Comfotable with You

I am still trying to figure out this NaBloPoMo thing out.  It's a bit different from the Reverb 10 challenge.  Reverb gave you a daily prompt to go with their monthly theme.  NaBloPoMo gives you a monthly theme to do with what you want as long as you write every day and then offers prompts Monday thru Friday to jump start your creativity.  I am having a bit of a problem going from one structure to the other.  Not that one is better than the other, just different. 

The theme for this month is Friends. 

Doesn't seem that hard right?  I love my friends.  But even if I wrote about each individually every day of the challenge, I still wouldn't have thirty days of content.  This led to a small amount of stress.  Then I turned to my smarty party search box and found some inspiration in the form of a quote.  So for today I will start there and work my way out. 

“Friendship with oneself is all important because without it one cannot be friends with anybody else in the world.”

Eleanor Roosevelt 

I like this quote because believe it or not it's true.  So let's start from the beginning.  Every one's beginning.  You have to at least like yourself.  I'm not saying you have to love yourself and take out a billboard with your face on it or anything.  That might be a little extreme and slightly creepy.  I'm saying that you should like yourself.  Now, we all have those days where we don't like how are shirt looks or the fact that no matter how hard you try you hair always wants to part in the same spot. 

But over all in general, be comfortable with you.  Once you are friends with yourself, it makes it so much easier for the rest of us to be friends with you.  And those days where you have convinced yourself that your feet look funny...those are the days where us friends come in handy.  We are pretty good at telling you that you look fine and to stop worrying.    
     

Party On Wayne, Party On Juju

December 9 – Party. What social gathering rocked your socks off in 2010? Describe the people, music, food, drink, clothes, shenanigans.

We've had a few fun gatherings in 2010.  This year was the first year that we have actively made the kid's birthday party circuit.  Clover is now old enough to be invited to her friend's birthday parties.  So this year we made the rounds.  She even got in a bounce house for the first time.  She needed help at first but by the end of the afternoon she had such a sense of accomplishment because she could do it herself.  I was a proud momma that day.  An added bonus I got to catch up with a bunch of girls from high school, and we got cake, so really it was a triple bonus.  At one party Clover got to watch a clown do magic tricks.  She went home screaming ABRACADABRA all afternoon!  We went to two swim parties, one which she jumped in the pool fully clothed while I was walking her shoes to the backpack.  I was conflicted, part of me wanted to be mad but I really couldn't help but laugh.  In her mind there was nothing wrong with getting in the kiddie pool fully clothed.  The five seconds it would have taken to change would have been too much for her little two year old body to handle.  I got lots of comments about how much of a "free spirit" she was that afternoon.    

Family gatherings are new for us as well.  We came from point in our lives where it was just the two of us, Hubs and I.  We went out whenever we wanted.  We hosted a ton of get togethers.  I can't tell you the amount of gaming parties we had, or how many times I woke up to the occasional friend on the couch.  Once we had Clover things slowed down a bit.  Actually they came to a screeching halt.  Guess what?  Most single guys are scared by babies.  I say that because in our experience most of them disappeared when Clover came home.  That first year we tried to host a few parties thinking that nothing had changed.  Crickets.  We have a few loyal buddies that we keep in touch with. 

I have to say that there has been a shift in our social calendar.  We have lots more family events to attend, which is new to us.  It's been a blast.  We were invited to a family camping event with multiple families with kids.  We got to camp out with great friends, made some new friends and watched Clover have a blast running through the forest with the other kids.  We also went to a very lovely Thanksgiving dinner hosted by a friend of mine.  We had great food, great conversation and once again got to watch Clover play with her friends. 

I think my favorite of 2010 was the Carnival Party!  I might be slightly biased because it was the party I threw for my 30th birthday and Hubs 31st!  I decided that I wanted to throw myself a party.  I love throwing parties and love the details.  I printed ticket invitations.  We had carnival games and prizes.  We got to borrow a rockin popcorn machine to make popcorn.  There where so many details that pulled the party together.  We invited lots of friends.  We had one moment where we thought we may have invited too many people because it seemed like we just couldn't get around to talk to everyone.  And I can't forget the cotton candy machine.  Best idea ever!  I was a little shocked to find out that some people don't like cotton candy.  What?  Are you serious?  Of course having my birthday the beginning of June, it happened to be triple digits.  So hopping in and out of the pool was a given.  A friend made me a carnival popcorn bucket cake to pull it all together.  It was a nice way to end the party. 

We've had a lot of great gatherings, fire pit night and Friday hang out nights.  The year isn't over yet.  It will be interesting to see what else we can squeeze into the next 22 days!