Backsies Is What There Is Not: Whatever Floats Your Float

This was homecoming week at the university where I work. We had a spirit week at preschool, and while the kids didn't really understand it, they sure had fun participating in it! One day, they dressed like superheroes, another day we all wore pajamas. There was also a crazy hair day. This brings me to my Ten Things of Thankful for this week:

I thought the theme for homecoming was stupid, but I made the most of it and came up with a brilliant idea for our float. The theme only meant something if you were a fan of some comic book-based cartoon, which I definitely am not ("Lions Assemble"). Thankful for the help of the interweb!

My friend Robin procured GINORMOUS cardboard boxes from her dad's work that I used to make the float, and Dane took them apart for me.

I spray painted boxes until I was pretty sure my entire right arm was going to fall off, but it didn't!

Wednesday was a not so good day. Stress from my dad going from rehab facility back home and all that has entailed was bringing up big feelings, and then somebody was mean to me, and I felt like I had been slapped. Thankful for Ceason and Nikki for lifting me back up!

I'm also thankful for Kaley for lending me an ear and reminding me that self-care is vital, then bringing me a lovely little gift to help me in the self-care department.

Getting my vision for the homecoming float to come to fruition took a village, and I'm thankful to Robin (again!) for dyeing the superhero capes I made for the kids and to Alyssa for creating and ironing on transfers of our logo to the capes.

With Alyssa

I'm thankful for my friend Jennifer, who came up to school on her day off and cut out the city I had imagined and drawn onto the cardboard sheets. Then she added countless windows with yellow duct tape and even left me a little surprise drawing on one of them! My student worker Madi also helped me with windows and with putting the whole thing together.

Party on the 14th floor

Dane and I got ourselves in a pickle once again, although instead of being locked out of the school with no keys and no phone, we were in the (definitely haunted) basement looking for something I could use as a frame for the float's sign. I was poking around some cinder blocks and saw what I now know to be the unmistakable shape of a black widow spider. I screamed. Dane screamed, levitated, and was suddenly about 20 feet away. Once again, we didn't have cell phones with us to holler for help, but there WAS a landline and all we had to do was call one of the extensions upstairs, and someone (hopefully Ceason) would come kill the spider and rescue us. Problem was, we didn't know anyone's extension, and even if we did, we didn't know how to dial them. I took one for the team and ran past the spider and through the basement, up the stairs, through the fire door, and found Robin the Spider Killer to save us.

It was bigger than it looks....

More thanks for Dane for getting my sign set up and to Dane and Ceason plus Mr. Bobby (who doesn't even work for us but for the office next door) who figured out how to attach my city to the trailer when it didn't have any sides on it.

Thankful to the preschool dad who pulled our float with his truck. He was immensely helpful in getting the city attached and the sign in place and for being a perfect float driver. I'm also thankful to all the parents and students who rode on our float and brought candy to throw.

We didn't win best float in the parade. We SHOULD have, but we didn't. That's okay (not really). We were the cutest. Our float was the best. And we had the MOST FUN!