Success!

I haven’t had much of a chance to update my blog lately, and now that William’s party is over – it’s time to catch up. So this is what’s been going on these past couple of days.

Early Thursday morning: I absolutely did not want to run out of food, so extras was OK with me. I got up at 3 am and spent 5 hours with two roasting pans going in the oven for cooking the bacon. Now hindsight, 12 pounds of bacon was a little excessive for a couple of can’s of beans. But as long as I was going to make bacon, I was going to make bacon! I ended up using maybe half of it in those beans and I’ll just freeze the rest. Until they get frozen, we’ve been eating it like beef jerky. You warm up some in the microwave and snack on it. Now that I think of this, I could just about imagine if someone would come and see us walking around snacking on bacon. It might look a little ‘country’ wouldn’t you think? The rest of the day was getting the rest of the groceries that I needed and making sure that I had enough of everything.

Thursday night : with the week getting busier and busier, I didn’t have any time to work on William’s scrapbooks. Now isn’t that just ironical? It was the first thing that I said that I was going to do almost 1   1/2 years ago, and it’s the last minute thing that I had to do. I guess I thought that I always can work on it, and the reality was that I never did it! So now it was crunch time. Daryl told me that no one will notice if I didn’t do it, but I don’t think that’s what it’s all about. I think getting ready for a graduation party is to set goals for yourself, and by golly you want to get it done! So I just couldn’t stand it that I didn’t have it done for William. So after sleeping for a couple of hours, I finally had rested enough by 1:00 am to get up and work on it. It wasn’t exactly how I wanted the book, but it was at least done! I plan on spending a little more time on it and making it more to how I would like it to be. Hopefully I’ll get back to it sooner than a year and a half though.

Friday: this is a day to cook and by the end of the day, all the food was pretty much made that I wanted, and the Roadhouse was decorated. Since the day was busy, I didn’t get around to painting our front door until late that night. Yes, Daryl actually said it didn’t matter to him at all. I think the secret to his willingness was because he was tired. Whatever was the case, I said.. OK and grabbed some spray paint that I bought the other day at the hardware store.  While the door was down, we had to put something up in it’s place. What did we use? Well the Scooby Doo blanket worked perfect. It looked a little strange, but it worked. It ended up being a long day, but a very productive day.

Didn't keep out the little kitty did it?

Check out the door! Love it

Saturday. Big Day!  We all got up early and started to get everything ready. The barbecue was hot and grilling the brats and burgers, and I was working on double checking everything. I had a new picture that I bought from the hardware store last week and was really hoping that Daryl could help me hang it. I went in last week to get a can of spray paint and came out with this picture. It was a very expensive can of spray paint! Even though Daryl just had gotten in the house and  cleaned up, and we knew that our guests were coming soon, I must have sounded pretty pathetic because he helped me hang it. Usually when Daryl helps, he likes to measure the wall and then make sure that it’s just perfectly spaced. This process can take quite awhile. But on Saturday, he said ‘how’s it look’, I said ‘good’,  he added the hook to the wall and we called it done! It’s funny what you do in a crunch isn’t it? But the picture looked good and even though the wire that’s on the picture isn’t what it should be, it’s up on the wall, and just in time!

The party: how fun it was! The main goal is that William liked his party and he said that he really did. So I’m calling it a Success! We had a 25 to 30 mph wind and it was in the mid 80’s,  but since we had the party inside the Roadhouse – we were good!  We didn’t run out of food and everyone seemed to have a good time. The one part of the party that I thought was kind of cool was that people felt comfortable enough that they either walked around on the farm to check it out, or that they spent time just sitting on our porch swing and patio furniture enjoying the day. How nice is that? Someone told me during the party that the building felt just right and that it fit into our farm just perfect. What a nice thing to say.  We didn’t run out of any food or drinks at the party, and we had some leftovers to deal with. We plan on freezing some of them and using them for the Kuehner reunion at our farm next month. And yes, some of it went to the dogs and chickens, but that was OK.  We had too much cabbage salad and also too much beans. Now I know that you can freeze the beans, but at the end of the night I took a hot bath and just went to bed. Since it sat out all night in the roaster, I just knew that the dogs would really be excited to have these leftovers in the morning. Good thing I didn’t put all the bacon and hamburger in it that I cooked up! On Sunday after the crew came to pick up our tables and chairs that we rented we started on cleaning our roasters. What a yucky job that was. But Daryl washed them when I took care of freezing some of the food. I asked him which job he wanted to pick to do and he said roasters. Good thing, because that to me was a very bad job to do!

Now to match the pans to the bottoms and start returning them to their owners

William said the other day that he felt that once you graduated it didn’t feel like it was over.  But then when you have your party it seems like you are all done with high school and you’re getting ready for the summer and college. I think he’s right because it does feel like we’re ready for the next step now. But for this week? We are going to try to do a couple of fun things. I just laughed tonight when William asked where my list was because he had to add something to it for him. I said – list? For the first time in 1 & 1/2 years I’m not going to make any list. I think I might go through a little withdrawal though and we’ll see if I make it through the whole day tomorrow without one. It’ll be weird not to go to town without my highlighters to check things off my lists. I counted that I usually had three with me at all times. One in the car itself and two in my purse.

And for the farm project? It’s done. I think I was at 174 gallons of paint that we used, and around 11 cans of spray paint. We didn’t keep track of the amount of lumber or the hours spent on fixing it up, which I wish I would have because that would have been kind of interesting.  So what lies next for me in the future? Well this week I’m saying is going to be fun week and then maybe start looking for a job. Not sure if I’m going to do a part time job or a full time job. I also need to start working on our Ragbrai housing for July, fixing up our old camper for the kids, planting the garden, finishing Mom’s pictures that I was scanning, finishing up my secret project that I started a couple of months ago, working on the Kuehner reunion, planning a Franzen movie night in the Roadhouse, and picking rock. But for tonight? It’s around 11:30 and I am going to pen the dogs up and then go to bed.   I’m kind of tired.

What a fun party!