Welcoming Home Daddy

The Welcome Home sign was a project designed to distract the kiddies so that we would not have to spend five days having this conversation:

Kiddie: When's daddy coming home?

Mommy: I'm not sure. He's going to call us when he knows.

Kiddie: When is he going to call us?

Mommy: When he knows when he's coming home.

Kiddie: Well, when is he coming home?

ETC

We bought the paint and the board and the stencils and the lights and the ribbons and got to work on Sunday. I thought maybe they would paint a red, white and blue collage on the board, and then we could stencil the letters over it for an understated yet patriotic tribute. The kiddies thought it would be a better idea to paint the whole board red.

Apparently the bright red board triggered some sort of latent mental deficiency in me. I knew the red wouldn't dry quick enough to roll blue on top of it and I knew that once the kiddies got the blue paint on their rollers they would paint the whole sign blue. So what idiotic plan did I devise? Splattering the blue paint on the sign, and their shoes, and their clothes, and the ground (through the sheet the board was sitting on). In the 4.5 seconds I turned away from the project, Marty produced 3 huge puddles of paint that were not dry even 12 hours later (hence the fan in the picture above).

After 6 hours in the sun with the fan blowing on it, the blue paint was finally dry. That was when I discovered that the stencil letters we bought were just barely going to fit on the board (and that we were going to have to shorten "Daddy" to "Dad" which they never call him - hopefully he'll know who they mean - and we had no room for an exclamation point - what's a welcome home sign without an exclamation point) so I was going to have to do them myself, much to their chagrin.

To distract them from the fact that they didn't get to paint with the white paint (and to avoid any suggestions of other ways white paint could be added to the sign) I let the girls use a tape measure and scissors to cut the ribbons for the bottom. The tape measure is so popular in our house that the kiddies may each be getting one in their stocking, so I was hailed as a hero for suggesting they use it.

Once the ribbons were attached we added the blue lights by staple gun. We bought the blue lights by mistake one Christmas, and we keep packing the box away every year, I guess in case we decided to celebrate Hannukah. Now they have a purpose.

Then we added the star lights by staple and glue gun. I should film the star lights and add the footage to this site because they twinkle in a most festive manner.

Finally, we added The Entropy Three to the picture. While they can be rather persistent and talkative and loud and demanding they are also three little heroes who have held up this year beyond everyone's expectation.

WELCOME HOME DAD(DY!)