Secret Santa

As I stepped outside to grab my shoes last week I found this hanging on my doorknob.


When I opened it up, I found an envelope with my name written across the front and a cute holiday card inside.


And then the best part of all...


A whole new set of socks!! Someone knows me well.

The card was simply signed, "From Someone Who Loves You".

Surprise socks? Even better. A big, huge thank you from my feet and I to the mystery sock-giver.

Now I just need to find a skirt or some elf-ish capris to really show off those stripey fur-topped holiday socks. You think I could pull it off?


Without the monkey pajamas, I mean.

To whoever you are, you mysterious bearer of fantastical footwear, thank you. You made my day - and you are awesome.



Want to read more? Well, alrighty! If you'd like to read about a Christmas tradition in my family, click over to 4P today.

Spreading Sunshine

Friday was the 9th anniversary of the day my dad died. Rather than mourning this profound loss, I chose to celebrate his life by spreading sunshine all week long. You can read more about that here.

Friday was the big finale. Dad loved ice cream so I arranged to have our local grocery store print off some coupons for free soft-serve ice cream that I could purchase and then share with others. I must admit, I was a bit disappointed in the look of these. I guess I had pictured something with a bit more pizazz than this:


So I decided to spice them up a bit.


I found a template for some pockets and got to work cutting out & gluing together little pouches to deliver my coupons in.


I added messages to the front of each one and then plastered them in unexpected places all over our city.












I have no idea who got any of these coupons or if any of them will even be used, but the simple hope that it would make someone smile to enjoy one of my dad's favorite treats was worth every effort.

Surprise, Surprise!

This last weekend held many surprises for me. I thought that our anniversary celebration from a week ago was it - but Allen had a few more things up his sleeve. Saturday morning began with breakfast in bed, including a telegram that started me on a completely unexpected wild goose chase which continued until Sunday afternoon.

Do you like picture books? Because this is sort of like one. Enjoy!

I am so lucky!

Treasure

Mother's Day was, in a word, awesome.

I got a beautiful new rosebush with "Our Mother's Day Mailbox Rosebush" labeled on the front.

Throughout the day I found letters from each of my kids nestled in the bush... including this classic from Coolister (who, may I point out, is almost sixteen).
On Monday there was no school and I was surprised with Mother's Day, Part II. I was spoiled so rotten I was afraid I was beginning to stink.

When I went outside I found that Allen had built a planter where the new rosebush could reside.
Throughout the day the kids would ask me, "Did you plant your flowers yet?" To be honest, I figured that if I held out long enough they would be planted for me.

No such luck.

As I washed the breakfast dishes this morning Princess called to me, "Mom! There's a mailbox by your flowers!" I looked out the window thinking that perhaps I'd find the purple Columbine flowers I received from church on Sunday planted by our mailbox.

Here is what I saw instead:
Indeed, a quaint, rustic looking mailbox was there in the flowerbed. And the flag was up. You know what that means...

Mail!
It was a letter from my sweetheart.
I'm not going to tell you what it said. Some things are for me alone. I will say this, though: Boy, oh boy am I a lucky lady.

I decided that after all of the work he put into everything the least I could do was get those roses in the ground.

I left the kidlets in the house with ElemenoB (who was home with a sore throat) and set to digging myself a hole. Almost immediately I hit a rock.

Cursed ground! I thought. I tried to pry it out with the shovel and found that it was not a rock at all...
It was some kind of burlap sack. Buried treasure!

Suddenly the kids' excitement for me to plant the rosebush the day before made sense. I pulled the sack out and unwrapped its contents, anxious to see what was hidden inside.
I grabbed the drill and removed the lid...
Pulled off the newspaper...
...and found my buried treasure.

I am absolutely overwhelmed at the effort that went into making this Mother's Day(s) completely unforgettable.

But you want to know where the real treasure is?

Right here.

For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. -Matthew 6:21

I Never Know What I'm Gonna Get

Today was a bright, sunshiney day.

The moment I stepped outside I felt invigorated and happy. I wanted to enjoy the beautiful weather rather than spend the day in the house so I decided on the spur of the moment to take Hubba, Curly and Baby O to our favorite semi-secluded park after dropping Princess off at kindergarten.

When we arrived the kids immediately raced to the playground.
They climbed, ran and threw wood chips to their hearts content until Hubba looked at me suddenly, wide-eyed, and exclaimed:

"Mom, I gotta go to the baf-room!"

We hurried to the other end of the park and saw the sign on the bathroom doors:

CLOSED FOR THE SEASON

I told them it was time to head home but Hubba assured me he could hold it, so the playing continued.

As Hubba and Curly explored the slides I took Baby O over to a tree that cast its perfect likeness against the mural behind it.
I heard someone honk their horn and instinctively turned - Hubba and Curly were both in plain sight.
Nothing to worry about. I finished snapping a couple more pictures and walked over to the playground.

