Storytime! (Valentine's Edition)

Carson is in a phase. He likes to hear stories at night--not just read books. He wants to hear stories about when I was a kid. It started with "Uncle Mike" stories, about when Mike broke a window, a toilet, a bathroom door, accidentally stabbed a neighbor kid's neck with a fork...you know. The usual. The "Uncle Mike" stories lasted a good couple of weeks and now I've been just kind of raiding my memory for interesting stories about my childhood.

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I thought of one the other day that reminded me how awesome my mom is. It was February of my 4th grade year, and Valentine's Day snuck up fast. Somehow, I completely forgot that we were supposed to handmake special mailboxes for our V-day party for our classmates to deliver the chintzy little valentines. It was no sooner than 7am on February 14th when I was in a complete meltdown that I did not have a beautiful, hand-crafted mailbox.

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I'm pretty sure my mom missed her morning meeting so we could take a bit of time to whip something together. And when I say "whip something together" you need to know MY mother. This was not a shoebox with construction paper. Oh no. She found a cute little basket about the size of a sald plate. She just happened to have red fabric with white hearts (of course she did) that she lined the bottom of the basket with. Then? She hot-glued lacey trim around the edge of the basket. And to top it all off: my mom had the GENIUS idea that this basket would not sit on my desk, like all the other boxes. It would---WAIT FOR IT--hang from the ceiling with ribbon, dangling at eye-level to maximize the AWESOMENESS. I was filled with giddy glee, thinking of how I would be the envy of all the other people who had labored over their boring paper hearts. It's a memory that is etched in my brain and I don't know if I've thanked my mom enough for it. Thanks, Mom! You are awesomeness. ;)

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Another memory I had this week was when we (Bunch family, circa 1988) were going on our own road trip. The DAY before we left, we happened to see something in another family's mini-van. It was, how can I explain this? It was kind of like a fabric shoe rack that hangs on your closet door. But instead of hooks at the top, it had a "hood" that went over the head rest on the passenger seat, hanging down the back. And instead of pockets for shoes, it had smaller pockets for whatever little trinkets an 11 and 8 year old would want to have handy for a 2 week trip. We saw this Fabric Trinket Holder Thingy and realized how perfect it was. How badly we "needed" it. Did I mention that this was the DAY BEFORE we left?

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Yeah. Guess who had a brand-new, hand-made Fabric Trinket Holder Thingy, surely sewn in love late into the night, in our Toyota minivan as we embarked towards Colorado and Wyoming? WE DID! As my friend Kellie would say: "Classic Jo!" (That's my mom's name, in case you didn't know.)

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I had my own moment of Jobunch spark the week before our trip. I saw a space between the kids' seats in our van. I eye-balled it and thought of a little plastic set of 3 drawers that is in Sydney's closet, holding junk. Then I measured it. Then I dumped the junk and? IT FIT! So the kids had a little 3 Drawer Trinket Storage of their own for our road trip. It started out with coloring books, crayons and snacks, and then just picked up pretty much any misc. item we wanted off the floor. I'm not really sure that C and S appreciate it as much as Uncle Mike and I appreciated our road trip gift, but they did like it. If only I hadn't run out of time, I would have put a nice lacey trim around it, just for old times' sake!

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