Mommy Hat Parade

Happy Mother's Day!

I celebrated with my 5 yr old at her preschool on Friday.  The school had a long program for the moms and it was a lot of fun.

We got a note home saying that the moms had to wear a decorated hat; oh dear, what am I going to do for that?  I had a very busy week and really didn't have much time to think about it. I did look at sun hats at Walmart, but they were so floppy. And $8 for a hat I will wear for an hour. Eh.

I decided to get a piece of posterboard for 99 cents and make my own hat. I'll bet lots of moms will have home made hats.

At midnight on Thursday, I cut the posterboard into a big brim and folded some grocery sack brown paper around for the hat part. Glue and tape and there was the hat structure. I had to cover up the ugly brown grocery sack, so I used the generic leaking diapers that I bought for Charlie. Those diapers were great for cleaning up spills, but not great for diapering Charlie. They leaked like crazy!  I ended up using them as cleaning rags, that's how bad they were.  I had two left, and so I wrapped them around the top part of the hat. Perfect!  I glued on some of Henry's baby shower decorations too.

To the brim, I glued on little photos of all my girls, Charlie and the dog. I even stuck a picture of Kaelyn on it.  The photos looked good.  I decided it wasn't flashy enough, so I glued on a glitter border and tied a fabric scrap around it. Looking better.

It won't stay on my big head. Ugh.  I took inspiration from Mary Poppins and added a tie on sash.  I just used a fabric scrap.  Since I had the tie, I stuck on some baby shoes to the ends to finish it off.  There, the world's corniest Mother's Day hat!

Morning came and Gracie was super excited to see my hat.  She loved it! But she thought it needed more pink and stuck a wad of gift wrap on top. The gift tissue looked pretty good so I added another piece and fluffed it up. I suddenly realized it was huge.  Too late now, we gotta go!

Since it was a special day, I donned a sundress. I never do that!  I put on my white sundress, decided it was just too white.  So I put on a yellow maternity sundress, no, the white one fit better.  Back into the white dress, ok, it'll be fine.

I loaded up the kids and the hat and off we went! First stop, gymnastics.  I met my friend there. She and her little girl were kind enough to accompany Libby during gymnastics class and babysit her for a while afterward so that I could attend the preschool thing.  I was putting Libby's carseat in her car when she said to me, "Did you know that your dress isn't zipped?"

Isn't that the perfect way to dress for a Mothers Day event? In an unzipped dress? How embarrassing! I am so glad I had to drop Libby off first! We all walked into gymnastics together and we were the only ones there.  Leave it to me to go on the wrong day. Wait, it was Friday at 9:30. That should be right. The teacher came in and said we were just too early. Class didn't start for another 5 minutes. Ok, then. Gracie and I left for her school.

First we went to the school chapel where the pastor lead the kids and moms in some children's church songs. Then the teachers read a story and put on a skit to illustrate the story. That was cute and the kids sure enjoyed it. Everyone was excused to the classrooms to make craft projects. We were to go into each classroom and make three or four different things.

Gracie and I made a "Helping Hand Bouquet" and a teapot necklace.  They were both time consuming with the cutting and gluing and beading, so I helped Gracie and felt guilty for helping her since I don't like it when she brings home art projects that the teacher obviously made.

Then it was time for the Mommy Hat Parade.  All of the children went outside and sat down, judges were put in place and the moms lined up.  We were paraded around the playground and told to bend down to allow the seated judges to view the hat and do a dance for the judges.  A dance?  Oh my.  I swooshed my arms up and down. There were some nice hats, most of them hand decorated with photos and flowers and such. I really liked their ideas and wished I had thought of this and that. Some of them looked slapped together and some looked like they spent a week or more on the project.

The judges handed out prizes for Most Creative, Most Outrageous, Promises Top Model, and Silliest. I won Most Outrageous!  I got a laminated award certificate and a Starbucks gift card. Gracie was thrilled to pieces!

After the hat parade and the awards, we were herded indoors for a luncheon. I was starving! The buffet table had quite a spread: chips, little coldcut sandwiches, cold spaghetti salad, jello and cookies. It was awful! Yuck! Thank goodness for the cookies. My friend showed up with her daughter and Libby, so we took this opportunity to leave our picked over lunches and head out.  We had to move the carseat back to my van. Libby and Nora each grabbed a cookie, Gracie grabbed two more and off we went. A successful and very fun Mother's Day morning!