear and join us on our weekend away, I decided to wait until we returned home to as not lose her or have her to distract the girls from other weekend events.

Day 1. Monday
The girls woke up bright and early Monday morning with an Elf on our shelf. She was sitting on the tupperware container we had stored our Gatlinburg fudge in only the night before and had obviously ate a little bit. She also left a note in agreement to what Santa had told her of Gatlinburg fudge being better than any other fudge there is. The girls were ecstatic that their new friend had finally arrived and begged to take her to school with them, but of course I would not allow that.

Day 2. Tuesday
In an effort to make school mornings as easy as possible with two procrastinating girls, we have a nightly routine of selecting and laying out school clothes for the following morning. When we woke on Tuesday, the girls' clothes were thrown all over our living room along with books that had been knocked off a chair side table and scattered on the floor beneath.

Day 3. Wednesday
Ashley must have wanted to share a little of her home with McKenzie and McKenna because she created a winter scene in our living room. She took all the cotton balls from my decorative bathroom apothecary jar and had them covering the coffee table with Snowman Peeps scattered amongst her cottony snow. Ashley sat in the snow next to a peppermint candy themed Christmas tree ornament she brought back from the North Pole. Next to her was her written response on the same note the girls left the night before asking what she liked to eat in the morning. It turns out Ashley is very tired in the morning and doesn't eat during the day, but really likes the snacks the girls have been leaving for her at night. Again, the girls begged to take her to school, but again I would not allow it instead reaching a compromise to let Ashley ride to school with us. She staying in the back seat held up to the window so she could see our morning route, car line and the girls' school and was given to me to ride up front when the girls exited the car for school. She sat in the same place of my console all day with her eyes fixated in my direction, watching my every move.

Day 4. Thursday
Panties, panties...everywhere, well not everywhere, but in a trail between the girls rooms that would have Hansel and Gretel finding their way home with no problem. I woke the girls in a hurried rush as I had woke a little late myself and continued with our morning routine listening to the girls giggle at Ashley's nightly mischief.

While my husband keeps accusing me of having more fun with Ashley than the girls are, they are enjoying her much more. I will admit that it is fun tapping into the childlike creativity of being an elf. I never know what she is going to do until the girls fall asleep and I am forced to figure it out quickly before I go to bed each night. It is both entertaining and helpful to see what other's elves are doing in several of my friends' morning facebook updates. I find their posts give me quick and easy ideas where I may be over thinking and trying too hard to be creative thus making the elfing stressful. This morning I couldn't help but think that Ashley's notes could be very helpful in motivating the girls to get some chores completed without me having to nag them. Is that manipulative? Yes, maybe a little, but I'm not above a little manipulation if the girls will take direction better from their foot tall friend rather than they will me and avoid a argument or two in the meantime. If Ashley's going to live in our house, eat our snacks and make messes, I figure she could do something productive too and help the girls score some extra points with Santa by cleaning their room, fighting with each other less and taking some initiative in other areas where they are relying on us to baby them. Yes, Ashley is definitely going to explore this method and maybe December will be our month for some better habits to be born to usher us into the new year ahead. I'll update you on the progress or lack thereof.

Happy Elfing!

Limbo

Someone asked me yesterday "What are you plans?" I had to answer "I don't know" which is a rarity for me. I've been thinking a lot about my answer in embarrassment and disappointment of myself for not having a plan. I always have a plan, a goal or even a list of plans, but right now it seems pointless in the many scenarios before me. That saying of "everything is up in the air" feels like a definition of what I have been going through and a plan is useless as I wait on everything to fall into place. Though it seems things have been falling all around me, they haven't been falling into place, but rather in a mess I can't seem to make my way through. Just as an infant struggles to force a shape into the wrong hole of a toy, I've been in a struggle to put things in place, but there just isn't a fit or a fix. The word that is scrawled across the blackboard of my mind is "LIMBO," and I neither like the game, nor the state of mind. In an effort to further understand, I looked up the definition:

Limbo:
A region or condition of oblivion or neglect:
A state or place of confinement.

An intermediate place or state.

...which led me to another definition...

