The big grad bash

Maddy's graduation party came about because my SIL told me this is what parents do. She directs me in etiquette things like this and she had one for my nephew and  and so I asked my daughter about having one. She was born the day before Thanksgiving and her birthday celebrations since about the age of six have been few and far between because people are busy celebrating Turkey Day with family. She has gotten ripped off in that department and this was my chance to make it right. But secretly I was sure she would veto it. She isn't into making a fuss about herself. To my surprise (and secret dismay) she agreed it "would be fun".

I am not a party person. I don't feel it is my forte. Put me in charge of creating a show and writing a script or performing a dialogue or hosting a banquet and I'm your gal. Make food, order food, decorate a house, and present a table for a party? Call a party planner, because me? Definitely not that gal. Luckily, my friend SueG agreed to step up and take over and thus Madison's Graduation Party was born.

We talked about it for several months before graduation. I made a list and checked it more than twice. We researched catering companies. We decided on a North Carolina theme as soon as Madison chose her college. I ordered UNC decorating items and party ware from Amazon. We decided on BBQ and created a menu. We shopped for more party items. We made lists of food and who would cook what, who was in charge of picking up certain items at what time, and where and how the furniture would be arranged. I ordered trays of food from three different places. SueG researched punch recipes. We were on party central mode 24/7 especially in that last week.

The Friday before the party my mother's cleaning lady/evening caretaker/friend drove down to help me spic and span my house. She is the cleaning guru and the two of us worked from sun up to sun down polishing my house like it has never been polished before. The woman is amazing and was a godsend. When she left my house was a show piece. SueG, Darcy, Madison and I then went to work decorating the house and setting up the furniture. When I went to bed that night I was convinced that all I had to do the next day was minimal last minute arrangements.

I should have known.

Fiasco #1 - The water department likes to change things up every so often. They add chemicals. They remove chemicals. They shut off the water. They slow down the pressure. One of the things they love to do is add chlorine. There are weeks where I walk around my house looking for an indoor pool I didn't know I had because the chlorine smell is so strong from someone showering. We don't drink our water straight from the faucet.  We are those wasteful people who buy bottled water and have a filter on our refrigerator. Cue to a few days before the party. I opened my freezer (the same freezer I wrote about here), grabbed a handful of ice, and dumped them into a glass. They looked odd. Smaller then usual and a faint smell from my childhood, back then we called it "freezer burn", wafted up from the glass. I took out a piece, licked it, and immediately dumped the glass contents into the sink. What was that taste? What was that smell? Hubby said it had to do with the water department and the chlorine. I made him change the filter in the refrigerator. Bottom line for the party? We had to buy bags of ice to be on the safe side. Fiasco? The day was a scorcher so the ice that we dumped into coolers melted quickly. The freezer was too full to hold many bags and so we had to keep running out to the store for more ice. Not such a big deal in the long run. But add it to...

Fiasco #2 - We have a group that we met in Lamaze class that has stayed together off and on through the years. One of the families is my Steelers buddy. His daughter and Madison were born two days apart and for the first four years of their lives we were together almost daily. All of the baby books of those first years are of the two of them together. Over the years they went their separate ways, but her mother and I still look at the two of them and see, well, those two little girls running around together. Fiasco? We both ended up planning our parties for the VERY SAME DAY. My invite arrived in her mailbox the SAME DAY her invite arrived in my mailbox. The only saving grace was that her party started at 2:00 and my party started at 6:00 so I made my family go to her party. They argued that it was cutting things close, but I insisted. Bottom line? We did well with this one. We got there at two, ate, mingled, took photos, and we were out the door and in our car heading to the grocery for ice by 2:58 pm. I was feeling better...

Fiasco #3 - As the day of the party went on our decorations, hung the night before, slowly started falling from the ceiling or the fan or the walls. We would walk from one room into another and step on a decoration. We would re-hang one only to have the one next to it fall to the floor. Bottom Line? It would have been comical had I not been strung so tightly.

Fiasco #4 - I made a DVD to play on our TV's in a loop during the party. I worked very hard on this little item. Because Madison was born in the days before digital I had to scan old photos into my computer. I had to go through baby books, old photo albums, and containers of old pictures and then scan them two by two into my computer where I had to arrange them into years. Then I had to make the video using a program I had never used before. And add music! I did this several weeks prior to the party and was feeling very cheeky for having done so. Madison showed me how to save it into a file and every few days I would tweek the video. I spent hours on this thing. The day before the party I realized that I had never put it on to a DVD. I didn't panic, Darcy told me to save it to a jump drive and that one of those would plug directly into our TV. Madison attempted to do this for me, but the file was too big for the jump drive I had. We spent several hours that night attempting to get it on to a DVD, but each time Madison would put it into the player it wouldn't read. We went to bed and regrouped in the morning with the computer expert. It took him three hours to make it work and when it did we sat down to watch it only to realize that I had failed to save my tweeked version and we had instead the original version which included some photos twice and some photos out of my careful timeline. I let it go. I had no choice. We could not have a do over at this point.

