Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Winner!

At the daycare's carnival this past weekend, they had every family fill out a ticket for a raffle. "Lots of prizes!" the sign promised. "You don't have to be here to win!" I never win drawings, but I saw restaurant and store gift cards on the sign-up table, and the grand prize, which was two weeks of free tuition. So... what the heck? It only cost me thirty seconds to fill out the ticket.

This morning, the director hailed me as I was taking Alex back to his class. "Don't leave without talking to me!"

When I came back up to the desk, one child lighter, she handed me an envelope. "You won a prize from the raffle!"

"Oh, awesome! What is it?"

"Two tickets to Busch Gardens!" Amusingly, we didn't win the first drawing -- but the family that won the tickets at first already had season passes for this year, so they gave them back to the daycare for a second drawing. But that is pretty awesome, especially since Busch Gardens just opened their new Sesame Street themed kiddie area.

Now we have to figure out when we can go. With Penny and Alex along, I don't see it being an all-day excursion -- a few hours at most, really -- but if we register for Fun Cards, then we can go back all summer, for just the price of parking.

Cool!




I forgot to mention the sweetest thing that happened on Mother's Day.

Penny was playing in the dining room, and said, "Oh! I found something!" and brought me a random scrap of paper (I think it was a registration card from a Highlights magazine) on which she had written, "To Mom Frome Alex I love Mommy"

"I think Alex made this for you!" she said, completely disingenuous. "Wasn't that nice of him?"

It was so utterly sweet of her that I teared up.

I am suddenly not sure whether this child is actually my spawn. It would never, in a million years, have spontaneously occurred to me to help my brother make a card or gift for our mom or anyone else.

And if I did help him make a card for Mom (on someone else's suggestion, perhaps) then I would absolutely not have tried to let her think he'd done it. I would've made certain she knew the full extent of my contributions.

At least she made sure that "Alex's" card did not outshine her own.

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