Our creative yet un-x-rated headdresses

Laddie isn't coming home from school for Thanksgiving.  Flights from New York to Chicago were around $500 when I looked.  Maybe if we had looked into flights earlier, we would've found a deal.  I doubt it though.  I think that since there is less wiggle room in terms of travel dates over such a short break the prices are just high. 

Christmas break will be here in no time.  Do you recall what fun last year's Christmas break was?  I haven't.  (Ok - this is a link to a long post.  I've gotten better about this, don't you think?  Just pace yourself if you'd like to be enlightened).

Although he was invited to a friend's house in Philadelphia, he opted to stay at school and hang with some buddies who are also staying in town.  The group plans cook a Thanksgiving meal at his buddies' house off campus.  Tank expressed some misgivings about the possibility of food poisoning.  He had a good point.  Do these college sophomores know how to tell when a turkey is cooked?  I'm assuming they will be surfing the web for tips - or calling home.

I vowed to bake some pumpkin bread and ship it out to Laddie for their friends-giving.  Baking has come to a stand still around here.  I can bake in the basement, but it is a hassle.  This was going to take some effort.  I remembered on Sunday night - when I was very exhausted thanks to Christmas card creating online -that I needed to get this bread baked and in the mail the next morning. 

Exhausted as I was, I started making mental notes about how the pumpkin bread package needed to take shape quickly.  During dinner, I told Curly that I thought she could make some place-mats or Thanksgiving decorations for Lad's friends. 

Then I had an idea.

Why not make construction paper Native American headdresses for Laddie and his friends?  I texted Lad to find out how many buddies would be attending the dinner.  9.  Then the entire family stepped up.  The girls and I handled constructing long white bands with notches to fit any size noggin.  To complete the look, we taped three or more feathers to the back.  The highlight was when we brainstormed for unique native american names.  We came up with some whoppers to label each hat.

our finished work

In true Mini-me form, Mini can't spell.  Before she messed up ANOTHER headdress, I decided to google how to spell the word she was about to write.  Um, little did I know that the phrase we THOUGHT we had coined actually referenced a nasty sex act.  The description popped up on my phone screen and shocked the hell out of me!  I quickly insisted that Mini choose from the many other suggestions we had yet to utilize.

Tank was on to me . . . of course my attempts to withhold my laughter only made me burst suspiciously at the seams.  It was like being in church as a kid when a sibling makes you laugh over ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, but once you start there is no end in sight.  Holding it in only makes it worse. 

Tank was googling the phrase faster than I could beg him not to.  His eyes widened.  'Oh yeah, Mini - whatever you do - DON'T WRITE THAT!'  I imagined with horror what would have happened if we had sent the x-rated custom Thanksgiving hat to Lad's friends.  I am still quite confident that this odd dual-meaning is incredibly obscure.  I don't consider it to be mainstream enough to have offended his friends' parents, if the guys had posed for a photo showing off the hats.  But still. 

A few of the approved favorites included:  'Vaping Cow'  'Makes-Big-Dung-Piles'  'Pilgrim Hater'  'Dwight Schrute' (Tank is an Office addict)  'Chief Moon-U'  'Angry Elf'' (we are all Will Ferrell fans) 'Squaw Magnet' 'Lost-My-Loin-Cloth' and 'Dances-With-Chicks'.  We were on a roll, so we over-produced.  Translation:  these 9 guys will have plenty of hats to choose from.

The kids claimed that they hadn't seen me laugh so hard in ages.  It is true, I am often the family's Angry Elf.  I think it makes me grouchy to race to fix dinner in a constricted basement space (for the past 13 weeks!) and stumble over a pile of legos as I bolt back up the stairs because I am running late to drive some kid to an activity.  All this while knowing that I can't speed to get there. 

I will keep you posted on how our humorous gift was received.  We discussed what we anticipate Laddie's approach to be.  He might toss our treasures in the trash before he heads over to the off campus house, or he might introduce his friends to his quirky family and their twisted (but not x-rated) sense of humor.  Time will tell.  If all goes as planned, then we anticipate Lad sharing photos of he and his friends donning our creations . . . wondering which one Lad will elect to wear.