Off the Hook

To my adult son (and eventually to my other children),

I know you have been struggling with whether to spend Thanksgiving with us. In thinking about our interactions, I may have been sending you mixed messages. I want to be very clear: you are off the hook.

We love having you with us. You are always invited, always welcome, any day, any time. That is a given. Always.

Members of this family have used guilt to manipulate people for years. As a result, some people have been driven away and others immobilized. Guilt is one of those things that can destroy relationships. I am not going to use it on you, not now, not ever. If I ever do, I want you to point me to this post and hold me accountable. I love you too much to make you feel bad or guilty about anything. 

The most important thing to me is that you are at peace with your decisions and that you are doing things that make you happy. Life is too short to do anything else. Do what works best for you, your schedule, and your life. You have made many solid decisions in the short time you have been an adult. I trust you will continue to do that. I am in your corner 1000%. 

I am truly fine with whatever you decide about holidays, summers, birthdays, and even beyond college. Those decisions are yours and yours alone. You should be limited by only your imagination. When you figure out what you want, in your own time, and in your own way, please let us know. We want to do what we can to support you. 

There will be times when you are not off the hook; like when your brother is in his first Wimbledon final or your sister is being sworn in as President of the United States. I will let you know when those events happen and will give you as much notice as possible. Until then, you have enough to worry about; and where you are consuming turkey should not be one of them. Whether you are with us, eating a Hungry Man turkey dinner alone in your dorm room (which I really hope isn't the case), or with your new girlfriend (which we suspect might be the case), please know that one of the things I am most thankful for, is that I get to be your mom. It's been an amazing ride, and I don't think that is going to change any time soon. 

Wherever you end up, I hope you are with people who appreciate your debates and sharp wit as much as we do. 

Love,

Mom

Do You Believe in Magic?

Jack loves Halloween, way more than your average bear. He turns seven this year on Thanksgiving. That is a really tough time of year to hold a party. Since Halloween was on Saturday this year, we thought it would be a perfect chance to throw a Halloween Birthday Bash.

This was the invite:

These are the pumpkins carved by my very talented husband:

Jack's pumpkin was the RIP one and Vivi's is Raven from Teen Titans Go!  Vivi's costume was also Raven, although she wasn't really into dressing up this year.  The only pics we got of her in her costume are from her school Halloween party.

Most people run the other direction when they find out you are having 20+ kids at your house ranging in ages from 3-8, for several hours on end. Our friends Marybeth and Scott did just the opposite. Marybeth was my study partner my first year of law school. We work very well together, and we have been great friends since the day we met. After working all day and then driving to our house from Vermont, Marybeth walked in at 10pm on Friday night and asked what she could do to help. She and Scott are a godsend. I don't know that we would have been able to pull this off without their assistance. Marybeth also took many of these awesome photographs.

 

 

I love the fact that Riley (my goddaughter) and Vivi are becoming BFFs. They are still learning how to be friends, and will go from love to hate in a blink of an eye, but love usually wins out. As soon as they are apart, the miss each other.

 

 

If you know Jack at all, you know that Jack loves magic and is always trying to learn new tricks. We decided to surprise him with a magician. We had seen Jon Capp a couple of times at Ocean Beach's Summer Magic Series. Jack loved his shows and I knew he would be perfect for Jack's party. Jon is a high school teacher by day, and is fantastic with kids. If you are looking for party entertainment, I can't recommend him highly enough. He was organized, professional, flexible, and it was truly great working with him. He made Jack the center of the show.

 

 

The highlight of the show was when Jon levitated Jack. You can see the video here.

After the show, Jon made awesome balloon creations for the kids. He made some pretty unusual things like alien hats and butterflies.
 

Of course Bernie made a beautifully decorated and tasty cake. He says I have to give Pinterest credit here, but I wouldn't have been able to do this from a Pinterest picture.

After cake, we tried to play some Halloween party games like mummy races, musical pumpkins, mystery boxes, etc. While they were fun, the kids were more interested in playing in the leaves and just running around. We were lucky to have such a beautiful fall day so that we could be outside. Thank you to Bridgette, DeeAnne, and Michael, who helped with some of the activiites.

 

When the party ended, many kids stayed and their parents joined us for trick or treating. We ordered pizza and we put together some other treats: mummy dogs, coffin brownies, spider deviled eggs, punch with floating eyeballs, chili, etc. My inspiration for this came from years of spending Halloween with Deb Martin. She taught me well!

 

 

A pretty big group of us headed out into the neighborhood trick or treating. Being such a large group, we were hard to miss.  Some of the kids, not knowing the neighborhood, visited some of our neighbor's houses twice, and earned the label "double dippers."

Bernie stayed behind to hand out candy and scare kids with his costume and the fog machine. He didn't want to scare the little kids. One of them had an Elmo costume on and wouldn't come near Bernie. Bernie told the little guy to stay away because the Joker was afraid of Elmo. Bernie acted like he was terrified of Elmo. Elmo approached him, giggling, and quickly retreived his candy. 

 

The line of the night came from Jack while we were out trick or treating: "How many houses do we have to do?" It was pretty funny that he thought there was some sort of Halloween quota. I think he was tired from the day's activities and lost interest in trick or treating pretty quickly. Vivi loved trick or treating for the first two houses and then made Jacoby's dad cart her around in his wagon. The older boys were faster than she was at getting to the doors. If she couldn't be the leader of the group, she wasn't interested in participating.

After trick or treating, Jack had four of his friends spend the night. Although they were all exhausted, no one wanted to go to sleep. It made for a long night, but Jack really loved it, so it was worth the effort. Bernie was going to scare them, but we decided if he did that, they might never actually go to sleep. He has vowed to frighten them when they are older (insert evil laugh here).

Sunday morning Bernie said the 2016 annual Halloween Bash is cancelled. By Sunday night he was thinking of ways to make it better. By Monday, he was considering Halloween decorations on clearance. I think this means we are officially on for 2016 :-)

Thank you to everyone who came either to the party or to trick or treating. Thank you for all of the very generous gifts. I think this will be a birthday that Jack might always remember. He wanted to leave the Halloween decorations up until Christmas, but we were able to compromise on leaving them up until December 1st. 

Happy Birthday Little Man! We love you!