Christmas Crazies in May

I have been kind of crazy lately...volunteering and being a mom.

My big thing I volunteer to do right now is co-chair running the school store.
It's not been very time consuming until lately. My duties involve doing the finances and ordering school supplies and then dealing with any other fundraiser stuff. My partner deals with the volunteers and stocking the snacks made available.

Between getting Field Day shirts and their orders, and coordinating with teachers about what to have on their supply lists and then getting the info right with the supplier - I'M STARTING TO GO CRAZY!

Not that it's hard, what I've been doing, but that the t-shirts ran into a snag that required some serious foot work towards the end, and the school supplies is just downright tedious. If one thing gets left off, the students will suffer. And I'm trying to price a profit too.

In the middle of these two things, #2 child had a massive production last week. In a nut shell, a mini Epcot Center is set up in the school gym, each student is assigned a country with another student (we were Holland this year - Sister was Egypt when she was in 2nd grade), and perform a 1 1/2 hour long production about each country, showcasing what they learned about each one during the year. There were 16 countries and it is a pretty amazing little show.

But I said I would help chaperon two of the three performances for the little Kindergartens that come to watch the show during the week. And then I also fit in purchasing and preparing two representative foods from our country. We didn't have fun food like Greece - who did mini gyros, or Russia, who provided Beef Stroganoff, or even Italy, who served lasagna. We served Archway's Almond Windmill cookies and Gouda cheese. Only, Gouda was so expensive I just decorated with the Gouda packages that were imported from Holland had windmill's on them, and I faked the cheese to it and served Monterrey Jack (it was much cheaper). No one seemed to care.

Well, I'm finished with "Around the World", but now I have a year end parent's council meeting tomorrow with a presentation of profits from the store, and I must pack for my daughters two night camping trip to the Barrier Island camp at Camp St. Christopher that I gleefully, and with crossed fingers, signed up to chaperon. The crossed fingers were because EVERY parent signed up to chaperon this trip and I desperately wanted to be one of the six chosen.

Luckily this hot weather we've had of late is cooling down, as we will be sleeping "Summer Camp style" in non-climate controlled cabins on the beach. We should have a ton of fun, I just didn't bank on it being smack in the midst of this other stuff.

But - life is good! We had a fantastic Mother's Day party here at the house. My mother, his mother and father, and all of our siblings and their families were here (Daddy was out of town - we missed him being here!). We even had my precious neighbor Nancy (who is Julia's Godmother). It rained and stormed all day - so no swimming in the pool - but the men kept us outfitted in drinks like Amaretto sours, champagne, strawberry daiquiris, wine, beer - basically whatever our heart's desired.

Since we were supposed to be in the pool, we had all kinds of yummy "hand/finger food", jalepeno poppers, taquitos, many flavors of wings, and other dips and snacks. Ice cream sandwiches were for dessert. It wasn't fancy - but dang. . .all of it hit the spot and led to a truly relaxing and very laugh filled day! I'll do Mother's Day like that again any time.