Oblivion:                                                                  

The condition of being forgotten or disregarded. 

The state of being mentally withdrawn or blank. 

And now I understand why this is the word in my mind that I cannot run from, that I can't make disappear no matter how much I try to focus on other things, turn up the noise or put my fingers in my ears and sing "La La La La La" in an effort to ignore. Even when I try the ostrich-scenario of burying my head in the sand, the reminder of "Limbo" is still there. It's in waiting for a house to sell in a terrible housing market, it's in the uncertainty of the work day, it's in relationships with people I love who would rather ignore my existence than work on restoration, a vehicle in need of yet another repair and every other challenge that everyday life throws at me. It's the culmination of all these and more that plague me in this state of limbo and oblivion as if stuck on a page in a book that cannot be turned. That page where no matter how many times you re-read the text in front of you, the words won't absorb in your mind, but instead escape their meaning and are forgotten as soon your eye passes over them. It's the weight of limbo that hit me just outside of town as I returned from a long weekend away and tempted me to make a U-turn back in escape. It's this state of limbo that has me with no plans until a few questions are answered, weights are lifted and pages are turned so I can move from this place of confinement in the unknowns to making plans again...that is my plan for now and the only one I can make.

9 Hours, 2 Pottie Breaks and 17 Road Kills

Anyone that has children and taken a road trip knows that you can quickly run out of activities to keep the little ones occupied and distracted from the endless questioning of "are we there yet?" This weekend we took a road trip with our girls to Gatlinburg for an annual cheer leading competition that my daughter is a part of about four and a half hours away. Upon leaving our little yappers with my parents to dog sit for four days, they suggested we let the girls play the Road Kill Game. I know there are plenty of road trip games out there, but I doubt you will find this game in any activity books as it is one of my dad's originals and errs on the side of a little morbid and demented of a game to share with children. In the Road Kill Game, you simply keep a running tally of all the dead animals you find along the way of your trip. The first time I ever heard of the game was when my nieces road from Iowa with my dad and then drove back with my sister resulting in an approximate 28 hour round trip. They took their list, compiled the results and sent it to my dad in a nice tallying of all the dead exhibits they found. My dad was so impressed with it and the girls' follow through, that it became a framed and displayed souvenir of the summer trip. I have to admit I was rather impressed by the variety of specimens of their road side observations. So being that I failed to pack any other car activities, the Road Kill Game it was for our journey. I'll also admit that it does feel a little bad when you get excited to see a dead animal so you can tally it down on your notepad, but it did keep the girls entertained. Our list would have been much longer, but McKenna and I took very long naps on the return trip and probably missed a lot of victims. So here is our compiling of our 9 hour round trip Road Kill Game:

Gatilinburg Road Trip December 2011
Flower Pots: 2 (Yes, we realize that flower pots were not alive in the first place, but thought as ran over as they were they had been officially killed!)
Unidentified: 4
Dogs: 3 (This made us the saddest being the dog lovers we are)
Rabbit: 1
Chickens: 4 (We are guessing a cage door didn't get quite closed on a chicken truck.)
Deer: 2 (These make the messiest of Road Kill.)
Cat: 1
Total: 17 with the "Unidentifieds" winning. Yes, there are "winners," I said it was morbid. As McKenna would keep the tally, she would periodically update us on who was in the lead and who was trailing. Again, a little morbid, a little demented of a game, but the road kill is there so you might as well get the kids looking out the windows and using what's there in front, or rather on the side of you, to keep them occupied, using their animal, spelling and math skills. Happy traveling!

We're Expecting!

