Silly Jump Through Hoops Day, more like it

I'm still not sure how it happened, but BAM - just like that, I'm the mom who does her kids' homework at 10PM the night before it's due, when they're already in bed.

Let me assure you - if this was "real" homework that had any bearing on their intellect or academic standing, I would not have caved to the pressure, or given in when I realized they'd be the only kids without in the morning. But this week is Camp Invention, and despite Justin and my best intentions, we're just not that in tune with the details.

Thank goodness for friends whose kids are going to the same camp - a text (received at 9:45PM last night, mind you) alerted me to the fact that today was SILLY HAT DAY. Ugh - how could I have missed that? There's no doubt that every.single.kid would show up with a silly hat today. I couldn't let my two munchkins be the only ones with bare, completely unsilly heads.

First thought - what do we have that we could pass of as silly? Pink cowgirl hat with tiara - check. Except Little Miss Particular may not care to wear a cowgirl hat to Camp Invention. Because cowgirl hats are for the rodeo, which is in Texas, and Camp Invention is decidedly neither of those. Little Mister Easy Going probably would've gone along with my insistence that a glow-in-the-dark M on a Mickey hat was silly, but I knew the jig would be up once he got to Camp. I mean, my friends were gluing straws on a safari hat, for crying out loud. Now that is silly.

Insert loud sigh, eye roll, and slumping shoulders here. It was the moment of reckoning. Honey, find the glue gun. I'll get the ribbons, the pom poms, the googly eyes, and the paper flowers.

I'll let you develop your own mental image of me hunched over the kitchen island, coaxing glue out of a glue gun while trying to avoid the stringy strands that create a glue gun spider web every time I use one of those things.

Good thing I like to randomly buy art supplies and scrapbooking embellishments. Otherwise, my kids would've had floppy hats nominally decorated with whatever I could find in the kitchen drawers. Instead, I think I pulled off something that looked - dare I say it - planned. And they were all smiles when they came down for breakfast this morning and saw them on the counter, waiting for their silly heads.