Weekend of Fun

Friday evening, I stopped at the Guthrie's clogging barn to help with filling up helium ballons for the Fall Festival the next morning. I think we filled over 1,000 ballons in under two hours. They planned to start at 7:00. I arrived a bit after that and they already had a good start. I was leaving around 8:45. It was a lot of fun with about 14 people working on the project, including Mr. S, who's self-assigned task was gathering the free-floating balloons and moving them away from the immediate area where we were filling them up, tying off the balloons, and adding a 4'(?) ribbon(the ribbon had been cut to length sometime earlier). Once we'd added the ribbon, we'd just give the balloon a flip and just let it hit the ceiling. By the time we finished, the entire clogging barn was a hanging forest of red ribbon.

Saturday morning, we (JM, Jer, and I) headed off to the Fall Festival for the day. We arrived about 8:20 and immediately started helping with getting things ready for the day.

My responsibility was in the "kitchen." Beth coordinates feeding the crowds (planning for around 2,000) with chili (homemade, donated by the gallon), chicken noodle soup, and hot dogs. [Beth was also the one I asked to coordinate the food for our wedding reception, perhaps for obvious reasons--I figured if she could feed 2,000, she could feed less than 150.] Specifically, I spent the day heating up the donated chili and putting together the chicken noodle soup. Thanks to Chris & Mr. W who kept the propane burners going for me--I've never been much good at playing with fire!

JM's responsibility was at the grill. With two grills, he and another guy cooked somewhere around 1800 hotdogs in about 5 hours. Even so, there was a long line most of the lunch hour of people waiting for hotdogs to be ready to serve.

Jer even helped out in the getting ready for the day. He would run bunches of balloons from the clogging barn to the people that were tying them to various tents and signs around the festival. He then spent most of the day hanging out and enjoying the festival with some of the kids he knows from clogging.

The three of us did get to spend at least an hour toward the end of the festival playing the games together and having fun. Then JM and I joined the rest of the clogging group for a performance at the end of the festival. After the performance, we took the time to relax and visit with some friends we hadn't seen in probably a year, then we pitched in with the clean-up. We left before everything was put away, but it was close to 7:30.

At home, we grabbed a quick bite, showers/baths all around, and headed to bed!

Sunday morning we went to church. After church, we took Johnny and Claudia (children in a family that started attending our church recently) with us out to Bear's Den. We picked up hot dogs on the way out and ate them at a picnic table before we hiked out to the rocks and spent time climbing around. We stopped for slushies on the way back to drop off Johnny and Claudia after we been out for a couple of hours. Then three of us went to hang out at the library for awhile. Jer picked up about 7 books and a DVD that he wanted to check out. JM found a book he wanted and I picked up a book from the new book shelf and one that I had on hold.

From the library, we headed to pick up Jackson and Ben (children from another family at church). Jackson, Ben, Jer, and I went to Awana. After Awana, we dropped Jackson and Ben off at their home and home ourselves. On the way home, Jer was asking for "SWAT Policeman pizza."

At home, Jer headed to bed and I went to find my pour pizza recipe, which I had an idea for converting into "SWAT Policeman pizza." SC had borrowed my recipe book with that recipe a couple of weeks earlier (along with my mixer to make cookies), so I called and asked for a return. He and SarahS brought back all the borrowed items. By the time they arrived, Jer was asleep, but they stayed and chatted with JM and I for a bit.

Monday morning, Columbus Day. JM had Jer for the day, so he had taken the day off. I had a normal day of work, which meant I didn't have to go in until noon. The result being that we slept in. After we finally got up, we made a trip over to the grocery store to pick up the ingredients we needed for "SWAT Policeman pizza" and then we made the pizza for lunch. Using the pour pizza recipe, we added blue food coloring to the batter (it turned out greener than I had hoped). Baked it for the first 15 minutes. Then when we added the cheese and pizza sauce, we also added pepperoni layed out as an "S." (I would've spelled out "SWAT" but there isn't enough room for that in a 9X13 pan.) Then baked for the last 15 minutes, as usual. Jer seemed to accept it as "SWAT Policeman pizza" and I was glad to be able to do something a little creative.

All weekend, the highs were in the 80's or 90's--beautiful weather for being outdoors and didn't feel much like fall at all.