Yes, that's right, we're expecting in the Hodge house! We are expecting an elf to come stay with us until Christmas! Did you think I was talking about a baby? No, thank you, my hands are full enough as it is and my uterus has an aversion to such creatures growing inside of it. Sorry if I misled you, but I did get your attention, didn't I? So the real story is that we are getting an Elf On The Shelf to stay with us until Christmas. If you aren't familiar with what this is, don't worry, I didn't have a clue until last year when my many friends were posting about their elves's nightly escapades on facebook. An Elf On The Shelf is an elf that comes to stay in your home until Christmas. This elf's sole purpose is to keep watch over the home's children and report to Santa on how well they are behaving until Christmas. These little spies are also mischievous around the house, hiding, making messes and other creative little elf activities to keep them occupied when the children are sleeping or away at school. My girls were introduced to the elf last year by their teachers and would come home with giggles and stories of what the elf did in their classroom that day. We decided then that we would get an elf in our home this year, though I meant to pick one up on a post season sale, but unsurprisingly forgot. On a related topic, my sister is hosting a foreign exchange student from Thailand in her home, so I guess I could house an elf this year on the North Pole Elf Exchange Program, right? Yes, indeed, I'm not going to allow her to one up me on our ongoing parenting/humanitarian/super-woman sibling rivalry.

While I was planning on starting the elf inhabiting with the first of December, I'm assuming that other elf-participating parents began with the close of Thanksgiving. I say this because as soon as the girls returned to school from Thanksgiving break, they began talking about their elf and wondering when it would arrive. Thankfully, their best friend told them all they had to do was set out a glass of water, a few crackers, and a note to their elf and their elf would write them back with it's planned arrival date to their house. As efficient as they are, the note was completed before they even reached their bus stop and plans were underway for their elf to visit that night. Their note was left on the mantle next to a cup of water minus the crackers that their mom neglected to have in the house.

 

> Dear Elf

I really want an elf. I want 2 elves 1 good 1 bad. I want both that can be touched 1 baby 1 grown. I want the baby to be messy. Come even if we're not decorated.

From: McKenzie, McKenna

The next morning the girls were disappointed as their note and water were in their original place and there was nothing in return from their future friend. Turns out, our elf left it's note on the other side of the mantle >
 

Greetings from the North Pole!

Thank you for your letter. Santa gets lists and mail all the time, but us elves never get mail just for us. I have been picked by Santa himself to come to your house in a few days. Our elf records show that you have never had an elf at your house, so Santa won't let you have two elves this year. He said that if you take good care of me this year, maybe he will let another elf stay with us next year. So I am really busy right now in the workshop making toys and stuff. Santa won't let me come until I get all my list done. I think I will be all finished and packed to be at your house next Monday or Tuesday. I am very excited to get to come to your house. Santa told me you have dogs and I really like dogs. Please take very good care of me. I am used to Mrs. Clause taking care of me. She is really sweet and I have never left the North Pole before. Again, thank you for your letter. I have to get back to the workshop to get the rest of the togs made on my list.   

~ Your Elf

Well the girls were reeling in excitement and the morning ride to school was filled with questions and little known information about elves. They figured that their elf was probably at our house right that instant just to "check it all out Momma". Really? I being the "Google It" proclaiming person asked if they thought that our elf Googled where we lived. "Well of course not momma, they don't have wifi at the North Pole" answered McKenna. Elves have "Magic Powers" to locate your home and do all sorts of other things. I didn't even know my girls had all this elf knowledge, but I'm thinking I'm going to need to Google an 'Elves for Dummies' handbook to get me caught up on all the need-to-knows with having an elf in your home.

Now for all of you reading this and ready to call the Elf Gender Discrimination Hotline because I keep referring to our elf as an "it", please close the yellow pages and hang up the phone. The only reason I am calling it an "it" is because we are not yet sure if we are getting a girl or a boy elf. Of course my little ones want a girl, but all of the stores their mom has called is out of the Elf On The Shelf official Skirt that turns the initial boy elf into a girl elf. If a shipment doesn't arrive before Monday or Tuesday, the "it" is going to have to be a boy. Though it's been suggested that I make one myself or use baby clothes, my girls have seen the real thing and I'm not really sure if an imitation will be accepted. So at this point, we are going to let our elf's gender be a surprise.

The next night there were three notes left for the elf:

 > This one is McKenna's which apparently my computer and blogspot have joined forces against me to refuse to allow me to insert it any other way but sideways.

Dear elf,
You are very nice but can you please leave your note where I leave mine. I want to know if you are the baby before you come. Please tell me your name.


