This is important!

Another knock knock note.  These are always fun and it can be challenging to come up with a half decent one.  This particular note is not just a knock knock joke, it's also an 'action' note.  This means the recipient is required by lunch-note-law to perform the requested actions laid out in the note.  Penalties for inaction can include tickle torture, being forced to play Batman with your little brother, and watching your parents play your Nintento DSi XL instead of you.   The action requested in this note was very important!

Luckily they both performed the task perfectly.  Even so...I did manage to wrestle the DS out of their hands with a little tickling!

Back to school

While I have no desire to re-live my elementary school days, going back for a day or two wouldn't be so bad.  It would be fun to be a fly on the wall in my daughters' classes to see them interact with the teacher and their friends.  Or they could create a day like this:

Mostly I'd just like to go back to play kickball!

My award winning lunch note prose...

The following lunch notes recently won the award for best notes of the week in my house...an incredible honor and quite an accomplishment to say the least.  Doesn't matter that I was judge as well as award recipient...  I'll have to post my acceptance speech later.

These are part of the rare group of notes written specifically for each daughter on a winter day with snow in the air.

The middle section is the same for each note since I wanted to convey a similar point in each one.  And I take full creative license in being able to change the spelling of a word to make it rhyme better!  We don't own a pianuh or a piano, but we do have a cool electronic keyboard thing that is more than adequate.

Nonsense works sometimes

Sometimes nonsense works in lunch notes.  If I'm trying to make a note rhyme I'll use whatever phrases I need to.  Don't know how I come up with some of this stuff, but it works!

I chuckle when I read these, and hopefully my kids did too.  This is part of what makes writing these lunch notes everyday fun.  Just go with what comes out of your pen and don't over think it!

A topical lunch note

Here's a very topical lunch note I recently wrote.  I figured I should share this one now before it gets too dated.

Doggone it...Hannah Montana Forever is over forever.  If you are a parent of tweens with the Disney Channel then you've seen each episode at least twice simply through osmosis.  Although it will live on in re-runs until my kids are as old as me, a guest spot simply isn't an option now.

Bonus points for me if someone at my girls' lunch table said...  "Do you really have an agent???"

LOL

Lunch eating instructions

Eating lunch couldn't be more simple.  Unless you factor in all of the elementary school drama!  Who sits by who is a major deal, as is saving seats for your friends.  Don't talk so much that you don't have time to eat everything, and trading food is a no-no...unless you're discreet.  Stealing food is just plain wrong.  Also...don't laugh so hard that your milk comes out of your nose.  Your friends will never let you live that one down!

Aside from all that, I thought I'd use a lunch note to just spell it all out and keep the whole process simple.

See, there's nothing to it!

I should go on the road...

Jokes, jokes, and more jokes.  I enjoy coming up with a play on words or some other kind of silly joke for lunch notes.  My goal is of course a laugh out loud response...but even if the notes just elicit a chuckle or simple smile, that's good enough for me.

That wouldn't be a very good marketing plan.  Ironically, my wife recently had a pretty sad McD's meal when they messed up her special order on a burger (how hard is "plain"?), then messed up again when the replacement burger contained an extra patty (NOT what she wanted!), with both of them being extremely greasy.  No happiness there!

And they have very large icebergs as their canvases!  Penguins don't usually like to be used in this manner, but will make an exception if the walrus asks politely and promises a not to tickle them with their whiskers.

Sunny Sisters

This was a rare occasion when different notes were prepared for each of my daughters.  Usually they get the same one for time and practicality purposes, but I had assistance this time.  My younger daughter Allie came into the kitchen as I was deciding what to write and asked if she could draw a small picture on her sister's note.  I said sure and made it the subject of the whole note.

She drew a cute little sun in the bottom left corner with a small cloud next to it.  Her sister's abbreviated name was written in the middle of the sun.  I've re-created the drawing to the best of my ability below.

 

They should do stuff like this more often, because then the notes write themselves!

First they see it...then they jump over it.

Cows.  For some reason cows are great fodder for jokes.  Has anyone ever really gone cow tipping?  Do cows really sleep standing up that often?  Or is it just really easy to sneak up on them?  Not sure.  But I bet it's much easier to sneak up on them if they're standing there focused on the mooooooooon!