Fiasco # 4.5 - We have two televisions and my plan was to have two DVD's, one for each television so that people could walk from one room to the other and enjoy my graduate. That morning I realized that not only did we have the Tampa Bay Lightning in the Stanley Cup finals playing at 7:30 pm, but we also had the Belmont Stakes and a possible Triple Crown Winner running at 6:20 pm. I come from a sports family. Several of the people at this party are sports people. Knowing that my SIL would be horrified, but also knowing my crowd and my family, I had to designate one television to be devoted to those sporting activities. Bottom line? My video and beautiful daughter was shown on the living room TV and the sports were shown in the Steelers room. It all worked out well. Everyone got a chance to see the video because we looped it for hours. The horse race got the nation its first Triple Crown Winner in 38 years and the Tampa Bay Lightning won that game!

Fiasco #5 - I had ordered a cake, a fruit platter, and a cheese platter from our local grocery Publix. I had done this by going in and talking to the bakery department and to the deli department four days before the party. I asked to pick it all up by 4:00 on that Saturday. I was the person in charge of this task and so I was at my Publix a little before the time. I went to the bakery first where I received the baker's beautiful creation.

From there I went to the deli department and took a number. One of the deli workers is this petite woman who, during the construction of our Publix, ended up placed in the new Publix that I chose in the interim and she and I would lament about the construction and the loss of our Publix each week. She saw me waiting and came over to help me. I told her I had placed an ordered and she disappeared into the freezer to get it. She was gone a long time. She popped out, looked at me and shrugged, and conversed with another worker. The worker asked me if I had called in the order. I told her what I had done and she asked if I had my receipt. I told her I did, but not with me as the store never asks to see it. My lady disappeared back into the freezer, reappeared, and came over to me with the order receipts for the day. She told me that this was not the first issue there that day. My order was not in the pile. The other worker asked me again about my receipt and who had taken my order. I could tell she didn't believe me and so I called Tom. He looked everywhere I could think of for that receipt, but to no avail. My lady leaned in while I was on the phone and told me she would start cutting up fruit for my platter. I did what I had been doing for the past week. I cried. That got action. Tom tried to talk me off the ledge. The women both promised me the platters would be started and completed in twenty minutes. I gave them thirty. I left Publix, drove by the house and dropped off the cake, found the receipt, and took off again to pick up the Greek salads I had also ordered. I picked those up, drove by the house and dropped them off, and went back to Publix. My little lady was waiting for me. I presented the receipt to her and told her to make sure her co-worker saw that I was honest. My lady shook her head and told me she had told her the same thing. She got my platters, put them into my cart, walked me to the front of the store, and gave me everything for free! Bottom line? FREE! FREE! FREE! I cried again. We hugged, she told me to stop crying and get ready for the party, and off I went to do that.

In the end the party was a success. SueG was at my house ordering the family around. Tom was off picking up the BBQ. The girls were carrying food from the kitchen to the tables and hanging up errant decorations as they did so. SueG was whipping up punches and putting out her homemade dishes. Her daughter Sydney was arranging the food and the tables. I took a shower and was ready and at the door by the time the first guests arrived.

I had seen this little creation on FB about a week before the party. I loved it! So I blew up pictures, had them made at Walgreens, and pasted them on the back of stakes to line the entranceway to our house. Madison through the years. Everyone loved it and Madison was surprised.

At my Steelers buddy's house they had a shrine created for their daughter. Darcy wanted to know why we had not done this for Madison and I told her to feel free to create one. So she did. It turned out nice and everyone had fun looking through her albums and seeing her accomplishments.

Madison's uncle flew in from California. Our other Lamaze friends came and we took off where we had left off five years prior. We had about forty people crammed into my little house, but by the time everyone had food we were all arranged in various rooms and outside on the pool deck. It all worked out well and was very fun.

Later that night after everyone had departed, Madison opened gifts. I was overwhelmed by the generosity of our family and friends. The kind words in cards made me cry. I had tried very hard to include all of the people in our lives that had been a party of Madison's birth, her eighteen years, and her life. I went to bed that night full of love and gratitude for each and everyone of them; those who were able to be at the party and those who were not. Our family has been and is very blessed to have all of these people in our lives. I can't thank them enough for everything they have done for me and for Madison and for our family, and I love each and everyone of them.

Madison thanked us profusely over the next couple of days. "It was the best party and I'm so glad we did it!" That was all I needed on top of a wonderful event.