Grad Week - Part III

I'm not much of a party hostess. It's just not my forte, but I try. With Madison's graduation party, all sorts of things went awry and it still turned out a success. Darcy's party didn't have as much drama, but I did leave things down to the wire in the preparation department.

I was more worried about the high school IB Senior Celebration that I was in charge of planning for 140 people then I was about the party at my own house. Where I worked ahead in planning Madison's party and still had issues, I wasn't as on top of this party as maybe I should have been. I didn't order the food until three days before the event, going with my original theme of Cuban seeing as how she is moving to Tampa. We were still working on the video of her life the day of the party, yet somehow it all came together and we had a fun night.

My family guests and daughters were in charge of cleaning my house while I worked on Friday. I kept receiving SnapChats of them poolside, but I have to admit that my house was clean when I returned. The day of the party the family guests ran errands and bought balloons to decorate my house. They helped set up party supplies and entertained the guests.

Jaime was feeling good about being the number one guest in that she left behind her 14 children and flew from Indiana to be here to witness the graduation and grad bash. Unfortunately for her, she was usurped by the number one uncle. On Friday, from his home in Los Angeles, Uncle Clint called me to let me know he was flying in for the grad bash. He flew all night to get here by the party and then flew out the next day. He was only here for Darcy. We decided not to tell her and let it be a surprise. She was certainly surprised, and could not whine about the other guests who declined to come "like they did to Madison's graduation party."

We had about 50 people who showed up crammed into my little house so much so that our air conditioning couldn't keep up with all the warm bodies and the open front door. I spent my time running around trying to find fans to sit under to cool off, and to entertain those people who were sitting solo. My friend SueG manned the alcohol punch that she concocted, and that too could have been a source for my warmness. All of Darcy's friends came and we played a game I titled "How Well Do You Know Darcy". Participants were from her friend group, family, and miscellaneous people who we couldn't come up with names for, and we ran it like the Newlywed Game. Darcy had to match up her answers with the teams, and we played three rounds with the winners of each round going into the finals.

The last round consisted of all her friends and Sarina, she of the fifteen year friendship, won the tiebreaker to take the title. The questions was, "What game was Darcy playing when she fell and put a hole in her head that resulted in a trip to the emergency room?" A bonus was "Who taught Darcy the game?" The three teams made a gallant effort, but in the end Sarina knew the answer to put her team in the winner's circle. The answer was "popcorn" and "Kelly". She did not require stitches FYI.

The party went into the wee hours of morning with a few rounds of Mafia, lots of talking, and more cake. In the end it was deemed a success despite Tom telling me, "You had way too much food". Whew.