Archive for December, 2009
Months and months of planning.
Weeks of barely seeing my family.
250 handmade party favors.
Much stress, pain, and suffering.
240 guests brought in from all over the US + 1 from Japan.
An open bar from 5:30PM to 1:30AM (with no major incidents, thank heavens).
Organization of lodging for all the attendees (see open bar above – we do not want anyone driving after that).
The joy of watching everyone come together and enjoy socializing with nobody except me and the other organizers worrying or fretting about what will/is/can go wrong.
Ahhh, success. So glad it’s done for another year.
Sorry, no pictures. We tend to get a little, ummmm, crazy and I’m not sure that the behemoth corporate entity that owns us really needs to see how we celebrate the season.
We’ve lived virtually within spitting distance of Colonial Williamsburg for almost 9 years now and not once have we ever attended the Grand Illumination – which is the big to-do to kick off of the Christmas season. We’ve thought about it and talked about it but something always came up.
Not this year, said I. I was hell bent and determined that we were going to take Ava up for all the festivities…the fife and drum corp, the carolers, St. Nicholas, fires burning in the cressets, homes tastefully decorated with real candles and greenery, and the piece de resistance of the fireworks exploding over the Governor’s Palace. I was so excited that I even posted to Facebook where a friend responded with something along the lines of “everyone should go once.”
Now I know why she said that. Once was enough to last me my whole entire life and then some.
We actually scored a decent (though slightly illegal) parking space and had to walk only about half a mile to the historic district. We parked (illegally) right in front of 2 policemen watching us so we figured we’d be okay since they didn’t tell us to move. That and we knew they would have to write about a million tickets since everyone else was doing the same.
No stroller this time, either. I’m still not sure if that was the smartest thing we did or if it was the stupidest since it sure would have come in handy as a battering ram. Instead J had her on his back in our hiking backpack. This is a pretty serious piece of equipment, by the way. Nothing like the Ergo. This one is framed and sits up much higher which we knew would give Ava a much better view of the festivities.
It started out okay:
Picturesque, quaint, and not terribly crowded early on. I was already planning my own Christmas decorations for next year taking inspiration from the lovely houses here. No faux greenery or tacky lights on my house, no sirree Bob. It’ll be authentic all the way.
We stopped off to listen to a concert of people playing bells. Ava was rocking out, a bit unseemly perhaps since everyone else seemed to be sedately sipping their buttered rum or hot cider, but she was enjoying it and the bell players seemed delighted that at least one person in the audience was alive and paying attention.
After enjoying the music for a bit we headed toward The Cheese Shop (Shoppe?) for one of their fantastical sandwiches. We were sidetracked by a lovely group of W&M girls caroling in the square…
and by a not very successful visit with Father Christmas…
although she did stop crying long enough to say thank you when he gave her a candy cane (!) before finally making it to the restaurant just in time to watch the evening begin to fall apart right before our eyes.
It started with dinner. We waited 45+ minutes to get a couple of $$$ sandwiches and then waited another 15 for a table outside. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t expect people to automatically jump up and give us their table just because we have a kid but I would never loiter just chatting after eating when there’s clearly a mega shortage of tables. I do also tend to be a little more cognizant of both seniors and of people with children and will help if at all possible. Unfortunately we didn’t get that same courtesy so by the time we sat down with Ava to eat she was a starving and generally ticked off mess.
After dinner we headed back down to the courthouse to settle in for the show. I’ll spare you the awful details but there was lots of pushing and shoving, people getting knocked out of the way, and I was sorely afraid J was going to jail (for real) after he got into a shouting match with a man who pushed me (and Ava since I was holding her). I couldn’t decide if I was madder at J or at the man but that was the last straw for me. I’d had it. So we got behind a very tall man pushing a stroller (being used as a very effective trail blazing device) and followed him out of the crowd. We did not see even one fife or drum and I didn’t freakin’ care.
We did catch the fireworks over the capitol building on the hike out, unfortunately we didn’t get to enjoy them because Ava was Done (note the capital D). I dawdled a bit and saw a few but then had to jog along to catch up with J since he was leaving with or without me. He was Done, too.
I don’t think we’ll do that again.
We spent the whole day Christmas shopping. Ava was awesome. She was patient, tolerant, and incredibly well-behaved. So much so that I knew it couldn’t last much longer and it was only a matter of time before things went south.
I was right. It happened in Costco…but I was ready.
Her first candy cane, y’all.
It was a hit. Bought us enough time to finish shopping, wait in line, and get out of there before toddler meltdown disaster struck.
The sticky? Yeah, nobody warned me about that part…
Even one where we waited, in the cold, longer for it to start than the parade even lasted.
We live in a small city. I mean it’s tiny – approximately 10,000 people which is even smaller than the town that I grew up in. There are 3 (I think) stoplights and one main road so I’m not exaggerating when I say it was a really, really short parade. There were maybe 10 police cars, including the ones from surrounding areas, a couple of ambulances, one marching band, about 6 homemade floats – 4 of which featured the Grinch, and one policeman on a bike whose sole job was to keep people out of the road and on the sidewalk (didn’t work). The grand marshals of the parade were the surviving members of the local high school football team and cheerleaders from 1945 (seriously – there were like 8 of them) and it ended, naturally, with Santa on a fire truck.
She loved it.
Note: We did not amputate her hands. She refused to keep her gloves on so I folded over the arms of her snowsuit. She thought it beyond hysterical that her hands disappeared and she couldn’t find them.
She even loved the sirens. That surprised me. She usually doesn’t like super loud noises so this proves that J is successfully brainwashing her to embrace all things fire truck.
I was a little miffed with the lack of parenting around us. As candy was being thrown from the floats the kids around us were running right into the road to grab it with no thought to, oh – I dunno, the large motorized vehicles that could potentially smush their kids, or any consideration that their kids were running over anyone in their path…including Ava in her stroller. Between J and I chastising children (and parents) around us they finally backed off a bit but the only chance Ava had for her own piece of candy was when a very kind lady walked over to her and offered her one of her kids’ suckers. Ava was thrilled with this and said thank you so prettily the lady gave her another.
Once again this kid reminds me to find the joy in the simple things – even if my tush did freeze to the ground in the process.