T'was a Hectic Weekend

The title says it all. I'm exhausted! The party in honor of my daughters Graduation took place on Sunday evening, as scheduled, but not as originally planned. Mother Nature did not cooperate. I took some pictures, but not a lot cos I was busy busy busy with taking care of my guests.

Saturday was beautiful! Perfect! Couldn't have asked for more perfect weather if my life had depended on it. We spent the day working on the new deck, and getting my 'party' act together. I did everything I could do for the party that didn't have to be done on Sunday-like making the fruit salad. Didn't do that on Saturday cos fruit gets kind of mushy if you cut it up too soon. But I cut up all the veggies, got the meats marinating, cleaned the house, did some last minute shopping, etc etc etc. Anyway, by the end of the day the deck WAS NOT FINISHED!!!!! Though I said nothing to no one I was starting to panic in my head. I've got 25-30 people coming and my hubby has made a complete MESS of the yard. That was my silent scream you heard at 7:30pm pacific daylight time. (sigh).

Sunday morning hubby and I got up and got going on the deck early--it had rained during the night. This was a bad omen. My brother-in-law and his wife showed up a little later to help. I started chopping up fruit and doing all the other things I needed to do on Sunday. I got it all done by noon-except putting up the decorations, mowing the lawn, and setting up the gazebo tent. By noon the deck STILL WASN'T DONE. In fact, hubby went for a materials run. In the meantime, it was cold, rainy, and windy.

Now, I love my hubby more than anyone in the universe, but his inability to properly plan his construction projects was really starting to get on my nerves by now. He owns a fantastic program called Chief Architect that he can draw the complete deck in and it will list what he needs and how much to get. He knows this program well cos he's one of the programmers who writes it. He didn't use it. He did his usual guesstimating on the way to Home Depot instead. So there were quite a few delays as he made yet another materials run. And the wind blew, and the rain fell, and the cold chilled.

He didn't want us to mow the lawn--which is getting more like a jungle than a lawn by now because we haven't mowed since he started the new deck--until he was done. It rained on and off all day, and the wind blew-hard, and it was so cold. We were getting wind advisories. Apparently the top soil in Moses Lake, WA was headed our way-which, living on a gravel mountain is always a nice thing to get some more top soil-but does it have to happen during my party?

I ended up mowing the lawn myself at 2 pm (party is starting at 4pm). In addition, I had to scrap my decorating plans. All those wonderful tiki torches I'd bought were not going to be lit. Too windy and rainy. Didn't set up my gazebo tent for the food cos I figured no one would want to be out there in the cold. Didn't have my tables scattered about the lawn with tasteful little tropical decorations on each one. In fact, I didn't even take the table cloths out of the packaging. I changed plans at the last minute--had to. I set it all up in the kitchen and dining room.

By 3pm the deck was FINALLY DONE!! HURRAY! I talked my daughter and her boyfriend into putting up my Hawaiian decorations in the house while I took a shower. Folks started showing up promptly at 4pm and everything went really well. We handed out the grass skirts and leis and everyone got into the spirit of the thing. They were out on the deck between rain showers, and in the house the rest of the time.

We had a shish-ka-bob bar and it worked out really well. My fruit salad was a hit. Recipe is at the end of this post. My friend, Phyllis, brought a scrumtious bean dip, and my niece Holly brought her famous Sausage cream cheese dip. MMmmmmm.... There was TONS of food, and drink, and everyone told me they had a wonderful time.

There was only one really bad thing that happened during the party. My boys were following my sister-in-law around cos she had meat in her hands. (She was looking for the owner of a kabob that had not claimed it from the grill). She stopped, stepped back, and accidentally stepped on Tommy. He yelped. Morgan growled...and that was it. They got into a really nasty horrible fight. I was desperately trying to break them up, but found myself with no help on that front. I think everyone around was just so shocked. I feel really bad. I should have been paying more attention to them. When Morgan gets stressed he is prone to take it out on Tommy in a very doggish way and I know that. All those people in and out of his domain, some of them strangers to him, is stress for Morgan. Anyway, Morgan managed to put a terrible gash into Tommy's right thigh that was bleeding like a faucet stuck on high. So an emergency trip to the vet took place. I was in no condition to drive by this time (I'd had too much Rum), neither was my hubby (way too much whiskey), so my nephew Scott drove hubby and Tommy to the emergency hospital in Post Falls. I stayed home to tend to the guests. Poor Tommy. The gash was so deep he had to stay overnight for surgery-and I ended up with a $600 vet bill. Sigh...... But he's going to be fine. In fact, he's lying in his little bed and winking at me right now.

My daughter had a blast, we all had a blast and everyone was happy. So I guess, despite Mother Nature's nasty attitude, the dog fight, and the fact it wasn't the party of my fantasy, it turned out good. I still would have liked to light those tiki torches though. Oh well.

I call this University of Idaho Fruit Salad because it was at one of my daughters award ceremony thingies I first encountered this wonderful concoction and I don't know what it's really supposed to be called. The ingredients are unusual, but extremely tasty together-trust me.

Half a ripe cantaloupe cut into 1 inch cubes.
Half a ripe Honeydew melon cut into 1 inch cubes.
2 cups of strawberries, sliced.
Half a medium sized red onion, diced.
Half a cup of fresh Cilantro, chopped.

Toss it all together and eat. No, there's no dressing. The juices from the fruit are dressing enough.

They were serving this with fish at U of I. But it's good with anything.

I'll post pics from the party later this week.

Have a great day.