AAAAAH - CHOOOOOO!

You can't go wrong with knock knock jokes on lunch notes.  They can be clever, silly, or just down right dumb and they'll still get a nice chuckle at the lunch table.

You may already have an arsenal of knock knock jokes up your sleeve to use, but it's a fun challenge to come up with some on your own.  If you're feeling downright un-creative someday then grab a knock knock joke book, or look some up on the internet.  Your children really won't care where you got the joke from, and reading a bunch will help to get those creative juices flowing!

Can't go wrong with animal lunch notes!

All kids love animals, and like to use their imaginations to put animals in silly situations.  If you're ever stuck writing a note just think of an animal and come up with some rhyming words for it - then you're 1/2 way home!

That paints a really fun picture for a child.  Just remember that while including the sap in lunch notes is good, it can get old and lose it's punch if you do it in every note.  I go for fun or funny more often than not.

We do have a dog, a little puggle (pug/beagle mix) named Lilly.  After I wrote this I just imagined the picture it put in my daughters' heads...Lilly strutting around with her head held high in her golden collar.  I guess I'm too practical in my old age though...all I could see in my own mind was how heavy the collar would be, with Lilly's poor head close to the ground as she struggled to lift the weight of the gold.

Maybe when I make my millions we'll have to settle for gold encrusted dog collars!

Lucky Charms for life...

My beautiful daughter Allie would eat cereal at every meal and snack if we'd let her.  She loves the little marshmallows you find in Lucky Charms and similar cereals, and never seems to get sick of this milky meal.

All I can say is...Allie and I are a lot alike!

The lessor of two GOODS!

You have to love winter time if you're a kid in grade school.  Snow days are a thing of pure joy, and 2-hour delays are almost as good.  This note was written the night before a scheduled early release day for my girls.  There was plenty of snow and ice on the ground - not enough for a snow day but enough for a potential delay.  If the delay happened then the school would have normal hours after that.  If the delay did not happen, then the school would release the kids early as planned.

No matter what, a shortened day of school was going to happen...so as the note points out, on that day my kids just couldn't lose!

Life is quirky.

There are many silly things in life that can be pointed out in your lunch notes.  Like this one:

Also...goldfish really aren't gold.  Most of them are orange-ish, right?  Just sayin'...

Snow days rock!

Every kid gets the after Christmas break blues.  But there's always hope that tons of the white stuff will fall from the sky, bringing school delays and snow days.

Yes, bring on lots of snow days.  But not so many that school is extended until July!

Questions, questions...

One of the toughest questions ever for a tween.  Both my daughters have seen Taylor Swift and Miley Cyrus in concert already, but only one of them really likes J.B.  Tough call for them, but fun to think about...plus it has the potential to get lunch table conversation going!

A fun rhetorical question, and rhyming is always entertaining.  What...you didn't realize clouds are for sale to do with what you please?

Don't forget the SAP

Jokes and poems are always great for notes in a lunch box, but you should also use the opportunity to just plain pour on the sap.  Kids like this stuff when they're young...and your opportunities to really pour it on diminish as they get older as they could get more embarrassed and less receptive to it.  So once in a while, throw in a note like this:

Simple and to the point, and very reassuring to your child.  Gives them a warm fuzzy.  I don't do this kind of note everyday since then it would lose its potency, but once in a while it's good.

Happy 2011! First post New Year post.

Hope you had a great holiday weekend.  2011 is...well, not too much different yet.  That's okay I suppose.  The kids are back to school, which of course means more lunch notes.  Like this one:

I love superheroes.  Super powers always amazed me as a kid, and I wished I could fly just like Superman, or have x-ray vision, or be invisible, or super fast.  Wonder Woman fascinated me because just like Batman, she was very mortal.  Sure she was strong and skilled and so forth, but if just one bullet got past those golden bracelets she'd be done for.

It makes me laugh now to think about the invisible jet she flew in the old Saturday morning Superfriends cartoons.  How strange to see a woman in a sitting position streaking across the sky.  And we always saw the outline of the jet...was that just for perspective, or could anyone see the outline?  And does invisible mean truly cloaked or still detectable by radar?  Guess it doesn't really matter.  Anyway, this was a fun note to write.