The Flower Alternative

When we started sending the children to school we were introduced to a tradition for teacher's birthdays.   Each child would bring a single flower to school on the morning of their teacher's birthday, the room parent or other parent collects the flowers at drop-off, puts them in a vase and the teacher has a lovely bouquet of flowers to look at to remind her of her students on their birthday. 

We followed along with the tradition for many years, because it is a lovely thought, the collection of flowers.   The variety was always fun to see.  But I had one problem with it, and that was getting the flower for our contribution. 

We don't have stemmed flowers in our yard or flowers at all that would be suitable to add to a vase.  The only option I had was to buy a flower.   Except the grocery store didn't sell just one flower unless you wanted a fully decked out single rose at fully decked out single rose prices.   The best alternative was to get one of those packaged sets of flowers and extract a single flower for the teacher. 

Neither of these options was economical and since we're not big flower bouquet people here, the remainder of the flowers wasn't something we would have otherwise bought.  I looked for options and alternatives and on a few occasions, I found an easier way—like the time we were biking the children to school and picked wildflowers on the side of the road. 

Because I think we weren't the only family in this situation, the tradition has waned, but today we had a request to bring a flower to celebrate both our head of school's birthday and first year at the school.   I wasn't going to send in a flower since I suspected there would be plenty coming from other students but my husband had an idea: give her one of those vases I'd been printing instead.  

This, was an idea I could get behind.   I brought some good options to my son and he picked out one in a shimmery dark purple color that had an interestingly complex pattern.   Purple is the school's main color and the vase was one of my favorites.   My son write a sweet note in her birthday card, saying, "we didn't have any flowers in our yard, so we made you this vase instead."

The Big Boy Update:  My son and I are home alone tonight.   He and I are having a "Free Friday" night where we do whatever we want to do.   I already know what he's going to do: Minecraft.   He's behind me working on his current world right now.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter and her father are off to one of the last Y Guides things they will be doing.  Most of this year's events were cancelled and I'm not sure what's to come, but this is an outdoor event where they'll be camping at a site close to us.   My daughter wasn't that excited about going until we mentioned the magic word: 's'mores'.