A busy week!

I was doing so good staying up with my blog until this week. Let's see what's been going on..... Last Saturday night, we all surprised my dear friend, Claudia, at a party put together by her husband. It's funny how women will plan for weeks to make a party successful and a man decides on Thursday to give a party on Saturday and it goes off without a hitch! I went in for my 6 month dental checkup and he tells me what he has in mind. He's in there between patients, calling and inviting everyone while I'm sitting in the chair thinking..."That's the way to throw a party--decide and then just do it!" It was so sweet of him to do that for her. She is such a wonderful friend, sister, mother and wife--so, she deserved it!

Most of my week was consumed with preparing for Back to School Night at First Pres. I was asked to be the Hospitality Chairman this year, and Back to School Night is the biggest responsibility of the job. After being in charge of Garden Gallery last year, this should be a breeze! One thing about First Pres is how organized the Crusader Club is and how notebooks are kept to pass down year to year to each chairman. My notebook stated that last year purchased potted plants for the faculty and used them as decorations. Well....I went Thursday afternoon to the wholesale grower and filled my Expedition with 50 mums and ferns. More about that later. I decided to do something a little different with the food this year, so I cooked brisket for 500 people. My sweet friend, Michelle did take home two of them to put in her oven. I think I cooked 60 pounds of brisket! I emailed all of the other recipes to moms who volunteered to cook for the event and then others purchased fruit, rolls and several other things we needed. My new friends at Dream Cakes, made a beautiful three layer butter cream cake with the FPDS logo on it. If you recall, the temperature reached 101 on Thursday. I picked up the cake on my way to the school that night and it didn't make the ride too well! I felt so bad, because the top two layers just kinda slid off. Shelley said to call her if it needed retouched. I hated to make that call! She had just told me about a lady calling and canceling a fondant birthday cake at the last minute when I picked up my cake. I told her how inconsiderate that was and that they needed to get a credit card number when taking orders for cakes with lots of detail. Well, I guess that was God's way of taking care of things because she and her husband brought that cake up to the school for us to use. We sliced up the butter cream cake and every piece of it was eaten. Hopefully, it helped to get the word out about their new business. As far as all the plants for the teachers, I found a flaw in the FPDS notebook organizational process. I didn't know that the co-chairman last year purchased all of those personally. I thought it was something that the teachers expected! I had no idea that I could have just made a centerpiece and been done with it. Now my truck has spiders who have found a new home and I have a $350 receipt to turn in with my expenses. I will make a suggestion to the crusader club to discourage individuals from absorbing expenses that total more than x amount. We've all paid for things without worrying about getting reimbursed, but I don't think it should be something that major.