Opening Doors

Chapter 19- Birthday Road Trip!

At the end of October, I threw a birthday party for my two youngest ones and we did a Halloween theme party in the church basement. I had a bunch of pumpkins set up and paint and Spookley in the background. I also had the kids making cookies. I invited some of all my kids' friends, mainly because they all had siblings in the younger one's classes and I basically have watched all these kids grow with being in aftercare and everything. I made sure that they all had fun. We had 25 kids there altogether. Sally was there with her kids, too. And she had a party for her youngest the next week.

For Mac's real birthday (Halloween) I started at the kid's school with being an aftercare instructor again. He LOVED that. He missed being in aftercare. I knew my time there was limited because I knew I just had two interviews. I just didn't want to say anything yet. I was happy to be back and nothing was certain yet. So Mondays and Wednesdays I enjoyed spending time with them. We did that for Mac's birthday, but we also did trick-or-treating and trunk or treat at the kid's school. The day before we also did trick or treating in another city because I wasn't sure we would make it trick or treating or not this year. And I wanted to make sure the kids got to go, especially since I wasn't there last year for his birthday and I wanted to make sure he got to do whatever he wanted on his birthday this year.

A couple of days prior to this, Sally, her gf, and I went to do Trollaween for the first time. This is where we would take a bus and go from bar to bar drinking in costumes. It was great! I loved being driven through town on a bus while I drank lots of rum and Coke. We made it through 6 bars, and THEN I started getting sick... so 6 is the limit, got it... I remember getting so dizzy after the second to last bar, I got to see my one friend Jessie. There... (it's so hard when you have friends with the same first name and you are still trying not to use the main name they use...) The thing is, I'd never call her that irl. 😆 Even if it is similar. She was updating me on her life and hanging with her drinking pal. Gave her a hug and headed out. I managed not to puke my brains out until I stumbled into my house, I hadn't gotten drunk like this in YEARS! Actually, my 25th birthday comes to mind 😆. But yeah, NEVER again! I walk in the house, somehow manage to take a shower, and send a nude? Damn, I got skills... make it up the stairs and THEN! I puke... on my wipes/ sheets... almost made it just on wipes... got a tad on sheets... damn it, almost a successful night... then it was me recovering until we went trick or treating later that day with Sally, her kids, and my kids. Was a great time. 😆

November 12 (my dad's old birthday, side note quest) Sally had a reservation in the holiday parade for her laundry business. "Bubbles of Color" And she wanted Tequila, my kids, her kids, and her parents to be in the parade with her. I had never been in a parade before and ALWAYS wanted to my WHOLE life! I was so excited to go to help. We bought her candy favors and bubbles and made cutouts of her business information. I dressed up as an elf and my kids just dressed as warm as possible. LuLu and Sally's oldest dressed up as Jack and Sally from Nightmare Before Christmas. LuLu actually used my clothes to dress up as Jack. 😆 Me and my black and white pallets clothes... I add color, too! I just am not sure what most of the colors are... don't tell ANYONE! I mean I can tell green and the main primary colors. It's that orange that blends with the red or the blue that blends with the purples... my grandpa was full-blown color blind and my dad was blind in one eye. Eye stuff, is a thing on each side of my family. 😆

Anyway, me and my kids took the Christmas bus shuttle (made like Rudolph with the nose and antlers and the back being a sleigh) to the Christmas parade where we met up with Sally who was spot number 15. The kids and I got to pet an alpaca for the first time. Actually 2. And then we went back to the car where we were handed Christmas buckets I got from Dollar Tree and handed out suckers and pamphlets for her business. Tequila and Sally and I were right behind her car during the parade. And the girls were on the side handing stuff out. Mac handed stuff out for a bit but he got cold and went in the car. Tambo and my Marky filmed us and just stayed warm in the car the whole way. I, of course, lost them because the car was going super fast and I was over here handing out EVERYTHING in my bucket, including the 200 flyers. I gave them to kids and adults... and kids would ask me about Santa and others wanted me to take pictures with them, so I would. I was about 10 cars behind now and almost out of flyers... I then decided to just walk in the middle of the street and wave. Worked well... would get pictures taken and then I would keep walking. Such an experience! Except now I had NO IDEA where my family and friends were... I kind of just kept aimlessly walking the parade and hoped I would see them at the end. And there they were... right by the car, parked at the end. I went over to them and we planned to have them go with them to see the lighting of the tree. Since we didn't want to all squish in the car, I decided it was best if Tequila and I just walked back to the tree ourselves and meet them there. And on my way back to the tree ran into several people like Modo and caught up a little. See, still off social media and basically, everybody thought I said fuck them and deleted everyone, nope, just deactivated the thing and still had a messenger. 🤷🏻‍♀️ But was good catching up.