KISSING FROG WINNER / DIVA B'DAY TRIP RECAP

Congrats to B, at B's Blog, Running with Scissors, because she has won He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not: A Memoir of Finding Faith, Hope, and Happily Ever After by Trish Ryan. Trish chose her entry from more than 45 entries on first/worst/best kisses!

This is what B. wrote about her first kiss:

I'll go with first kiss. It was with a boy I was "dating" in 8th grade. We walked to the local elementary school's playground and sat under the slide. After a long while of awkward silence he said, "I want to kiss you." I said, "Ok, is this going to be one of those kisses that I need to take my retainer out for?" He replied, "No, you can leave it in." How much of a dork was I?!?!? He then gave me a very sweet kiss on the lips.

Trish said this about the contest and why she chose B. as the winner:

Omigosh, this was a fabulous contest idea ... what hysterical stories!

In the end, my heart is still with B., who asked if she should take her retainer out. As a girl who spent seven years of my early life squirming in an orthodontist's chair, this story hit way too close to home for me not to declare her the winner!

So congrats B, and please email me at manicmommy@comcast.net! There were sooo many great kiss stories though! I have to say I'm really glad I didn't have to choose the winner to this contest!

Now, about our little weekend getaway--

Diva and I had such a fun trip! We went to CONNECTICUT! They sang Happy Birthday on the flight to her and everyone around us wished her happy birthday and were sooo sweet to her she felt famous! On our way there, we sat next to a really nice man (who I later discovered told the flight attendant about her birthday so that's why they sang to her). I was telling him about how we were visiting my sister because Diva said for her birthday she wanted to go visit her cousins.

I was explaining how my family is all about pulling all sorts of silly surprises, and how my sister's father-in-law was supposed to pick us up from the airport, but her husband had let it slip that my sister was actually going to be able to leave work early to pick us up. I then explained how our family is nuts about these types of surprises, like the one time when we were living in Philly, but went to Chicago to visit MY in-laws when I was pregnant with Tukey. I had gone to take a nap and when I woke up, standing over the bed were MY PARENTS, who came to Chicago from Florida to SURPRISE US! I told this whole story to the guy sitting next to us on the plane. I'm sure I bored him to tears.

I told him this, fifteen minutes before we landed: "Knowing my family, my parent's probably arranged to be here this weekend too."

Sure enough, we get off the plane, go outside to find my sister (who I'm not supposed to know is picking me up), and a car door opens and it's MY DAD!

MY PARENTS TOTALLY FLEW TO CONNECTICUT TO SURPRISE DIVA AND ME FOR DIVA'S BIRTHDAY!

And it was so cool! And it made me so happy!

We had a very quick but very fun weekend, which included watching, believe it or not, soft porn on HBO (The Bunny Ranch--have you ever seen it? I haven't--we don't have HBO!) with MY PARENTS and CRACKING UP!

My brother-in-law and I had a Pancake Throw-Down Saturday morning, which I almost lost only because he uses the batter where you actually have to put eggs and milk in it, and I don't so I almost screwed up the consistency. But my secret? Chocolate chips, vanilla and cinnamon, and yes, I am still the champ, thankyouverymuch! We saw Nims Island, drank some wine, ate some filet mignon, cracked up watching 40-Year-Old Virgin.

I bought matching High School Musical jammies for my niece and Diva, and of course, Spiderman jams for the little man. And we totally got to bond. I am IN LOVE with them. I don't get to see them nearly enough! I snuggled up in bed one night with G-man, and he's all like, "Tell me a story about Captain Hook." I'm like, Cripes, I haven't made up stories in like forever.






But then one totally came to me! About how Captain Hook was at the grocery store and he wanted some Peanut Butter Captain Crunch cereal but he couldn't get it down from the shelf because of his hook arm but then Tinkerbell came flying by and even though they didn't really like each other Tinkerbell totally helped Captain Hook get the Captain Crunch cereal and then they fell in love and got married, and then they went to the peanut butter aisle and got some PETER PAN PEANUT BUTTER!

Isn't that a GREAT MADE-UP STORY!?!?

Then he asked me to tell him to tell him a story about a freaking CURTAIN!

So I did. Cuz he's like three and way too adorable for words.

Then we flew home today and Diva had awesome balloons from her Nana that said Happy Birthday so again she got all this attention of people asking her if it was her birthday and we got front-row seats on the plane and sat next to a very cool prego chick from San Diego (Hi Tara, if you're reading this!), who the flight attendant thought we were friends cuz we talked the whole flight!




At home, Mr. Manic, AJers and Tukey greeted us, and one of the best compliments I could have had was when Mr. Manic said to me, "You know, I can see how some days you get frazzled with them. They get wild."

SEE! They DO MISBEHAVE! They can get crazy! It's NOT ME WHO'S CRAZY ALL OF THE TIME! It's those crazy wild cub bear boy children of mine!

So Mr. Manic said he "lit it up" a few times to get them in line. They had a huge balloon for Diva, and we went out to dinner for her birthday and then took a family walk, and now it's Sunday night and everyone's in bed, and I'm on my way.


Happy Birthday Beautiful Diva Girl! Thanks for wanting to spend the weekend with me! And yes, in case you couldn't guess, she had her fair share of chocolate this weekend!

Peace UP!