A Successful Gathering

I waited until the last minute and that's entirely my fault. I don't know why I thought that Teresa would have some sort of party for Sarah's birthday. I should know by now.

Our family events are never very many people, but if the few "regulars" do show up it turns out to be a great gathering of folks, and just the right size. Such is the case yesterday. I called Friday afternoon for an event that was to happen the next day at 5pm so I didn't expect miracles, but to my delight we got almost 100% turnout.

To make it easy on myself, I relied on quick-fix foods. A few days earlier I had bought a 100-piece shrimp cocktail, and lucky for me I remembered to take it out of the fridge beforehand (they come frozen). I took it out for about 3 hours on Friday and about the same yesterday, and even then it was just barely defrosted. There were still some ice crystals here and there. Whew, dodged a bullet on that one. I also added two Papa Murphy's pizzas--One of the new chicken/bacon/artichoke variety that I had just bought for the first time recently, and one classic half pepperoni half Canadian bacon/pineapple. Guess which one the kids went for (stupid question)? I also had some sweet and sour meatballs in the crock pot. I only had bottled water for the younger folks to drink, but other than energy drinks, that seems to be about all they drink anyway. There was plenty of wine and beer for the older folks. Teresa brought the cake and ice cream with her.

We ended up with my sister and her daughter (Sarah's age) and her son and his girlfriend. Also, my brother and his wife and daughter (also Sarah's age). A little while later my parents showed up, and much to everyone's surprise and relief, my dad was very tolerable for a change. Oh, and of course, Teresa and Sarah too. That was a good size group of folks.

I had a good fire in the woodstove, had streaming music from Radio Paradise running through my stereo, the house was clean, and Mona (my mannequin's new name--Like it?) was dressed in a new Harley shirt. Halfway through the event we even turned the traffic light on, and that hardly ever gets used. See? Things were just clicking nicely.

I had Sarah bring her laptop with the excuse that I was going to reinstall her printer driver. I don't know if she wondered about that or not, but in reality I wanted to see how it fit into her new laptop bag. She loved the new bag and so did everyone else, and the laptop was a perfect fit. I also gave her a $100 check inside her birthday card. I don't recall what she got from everyone else because I was partying and mingling and enjoying myself. I told her that she had another present coming that would be in on Monday. That is her new digital camera. I also added to that and ordered a 4-gig memory card for it the other day, but I have no idea when that will show up. I think I'll try to hang onto the camera until that shows up. It only makes sense. She's going to need that 4-gig card with a 7 megapixel camera.

Boy, it's hard to believe she's 17 years old already!