Summer of Fun – Day 7 – The Double-Header

Did you enjoy walking through the park yesterday? Wasn’t it sooo relaxing? It was for us too! I’m glad you stopped in today. Do I have a story to tell you!

This is a double-header in that we did one activity during the day and one in the evening.

First Activity – Family Game Time

The daytime activity included a game of Guesstures! Have you played this game before? It’s a pretty old one. We’ve had it for as long as I can remember, but it’s still an all-time favorite around here. If you don’t know what this game is, basically it’s charades on steroids. There is a timer, and they’ve taken all the guesswork out of wondering what word to choose by giving you cards to help you decide what to mime. I love the tick-tick-tick of the timer and the sound of the cards dropping out of site if your partner doesn’t guess the word before time runs out.

The hubs and I were one team and the boys were another. The antics were hilarious as we acted out and tried to get our partners to guess the word we were miming.

My favorite miming was from my youngest son. He was rotating his arms backward in a big windmill fashion and as he’s doing that, he leans way back. My oldest son gets all excited and screams out “MATRIX”!

The youngest loses it and starts laughing trying to continue to mime. He lays down on the floor, all the while continuing to windmill his arms in a backward motion. The card drops and they don’t get that point. When their turn is all over, the youngest, through peals of laughter, informs the oldest, IT WAS THE BACKSTROKE! It was quite exciting!

The old people won both rounds but a good time was had by all!

Second Activity – Fire and S’mores

This has been a week of covert operations. My mama retired last week at the age of 70 and I planned a surprise retirement party for her. I’ve had my niece in on it from the beginning since she lives with my mom and could help get things cleaned around the house. I knew if I popped over and offered to clean something it would seem suspicious.

I knew a week wasn’t a lot of notice, but I thought what the hey, let’s do this.

Sunday – give mama a call asking if we can use her firepit for making smores as one of our Summer of Fun activities. Of course, she said yes! She’s such a great mama!

Monday – sent out the invite text to everyone. This is a surprise party, bring your own chairs and drinks, yadda, yadda, yadda. Then head over to mama’s to help her clean out her shed. You can read all about that adventure from Day 3

She has no idea she is actually helping to set up for her own party. That sounds terrible, I know, but I giggled to myself all day! 🙂

Tuesday – stay in touch with my niece about how things are going on the cleaning front. She’s helping a little. Not to worry, it will all get done, I’m sure.

Wednesday – head to Kroger to order the cake. We get in the store, head to the bakery and there’s not a soul around. Finally, someone comes along from the deli and we start the order process. As I tell the young lady what I’m wanting. I even have a hand-drawn picture of what I’m looking for (ok, so it’s a bit messy. It was laying on the counter during baking day! he hehe)

20180608_190722 — What I wanted on the cake

and she says,

“Our cake decorator is on vacation and I don’t know how to draw a coffee cup”

She then proceeds to look through the little book of pictures the decorators use and comes up empty-handed. She then tells me,

“I’m sorry, I don’t think we can do this”

What?? A bakery that can’t do a simple coffee cup? Whatever. Ok, moving on.

We then drive across town to Walmart. We get there and a young woman comes right out (this is already going better than at Kroger). I explain to the gal what I’m wanting to be done, I pull out my little hand-drawn photo and show her what I want it to look like.

“No, problem. That’s simple enough.”

SWEET!! We finish the decorating portion of the order; I give my name, phone number, etc and tell her I need it Friday at 6:30pm because the party is at 7. She’s all onboard and hands me my copy of the order.

Things are going along swimmingly.

We finish up a bit of shopping we need to do and head back home to do our activity for the day and to take care of some light housekeeping.

Thursday – Have several folks RSVP and it looks like everyone I invited is going to be able to make it. HOORAY!!

It’s finally Friday, the day of the big event. I’m so excited I’m bursting at the seams!! I need to pick mama up from the garage because she’s having her oil changed and then we’re going to hang out for a bit, ya know, just to visit, while the car is being done and then I’m going to take her to pick it up. The visit was nice and the car finished early. That never happens!

