. . . and all through the house, all the creatures were STILL bouncing off the f*&#ing walls because mommy DID NOT manage their sugar intake and in fact she
made sure they ate so much sugar it was going to take 4 days to de-tox them!!
In true Runamuk fashion mommy and the girls hosted a mish-mash holiday
party with a purpose. This time it was
Hallo-Giving Chrismakuh and it’s now November 12th and we’ve done
all we need to do for the holidays, right?!
We’ve celebrated all of them and we even added our standard charity
component that wouldn’t be Runamuk if it didn’t combine a canned food drive
meets extra candy drop off meets toy drive!
Mommy’s been away from blogging for a little while
(something she’ll explain in the next post), but she thought she’d start up
again with a bang so you all didn’t wonder if she had a lobotomy or fell down a holiday rabbit hole!
Here’s what I learned happens when you mix 32 kids + 12 mommies
+ 22 TONS of sugar (and I’ll explain at the end how we did it all):
1)
When trying to be clever with a game, ALWAYS
FOLLOW DIRECTIONS! I thought it would be
so great to give our Grab the Ghost game a little twist (and make it more fun
for the kids) by making the ghosts out of Tootsie Pops. Well, there’s
reason that the Disney version says “use small rubber balls or wads of
paper”. They’ve seen what happens
when you put Tootsie Pop ghosts in the hands of 7 year-olds. They are likely to do THIS:
 |
| You can even see her friend in the background doing the same thing!!! 32 kids with swinging tootsie pops! Who's the rookie parent who came up with that one??!! |
In this game the children grab their ghosts quickly away
from the middle so that the “grabber” can’t catch them.
What the instructions don’t say is “DO NOT make the dumb@$$ move to put anything harder than a paper towel in these ghosts
because when the children “yank” the ghosts away, they MAY smack the sh*t out
of themselves”. Oh yes friends, we did
have one bloody lip casualty when one of the little ones smacked herself
with her lollipop. That was a fun
explanation to mom. “Hi, your child came
to our house for a fun party and her “treat” to take home is a lip the size of
Texas”! SH*T!
2)
If a friend comes outside to tell you “note to
self, next time the popcorn project should NOT be in the kitchen” – DO NOT go
inside to check it out. Otherwise, you
may find THIS
Who’d a thought that these little boogers could make this
much mess??? Oh, wait. . .
But, here’s my Thanksgiving
gratitude . . . “I’m eternally thankful for all the mommies who cleaned up this enormous
mess and left my kitchen beautiful by the time the party was over!!”
3)
When making a sample for your jar decorating
project, just let the children decorate the jars without any instruction or
sample from you! Can you guess which one
is mommy’s and which ones are the girls?
Yeah, mommy’s would be the lamest
one with the half drawn Holly leaf that she gave up on after realizing she had
no f*&#ing idea how to actually draw a Holly leaf. The snowmen are waaaaaaay cuter, and even the
baby’s little star is better!
4)
DO NOT put homemade frosting in the
refrigerator. Serve that sh*t warm. For if you do not, you may have one of your
smart@$$ mommy friends say “sister, you really need to add some trans-fats to
that frosting of yours.” She was
right!!!! The poor kids were trying to
spread my homemade frosting and it looked like a crumbly experiment gone
wrong. Where do they put the instruction in the recipe that the butter will re-harden and make it virtually impossible to spread. No good frosting deed goes unpunished!
 |
| The one on the right has the trans-fat version which the child used after the other sh*t didn't work!!! |
5)
And finally, when weighing the donated candy at
the end of the party, make sure it is NOT the day that your monthly friend
comes and you are bloated and your heaviest!
Apparently our scales only want to weigh humans, which then
meant that mommy had to put herself on the scale WITH the bag of candy. Which then meant she had to do some extensive
math to figure out exactly how much candy that was. Who’s f*#&ing idea was this again???? Oh,
and by the way, Husband from Heaven’s eyes popped out of his head because
of my earlier TMI moment and he revoked my blogging privileges again!!
We had our usually messy mishaps, but here’s the Pinterest
version of the party.
1)
Add a charity component. I had everyone bring something that would go
with the theme of each holiday –
Canned food and provisions for Thanksgiving
boxes
Unwrapped New Toys
Leftover Halloween candy
Here’s what the children and their families
donated
100 food items
Enough paper goods to serve 32
35 POUNDS of candy
13 toys
 |
| This pic was too good to pass up. And for the record, those are shorts under her dress! |
 |
| I am truly humbled by this, and hope you can see the Ego's "Give Thanks" sign. |
Not a bad charity day!
2)
Food – Here’s a Thanksgiving Feast your kids
will surely eat!
 | ||
| Turkey sandwich (instead of the whole bird), potato chips (instead of mashed potatoes), a mini pumpkin (aka orange with celery stuck in it - in lieu of pumpkin pie) and sparkling cranberry juice (instead of cranberry sauce)
|
3)
Games – I thought the kids hated them, but the
parents later told me the kids LOVED them.
So, if you do this, make sure you:
a.
Have the kids play dice games that involve money
(wait, will the Nana add this to her custody file?) Once the kids grasped the rules (which took
much longer than I anticipated), they had such a great time, and the fact that
they got 5 pennies to take home was the icing in the cake.
b.
Be a bit more organized with the relay game – We
had NINE kids on each team and I thought they were going to bulldoze each
other!! Oh, and we did have some cheating offenses! But, when describing the party
later that evening, all the girls could talk about was the relay! I wish I had a good picture of this, but we had the kids push a pumpkin with a broom through a few obstacles and then at the end they had to put on a cape and glasses and get back to the other end. They were hysterical.
4)
Projects –
a.
Thankful Turkeys – we had the party on veteran’s
day and if I’d really been thinking I would have asked the kids to write what
they are thankful for in relation to our soldiers, but their “thankful” wishes
were very sweet. These were Hand and
Foot turkeys and they really turned out so cute.
b.
Candle jars – stole this from the Ego’s girl
scout troop leader. Just put a little
paint in a jar, have the kids paint the inside, and then decorate the outside
with paint pens. They dry very quickly
and the designs they came up with were fantastic!
 |
c.
Marshmallow Menorahs-Just take some frosting to stick the marshmallows to the card stock, stick a candy corn in the marshmallow and it's done! The best part about this one was one of the moms who was
helping explained to the children what each candle meant. Very cool.
d.
Popcorn monster hands! Other than the enormous mess, these were
super easy with candy corns, popcorn and food serving gloves! The kids loved them!
e.
Last, but certainly not least – COOKIES!! Frosting + sprinkles = ultimate holiday
happiness. Just make sure your frosting
is plenty warm (because post Real Food Wars mommy was not about to let them eat
the “fake” stuff)! Oh, and notice the not so green sprinkles - yup, those are naturally colored green sprinkles and the candy cane is natural too. I love the Natural Candy Store!!
You know it's been a good party when at the end of it, THIS is what your table looks like!!
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| Shhhh, don't tell Husband from Heaven that this was in our "fancy" living room! |
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