"It's time to go," I announced. "We need to get you to a bathroom, Hubba."

"No we don't!" he answered happily. "I already went!"

"What?!" I said, looking instantly for the usual wet spot.

"Yeah, over thay-er!" Hubba said, pointing at the fence.
The chain-link fence.

By the street.

At that point, what could I do? We played a while longer then headed for home.

Apparently I'm not the only one who can be spontaneous.

Look At Me

ElemenoB and Thumbelina joined me for my bi-monthly all-day marathon grocery shopping trip last Saturday. As we were leaving the third store on our route ElemenoB made an interesting observation:

"People at the store just look at each others grocery carts when they walk past. Nobody looks at anybody's face."

I had never really thought about that before, but decided to see for myself if it was true in the next supermarket. Sure enough, not one person with a shopping cart looked at me. The more I thought about it, the more it bothered me. So I decided to do something about it at our last stop.

Let's call it an experiment in human nature.

From the time we left the car, I looked into the face of every person who passed me.

"Hello there!" I said to the cart-collector in the parking lot.

I got one of those slight-upwards-nod-of-the-head movements in return.

"Welcome to Walmart," the door-greeter said in his monotone, I-hate-my-job voice.

"Thanks! I LOVE shopping here!" I replied, which was a little bit of a lie, but it solicited a friendly half-wave as I continued walking. So I think it was worth it.

"How are you today?" I asked an older gentleman in passing in the produce section.

"Very well, thank you. You have a good day!" he replied.

This was fun.

Eye contact, smiles, and an occasional word met every shopper who passed my cart.

In frozen foods, a twenty-something scanned the Bagel Bites.

"Hi!" I called to her with a smile on my face.

She looked behind her. Nobody there. She looked back at me.

"Um, hi." she answered, closing the freezer and avoiding eye contact, as she pushed her cart past me.

No Bagel Bites today, apparently.

In the peanut butter aisle I passed a woman dressed in her Sunday best.

"I love your dress!" I exclaimed.

She looked at my cart.

"That's a lot of peanut butter."

"Yes," I replied, "I have a lot of kids and they all love peanut butter."

"Hmmm. Have a good one." she said as she continued down the aisle.

"You too!" I called after her.

In the dairy section I encountered my toughest case. Her hair was 3 shades of purple along with some of (what I assumed was) her natural brown. One colorful, glittery eye peeked out from behind her long bangs and I couldn't count all of her facial piercings. She was perusing the many varieties of yogurt.

"Hello," I said, looking her in the (one) eye.

She continued perusing. Yoplait or Dannon? Mountain Dairy or Great Value?

"I really like Mountain Dairy," I offered.

She went back to Yoplait. Ignoring me.

Should I give up? I thought to myself.

I am not a quitter.

"Have you ever tried this kind before?" I asked, holding up some Dannon.

She turned and looked me square in the eye.

She pulled her headphones out of her ears.

"Were you saying something to me?" she asked.

"Oh, I didn't realize you had headphones in," I answered, slightly embarrassed. "I was just saying hello. You know, making friendly conversation. Nothing important. Sorry to bother you."

"Hey, lady," she called to me as I walked away.

I turned. "Yeah?"

"Hello. And I like your shoes."

I looked at my shoes, then back up at her. "Thanks."

"No problem. You have a good one, ok?" she said with a smile.

"Yeah, you too." I responded.

Here I was, trying to see how others would respond to me, and this young woman's smile made my day.

Happiness can come in the most unexpected packages.

photo from personalnewtrition.com

The Order of Things

Apparently, if you are crazy enough to do this:

You may unexpectedly get something like this:


Where you could be told you've received this:


Any questions?

Surprise Endings

I have had a few requests that I write a blog about my sweetheart, Allen. Let me say this: As much as I LOVE the spotlight, he avoids it. Unlike me, Allen is not a real showy kind of guy who likes to bare his secrets to the world. They say opposites attract, and in many cases that fits us to a T.

But I will give you a little snippet of what I know about Allen that you don't: he is great with surprises. (I, on the other hand, cannot keep a surprise a secret to save my life. I'm too excited to give it to the lucky recipient.) Like the time he got me a piano for Christmas. How do you keep that a secret? He pulled it off flawlessly. I was convinced I was getting a deep-freezer.

Allen read my last blog about the Twilight series of books and came home with a copy of Eclipse for me. What a fun surprise! (He also read the entire spoiler on the book at wikipedia and threw out little hints of what was to come...check out his comment on my last blog entry.)

I have been devouring this book as much as I did the others while attempting to keep the house above "hit by a tornado" status. This morning I finished it. On page 599, I found some writing in the binding:

...and there was another surprise, the itinerary for a trip to visit my friend Rebecca in Washington!

There's your snippet. If this doesn't embarrass him too much, there may be further installments.

Thanks Allen!
I would have just called you, but you're in that meeting. Let me know if you want me to delete this post.
Love, Gerb