I Can Exhale Now...

As I mentioned in my previous post, no matter how well I think I've prepared, something (or several somethings) always come up! The Cub Scout trip to the nursing home went well. We had a relatively small turnout (11 scouts) so we recruited their parents to sing too. The residents seemed to enjoy it and I think the kids did, too. I know mine did.

The party for my RCIA group at church went well. I had stopped by the church office earlier in the day on an unrelated matter and ran into the priest who leads our group. I asked him if we were all set for plates, napkins, etc. and he had this 'oops' look on his face. He said he was going to ask the secretary about it. Now having been a secretary in a past life, I know the last think she'd want to hear, is "Can you scrounge up 2 doz. plates, napkins, cups, and some tablecloths - and can you make it a Christmas theme while your at it? And oh yeah, we need them tonight."

But the priest is new to our parish, so I'll cut him some slack (seriously, he's great). I ended up volunteering to go to the party store to buy the necessities. Now, I suppose there's an unwritten rule where if you volunteer,you forfeit your right to whine...BUT this is *my* blog, so here it goes:

I learned that you cannot go into Party City on Dec. 20 and expect to find two dozen coordinating Christmas anything. Fortunately, there were still solid red and solid green items so I could supplement. And never mind the fact that no one at our party would really feel slighted that he got the solid green plate while someone else got the poinsettia plate. The good news is that my spinach dip seemed to go over well (I'm culinarily challenged.)

My 3rd grader's party at school went well Wednesday. I baked 2 dozen plain cupcakes for the kids to decorate as reindeer - they came out cute: chocolate icing, broken large pretzel twists for antlers, a small Reese's peanutbutter cup for the muzzle, holiday M&Ms for eyes (green) and nose (red of course). The red M&M goes on the upside down Reese's, held in place with a tiny dab of icing. After all was said and done and cleaned, stress finally got to me and I ate the remaining icing straight from the can. So much for my diet.

So - for now anyway - I can relax and enjoy the last day and a half leading to Christmas. Until I 'volunteer' for something else! Happy Holidays, all!