About Me

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I am a stay-at-home mom of two sons, 12 and 10. I used to be an advertising manager. I love my new career and have thrown myself completely into it.

Thursday, December 24, 2009

Merry X-mas Eve and Happy Holidays

Whew! I'm sitting here in my pajamas with a cup of coffee. The boys are taking showers and I'm taking a break from all the pre-holiday activity. I have a few more "Santa" things to do, then things will be complete until we set everything up after the boys go to bed. The problem is that the boys keep going to bed later and later every year. I'm hoping they'll fall asleep before midnight because I start to nod off. Then they're up at the crack of dawn with a ton of energy. Next year, we'll probably just be going through the motions because my oldest, in fifth grade, doesn't believe in Santa anymore and the youngest, in third grade, has his doubts, but he still wants to believe.
Well since part of the reason for this blog is to detail my experiences and adventures of being a room mom in both classes this year, I'll review the class activities that happened before school ended for the holiday break. First, I spoke to other room moms to see if I should collect money from parents to get the teachers holiday gifts. The consensus was to let individual students give their own gifts and not to collect for a class gift because people celebrate different holidays. So I decided that was best and explained that decision to the number of students' moms who asked me about it.
Three of the four 3rd grade classes decided to plan our holiday parties together and the teachers thought a lunch would be nice. After one of the moms researched various options, the teachers decided on McDonald's Happy Meals. I asked the 5th grade teacher if he wanted to have any type of party or cookies and he said they had something else planned. However, two days before the last day of school, he e-mailed me to see if the class could have a pizza lunch. Now I had two lunches overlapping on the same day. I called another 5th grade room mom to see if she could be in the class for the lunch and she coordinated with some other moms to make sure someone would be there since I was already committed to the 3rd grade party. I called and ordered the pizzas and asked them to be delivered to the school at 11:30.
On the day of the parties, I volunteered for a bit in 5th grade then went to the front of the school at 11 to help bring in the Happy Meals for the 3rd graders. When I went outside, I saw a Pizza Hut truck. As the delivery guy walked toward the school I asked him if these were pizzas for the 5th grade and yes, they were. They delivered them half an hour early. The teacher wasn't ready for them and didn't have any mom to help him out. I let the teacher know what was happening, then brought the pizzas to his class. At least I was able to get the delivery guy to keep the pizzas in the warmers and come back to get them. The teacher was a trooper and ended up serving all 30 kids himself, with no help. I felt so bad but I had to help the 3rd grade teacher with all the Happy Meals that came. After lunch, we passed out cookies to the students.
Bottom line is that both parties were a success and all the children and both teachers were happy. This was my 1st experience of having overlapping parties and unfortunately by the time a mom came to help the 5th grade teacher, the pizza had already been served since it came so early. I apologized to the teacher but he was a real trooper and handled it perfectly. So I experienced what I feared could eventually happen and it wasn't so bad.
So now back to the final pre-holiday activities. Have a wonderful holiday season, whatever you celebrate!