Today we had our monthly staff meeting, followed by our Secret Snowflake party. I ended staying up until 2:30 last night working on Jackie's gift (if you want the back story, continue reading... if not, fast forward to the black text below)
[A couple of us went to Jackie's house back in September during lunch time and as we were leaving, I hijacked one of her lawn ornaments - a ceramic frog. At first, we were just going to put the frog in the safe at work, and when Jackie would go into it - hahahaha... her frog would be there. But then we thought... how can we keep with joke for as long as possible? I know... why don't we take pictures of the frog all around town doing different things. Oh... better yet, why don't we take the frog to Fire Island with us and get picture of it there. And so we did. Pictures of the frog on the Suffolk County police boat, on a pool table, kissing the deer... we had a blast the entire weekend with it. The fun didn't stop there. It ended up going to Indianapolis, Albany, NYC, New Hope, the Poconos... as many places as we would possibly take it until on October 30th, Teresa and Kate (yes ladies, I blame you both, broke the frog). In order to keep the joke going even longer, we snuck back over to Jackie's house and kidnapped the second frog - side, side story - we actually went to the wrong house on her street and ended up crawling on our hands and knees looking for the frog. Then, we went on their neighbors back deck and I ended up running into a tree as we snuck back to the truck to leave empty handed... it was only as we drove away did we see the correct house we were supposed to be at and ended up laughing so hard I almost wet myself. To wrap that story up, we went to the house and grabbed froggy II.
How we were going to let Jackie know was to put a scrapbook together of the 300+ pictures of the frog and give it to Jackie at the holiday party. To make the plan work, I had to volunteer to put the Secret Snowflake gathering together to ensure that one of us had Jackie as our gift's receiver. One of the 'rules' of the gift giving festivities was that the gift had to coordinate with the receivers name (i.e., If your name is Debbie Downer, you could receive Dunkin Donuts coffee and mug, or a Drama on DVD. You get the gist) Jackie's initials are J.W., so I ended up doing the cover with "Freddy the Frogs Jounrney around the World to find his was home. I came up with a corny storyline about the frog being kidnapped and having to take odd jobs to buy a plane ticket to get home. Teresa got some great pics of the frog at the airport, and almost had her camera confiscated at Newark due to the fact that she was taking pictures in a secured location. Below you find a couple of the pages that I did... all in all, I was pretty impressed with the job I did. I used the Artemia by After Five Designs Freebies and quick pages.
After the holiday party, I went back to my office and continued to work. Then my coworkers started acting strange (again). They would walk back-and-forth by my office and just give me a look. Then Cindy came in and asked if I could help her with the goal setting sheet... and when I asked 'with what part', she responded with "just come to my desk and you'll see". I knew right then and there that they were up to something and then I was escorted to the board room.
The entire crew (minus Dan because he's a boy and boys don't do showers) was there, including Megan who left us a couple of weeks ago and Carol who is still on her maternity leave. They all went above and beyond... clothing, tubs, blankets, drying station, sleeping sacks, taggies, and butt paste galore (which brought on another conversation about our outing at Fire Island). We also got our "entertain me" set, blankets, gift cards, Dora the Explorer movie and the cutest darn bibs ever!
Chris and I can not thank you all enough! We can't wait for you to baby sit.
2 comments:
We are lead into battle by the biggest nut job there is! :) Love you guys
How wonderful! I remember when my co-workers surprised me with a shower. I too was amazed by the generosity of people I worked with daily.
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