Mother of the Year

Trying to pick what my submission for M.O.T.Y. is going to be . . . . (You know, like the "For your consideration" clips that the studios send out to all of the Academy voters.) So very many possible submissions to choose from these days! Among the front runners:

1) Nine year-old won his school's history fair (with a little help from Dad on the typing side, since we're still dealing with a cast, and a little visual design assistance from Mom - but the concept and research were his). Just discovered that the district judging and awards are scheduled for this Thursday . . . problem being that one of my Junior Woman's Club departments is having its auction fundraiser that evening, and Dad is committed to being the auctioneer. So option #1 is to staff out history fair night to a babysitter (although we don't actually have a babysitter lined up at press time, SOOOOOOOOO . . . ); option #2 is to skip history fair night, on the theory that - knowing Connor - if he attends and does not win, he will complain mercilessly about the evening being a colossal waste of his time, but if he finds out that he won after the fact, he might be pleasantly surprised and pleased? No doubt either option will be overlaid with a (pick one) trip to Purple Cow/trip to Putt-Putt/trip to Gamestop.

2) Did such a good job of planning aforementioned nine year-old's LEGO Star Wars-themed tenth birthday party in my head that I failed to actually implement any part of said plan in the real world. Realized last night that party date is fast approaching, and I had yet to take any action in terms of inviting (theoretical) guests.

Invitation Plan A was to build one of Connor's LEGO Star Wars ships and photograph a scene with the little droids coming down the back ramp, carrying a birthday candle on their shoulders. (NOT an original idea – totally stole it from an Internet site.) We were going to glue the pictures onto cardstock, and I downloaded a Star Wars font to my computer (okay, so I did that much!), with the intent of printing out text for the back of the card that would scrolldown the page a la the opening of Star Wars #4 (which I consider #1, because I actually saw it in the theater the first go-round in 1977 - let's just agree to call it "A New Hope" and move on). You know: "LONG, LONG AGO, IN A GALAXY NOT SO FAR AWAY,CONNOR SCOTT WAS BORN . . . ." Something to that effect.

I was going to include a joke, too:

How did Obi-Wan know what Darth Vader was getting for his birthday?
He felt his presents.

So what am I actually sending out? Something that I commissioned a very nice lady in another state to create and E-MAIL to me, and for which I paid with PAYPAL. Nothing like the nice, homey touch, huh?

The good news is that my child is about to turn ten, and when I told him that we were going with Plan B for the invites, he advised me that he doesn’t care if we do invites at all – he’s perfectly capable of inviting people in person. “Or, you know, Mom, you could just call or e-mail people.” Once upon a time, I was afraid that when we got to the point where he didn’t care about his invitations, I might get all weepy over the fact that he’s growing up. Nope, no weeping – just pure joy.

I do have to say that the ticket-style invitations kind of rock - much cooler than what I would have pulled together. And I have to give it up for Jennifer, proprietress of the "Baby Bundles Boutique" eBay storefront. Ordered the invites (snippet below) quite late last night, had a proof in my inbox before lunch, and the Montgomery Plaza Super Target is printing those bad boys as we speak:

Oh, and because we had accumulated purchasing credits through eBay or Paypal (not sure how, but confident that my husband's "enthusiastic" eBay patronage is being rewarded - we have a "don't ask, don't tell" policy re: his eBay obsession!), one of those giants of the Internet paid my tab with Jennifer - I only have to pay for the cost of the one-hour printing.

Concerned that this "phone-in parenting" thing might get addicting . . . . It certainly is convenient!