During the visit, I tell mama I need to stop at the dollar store to grab a few things for our upcoming trip. Friends, three times I almost slipped up. She asked me what I needed and I almost told her I needed to buy plates, napkins, and forks for the party. I didn’t almost slip up once, but THREE times! Good grief. Thankfully, I caught myself all three times.

I headed back home and I swear the clock stopped moving. The time from 2 until it was time to go pick up the cake felt like an eternity. I was so excited I couldn’t hardly stand it.

It’s very rare that I pull one over on my mom. She manages to somehow always figure it out. This time was different. I made it 5 days and she didn’t have a clue! WIN!!

Friday – 6:15pm – It is FINALLY time to head to the store to pick up the cake. I load up the gifts and my son and his friend and we are on our way.

We arrive at the store to find the bakery, dark, not a soul around. My son and his friend walked over to the deli to see if someone could help us, but I found a produce worker first. He asks for my name and disappears behind the bakery cooler door. Minutes tick by and he doesn’t reappear. He eventually reappears empty-handed. My.heart.sank. to say the least. He asks for my name again and returns to the cooler. Again, he reappears empty-handed. WTH???!! He says it’s not back there. I ask for a manager. She appears about 5 minutes later. Come on people. The retirement party starts in T-minus 20 minutes and I still do not have my cake.

The manager looks three times and finally decided to call the store manager to see if he can figure out what in the world is going on. Needless to say, at this point, I.am.LIVID!!!

I have a houseful of people who are going to be waiting for me and I am wasting time with folks who can’t seem to find what I ordered. The store manager goes looking for my order form and finds it in the COMPLETED folder. Really? It’s in the completed folder? I’m thinking someone didn’t do their job.

After his third disappearance behind the cooler door, he brings out a plain half of a quarter sheet cake and tells me he will let me have it for 25¢. Let me think about this for a minute, UM NO!!! I ordered a quarter sheet and he wants to give me half of that and it’s not even iced? He wants me to pay, no matter how small the price, for an uniced, plain, cake that won’t even feed 6 people? Does this sound right to you? I think not! Doesn’t that equate to an eighth of a cake?

I have to tell you, I am beyond pissed and the minutes are ticking by. I’m trying really hard to maintain control of my anger. I realize the folks I’m dealing with are NOT who created the problem so technically it is not their fault, but there is no excuse for this crap!

Finally, exasperated, I tell the manager I will just take this ugly-ass ‘congrats’ cake, after all the point of the party is not the damn cake but the celebration of my mama. He discounts the cake, I pay $7 for a $23 cake that I don’t even want and I’m on my way to the party, finally.

20180608_190737 — The cake I settled for

Friday – 6:57pm – I am minutes away from the party’s location, I was supposed to be there 20 minutes ago because I was the diversion so the others could come in as a surprise and I. am. stressed. out. To put it mildly. I keep telling myself everything is going to be okay, to remember the party is not about the cake. It’s difficult to come down from such an event and I struggled. When I finally arrived, everyone was there waiting, but no pressure or anything.

Friend, things went amuck from there (I know, right? You’re thinking, how can it get any worse? Well, let me tell you, NEVER think it can’t get any worse!). It’s pouring down rain, there was a huge commotion as we all entered the house which set the dogs on edge, there’s a dogfight between my sister’s dog and my mom’s dog, mom got bit, and I’m trying to figure out how in the hell we’re going to get through this. Everyone is just standing around wondering what to do because things are a bit tense. Gee, ya think?! Lord, give me strength!

It’s funny how things happen. Everything had gone so smooth all week long in the planning of the surprise; I suppose I shouldn’t have been shocked when things finally went amuck! Alls well that ends well.

The long and the short of it, after the initial craziness, things settled down, the rain stopped and we had a wonderful fire for roasting s’mores. We laughed and talked and relaxed. Mama was surprised and loved that we all showed up and in the end, that’s all that matters to me. The night was salvaged!! Summer of Fun activity was saved!! HOORAY!!