The Busy Life of a Single Mom

I am proud to say we have finished our weekend of Ms. Merry Christmas, but before we had finished it, I was already hearing the words “next year.” (YIKES! There goes my hopes of this being a once in a lifetime experience!)  So I wanted to take a moment to share with you the lessons I learned over the last week or so in order to help make your first adventures into the pageant world a little smoother than mine).  These are the lessons I learned - the things I will do different “next year.”

1. The girls are interested. I had never given this competition a second glance, but knowing the girls are interested helps so that we can be keeping our eyes out for dresses and jewelry NOW so that there aren’t too many last minute runs next year (remember I’m at least an hour from any store worth mentioning)! This leads me to my next lesson….
2. Nana’s Ringlets and Cameron’s Hair Don’t Seem to Like Each Other.  Maybe this should be translated to say practice the hair styles ahead of time.  My mom spent a couple hours the night before putting these little curls in my daughter’s hair with bobby pins that she had to sleep in.  When she took them down, my daughter’s hair was frizzy and not really curly.  Mom was able to save the look, but it did not turn out as envisioned.
3. Prepare as far ahead of time as possible.  Seriously I couldn’t believe how much there was to do when it came down to it. Maybe it wasn’t how much, but how time consuming!  One sign took us an hour and a half to two hours to complete - and that doesn’t count all the ones we messed up on during the planning phase!!  We are always out of school for the week of Thanksgiving, and next year we will be creating signs, finalizing dress options, making hair/nail appointments all of this - during that week.
4. Know where the judges will be during the parade.  My youngest was in the back of the pickup, but we had her escort on the side the judges were on….not her!  I never even thought about this…I just put them in the truck and they chose their seats….ahhh…now I know an intelligent question to ask during the set up process.
5. Plan your decorations down to the details, and if possible, practice before that day. Ok. We had a very general idea of how we’d decorate the truck, but it would have really helped to have a more solid plan instead of “Should we take this?” and “Where does this go?” that day.  Being my neurotic self, I can assure you, we will have drawn out diagrams next year well in advance.  A practice run wouldn’t hurt either. Then you know that this type of tape will not stick for long or Santa is not heavy enough to remain standing when the truck is moving!  (Yea, that was an interesting lesson)
6. Get to the parade EARLY.  It takes longer than you think to decorate a vehicle.  All of this goes back to the preparation. I can’t believe the amount of time it takes to prepare for an event that doesn’t last but an hour or so. For something that we spent countless hours on (and in my opinion not enough), the entire thing lasted a hour and a half - parade and pageant! But back to the point, it takes a while to get garland, bows, beads, signs, etc on a vehicle…and then you must realize that this should be here instead of here and this isn’t long enough and when you start improvising - the time really goes by fast!!
7. There can be too many helpful hands. As nice as it is to have everyone helping, there can be too many people. We got to the point that we were climbing over each other and then our joined work wouldn’t look good together as we had different ideas and we’d have to redo!  So limit your help to a reasonable number. Make a list of duties for each person…if you can’t come up with something for them to do, then tell them you appreciate the offer, but you think you have it under control.
8. When the contest is simply a “beauty contest” find something to set yourself apart from the others. Yes…this may sound petty, but apparently in beauty contests (no talent, no questions, no fund raising - straight beauty), you should do something to set yourself apart - like an 18 year old having a 2 year old escort or your escort being your baby chihuahua!  Or since it’s a “Country Christmas,” wear boots and a hat with your dress.  Yep, these things seemed to make the difference in most categories. So next year, we will be trying to come up with some unique qualities to make us stand out in ways other than our “beauty.”

All in all though, we did have a nice day.  It was 85 degrees here for our Christmas festivities.  Yep, you heard me right - 85 degrees!  Oh, and I dare not forget to mention that my little one did get Ms. Merry Christmas Princess!  She is on cloud 9. We went to the movies and saw Santa last night and she did stay in her dress, taiara and sash!  She’s now all dressed for Sunday School (including the tiara)!  So what set her apart from the others? The mom in me has to tell you first, that she is naturally set apart because she has the biggest, prettiest, most unique eyes I’ve seen…(Not sure where they came from, but they are great, and one of my coworkers said she heard the judges comment on them as soon as she stepped on stage). But we also had her in “Christmas gear.” She had on one of the red dresses with the white “fuzz” on the neck and collar. She then wore a jingle bell necklace and Christmas earrings. And we topped it off with even a Christmas hairbow.