So I guess it's a little obvious that McKenna did not like the placement of the elf's previous note and she is taking charge of the situation to be sure it doesn't happen again. The concern of the elf being a baby or not determines if the elf is going to be exceptionally messy. (They are hoping for a messy baby, or at least something to blame their messes on....I'm onto them.)

This is McKenzie's in what I believe she must have really concentrated on her handwriting in because you can actually read it pretty well.

> And this one from both is just too sweet. The elf left a few notes again for the next morning and as requested they were left in the same place that the girls left theirs for easy finding. The elf also drank the water, ate the chips and really enjoyed the skittles that were left the second night. I can assure you that the elf is having just as much fun passing notes in the night with my girls as they are.

So as are expecting, you also can be expecting to read more about our Elf-scapades as Christmas approaches. As for me, it's late, I'm tired and I need to check and see what the girls have left their elf tonight! ;)

Alone In A Room Full Of People

Have you ever found yourself alone in a room full of people? Is that even possible? Why yes, of course it is. If you have never experienced it, count yourself lucky or more of a social butterfly than I consider myself to be. It's happened before, thankfully so long ago that I almost forgot what it felt like to be invisible. Not the invisibility that you would love to have as a Stan Lee created Marvel super power. But the invisibility felt that coincides with feeling ignored or not wanted in the room in the first place. It happened just last week in a room full of people. When I say full, I mean one busting at the seams, where extra seating was brought in and there were still people sitting on the floor. I sat there in a still shot of a movie with the room rotating around me in slow motion allowing me to pick out and tune in to all the conversations that filled the air. But when I opened my mouth to speak it was as if in a dream where you are trying in panic to scream but there is no air to fill you lungs and no audible voice to be heard. And I sat there holding it all in to a point where I wanted to fold up and melt within myself. I'm not blaming the people in the room, it may have been me that put myself there by building walls of protection amongst all the emotional hurt that lingered within me, the emotional hurt that weighed me down in place despite my longing to run away. Again in that dream where you are trying to run but your legs are heavy, limp and unresponsive.

Kind of depressing right? Sorry, this is my emotional purging moment, my blog, so I can write what I feel. Well not everything I feel or I would probably have more enemies than I possibly have now, but a candid yet controlled amount of my feelings that I can purge safely. Why am I doing it? Because in speaking with others over the years, it's not a uncommon feeling to have, but when it's happening to you, you can tend to feel like you're the only one in the world to experience it. I was recently told in conversation with someone who has been reading, that the person could identify with what stories, thoughts and insights I had wrote about. She said it was similar to the thoughts she had, she just never found the words for it. While I love to write the encouraging, mind provoking posts, some days just aren't that encouraging. Some days you feel that you will be lucky if you just make it through the next hour without having an emotional breakdown, let alone make it to completely through the day. Some days you find yourself alone in a crowded room, that's real life and this is why I do it, this is why I will allow myself to be vulnerable.

There were many years in my life that I would look at other people, women especially, that had this look like they had it all together. They were beautifully dressed, accessorized and juggling marriage, kids, family, work, friendships, home and obligations with perfection and grace while even finding time to bake a batch of cookies for the new neighbor. In watching them, I created this fantasy that they were doing it all without failures. I created an unachievable image of something that never actually existed in the first place and beat myself up worse when I couldn't measure up. Those beautify family pictures that come in the frames at the home decor store are models, make believe, they don't exist! Yes, models and they have been make-uped primped, posed, photo shopped and everything in between before being put in that gorgeous frame. The last family photo we had was years ago at our church and my then 18 year old step daughter showed up with bright pink hair. Not a cute little strand or two like I honestly thought would always look great in her beautiful blond hair, but bright, bold, dark pink for family photos to be put in our new church directory. Yes, I was mad, did you read this was to be forever documented in our church directory? At the time, I was on the women's ministry team, the MOPS team (Mother's of PreSchoolers), and a few other leadership church teams. Church teams that would much rather have had the picture framed family from the home decor store rather than the mom with the bright pink haired daughter. While the color was fake and did wash out over time, the family is real. We still have drama, problems, issues, tragedies, tears, triumphs, laughter and good times. It's called reality and that is where real life lives.