I totally gave her permission to kick me square in the butt ...........

Last Monday, not yesterday, Kacka Lacky, TN had our annual Christmas parade. I had agreed to walk with the girls in the parade because the gal who owns the clogging studio where they take lessons needed some adult chaperone's. It was cold, which was to be expected. The clogging studio got a super position in the parade sort of near the front of the line. The girls got lined up...the truck with Christmas clogging music screaming out the back of the truck bed, the "pro-cloggers" to clog all the way through the parade, the girls with the banner saying who we were, and then all the girls walking and throwing out candy...in that order.

It started to rain just as we were about get the show on the road.

.......that and the truck battery with the blaring music was dead.

Immediately the gal who owns the studio runs over to me and Ms. P and asks us if we have jumper cables. Which we don't cause she wrecked her vehicle hitting a deer and she had a rental car and I am just generally unprepared and in constant need of supervision when in the presence of any vehicles.

It has started to pour down rain now and we have lost our position. Our bags that have all the candy to throw out have gotten wet on the bottom and the bottoms literally start to fall out of the bags, spilling candy all over the streets where we stand in the pouring rain.....it's 40 degrees.

I had pathetically persuaded Ms. P into walking in the parade with me so I wouldn't have to walk all by myself not knowing anyone. um, yeah....I totally gave her permission to kick me square in the butt right in front of God and everybody.

The truck did get jumped off and despite losing our spot we ended up slap in the middle of the line in the parade. The SECC pro girls did clog all the way through the parade in the pouring rain. We did get sopping wet beyond all wetness in 40 degree weather. It was insane. In the end, it was a night I would surely remember as a sacrifice for my girls. Not only that, but even in the pouring rain Kacka Lacky town folks STAYED for the parade. I would have totally bailed if we had not been in the parade. But piles of folks lined the streets with their kids waiting to grab as much candy as possible. Our girls had a ball. I can actually say I had a pretty good time too.

D had the biggest umbrella known to man with Cole and Z waiting on us to come around. They got three full gallon sized ziploc bags of water-logged candy that night. Most of which hit the garbage the next morning for failure to dry in a manner that was eatable.

Ms. P's husband should have been in the parade he was waving us on bigger than the wavers in the parade. He was clearly excited and it made me happy to see his excitement. Her two boys, not quite as excited.

Meg and I agreed if we could get one of our kids to marry the other and have some children... some day...we could gab on about this night when we are older and grayer than we are now....cause it was surely epic.

We had to walk back to our cars at the end of the parade. Most of the mom's and a few teens could have passed for Alice Cooper.

It was till pouring down when we decided to just stop walking and call D to come pick us 6 drowned girls up under the shelter of the local car wash. He did.

My car smelled like wet vermin for like two days after that. I despise Febreeze cause it kills my sinuses, but it works so I used way too much of it.

We all got home, took hot baths, and put on warm fuzzy pajamas with slippers. It was an awesome way to end an unthinkable parade situation.


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Quotes from parade night:

.....the Baptist church handing out cookies and hot chocolate earlier in the night before the parade.

D - CB, do you want some hot chocolate?

CB- No it's too hot, I don't like it too hot.

D- CB, do you want a chocolate chip cookie?

CB- No, I don't like chocolate chip cookies?

D- Well of course you don't. These are made with goodness and love by kind Christians, you probably want devils food cake.
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CB in the car on the way home...

CB- Yeah and then Zachary pushed me down in the street and my hat got grinched. (drenched)


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This is not our city parade, but gosh, it's funny....and worthy of parade catastrophe mention for sure. Listen to the folks distress when Rudolph meets his fate.

"You're tearing Rudolph!!!"....oh man...it's just ...a little funny.

This goes back to my previous blog about why do we do abnormal things at this time of year?

....like striding in pouring down rain in 40 degree weather to the equivalent of a Christmas version of Cotton-Eyed Joe....and pulling an extremely over-sized baby deer with a birth defect on an under thought out parade path that tortures town folks and little children into night terrors about it's death by gouging of an over zealous stop light.

...anyhoo, Happy Tuesday.

I am sure other parents do stuff I don't like.....

...because little kids examine themselves in the mirror trying to figure out their bodies and stuff, CB discovered his birthmark on his butt. His birth mark is a bout 1 1/2 inches long and maybe a 1/2 inch wide.....

He comes to me in the laundry room....naked, as usual ....

CB- MOM! Look what you did! You spilled your coffee on me and stained my butt! Look what you did.......

It's the exact color of a coffee stain. I had never noticed that before.

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I saw a dog hanging out of a car window waggin its tongue....the dog had on blue goggles.

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To keep Skylar interested in reading we have been reading The Diary of a Wimpy Kid books. They are hilarious. The movie just came out on DVD, I love it, it's hilarious. I think it's surely one of my favorite kids movies. Cole does a great impersonation of the Indian kid, who tells Greg Heffley, the main character, that he almost got the infamous "cheese touch."

Anyway.. I am convinced the best way to keep a kid interested in reading is to get them interested in books they love to read. One can only read about George Washington and the pilgrims so many times before they began to hate reading, thus dreading it. Many of the books for required reading at this age are not very engaging.

I dread reading time with Sky...blah, blah, blah, blah....blah, blah....blah, blah, blah...blah, blah, blah, blah....Oh my gosh, then some poetry, I want to scratch my face off...humbly, bumbly, tumbly , in my rumbly fumbly, gumbly, zumbly.......can't do it right now. Understanding for that stuff comes much later than 3rd grade.

I have never figured out why they put these awful books on required reading list when kids hate them and dread reading them. Let me say I am fully aware that The Diary of a Wimpy Kid books ARE NOT classic literature or even could stand in the same line with the classics. However, if I can't get my kid to read the classics cause she hates reading...I haven't gotten anywhere anyway.

You don't get to The Screwtape Letters, Jane Eyre, and Shakespeare because you just can't get enough freaking "Susie loves to go to church, her mommy and daddy love George Wash ing ton and the first Thanksgiving. Everything in the world is furry bunnies and rainbows. The End."

One has to climb a mountain before they can stand on top and claim conquered with their flag waving and arms raised in victory!

Okay I am so done with that rant.

SOOOooo, in the name of learning to enjoy writing and some outside of the box creative thinking, I let her buy The Diary of a Wimpy Kid, do it yourself book. I thought it'd be a waste of cash really but she wanted it and she was willing to pay for it out of her account. She loves the dag gone book. Sky wants to write in it constantly, to the point of I am fixing to hide the thing and tell her it's lost.

To those who have never read the books or seen the movie, "Zoo-Wee Mama" is the punch line to dumb jokes and barely understandable cartoons. In my house "Zoo-Wee Mama" should be a new word in Webster's Dictionary, right along with the distraction word, "Squirrel!" from the movie, Up.


The book has cartoons you are to fill in with your words like this one Maysie did here....

To me this is classic "Zoo-Wee Mama."

So I start to draw one of my own thinking I am sort of creative this should be easy. I drew a complete blank after I drew the first picture, grew frustrated, and wrote some random caption about Elmo on crack. I told Sky to erase it and re-do it with her own, cause I was blank on the Zoo-Wee Mama and forgot about it.

The next day Sky brings me this that she has completed and drawn herself....

Which I thought was hilarious. I know, I know, most parents don't like this kind of talk.....that's fine. I am sure other parents do stuff I don't like.....try to move on, it's funny.


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http://www.wimpykid.com/

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