I went over on Friday to help her with the final preparations getting the house ready for Saturday. She shares a lovely house with Nick, a long time friend of Richard's, who owns the house. Nick is a great guy, but he is a guy and this house is a boy's house for sure. Vicki cleaned the downstairs on Friday during the day, then she attended Maryke's graduation ceremony in the evening with Jenn, Richard and Jeremy. Amber and I spent our time in the evening making the house look nice. Starting with a cover over the couch, too bad I don't have a "before" picture, so you could see what an improvement this made.
We hung decorations and new curtains in the dining room.
A large Congrats poster on the big blank wall in the pool/dart board room. And to give Nick credit, having a pool table and a dart board was most excellent during the party! I did not take a picture of the other wall which has a six foot poster of a woman in way too short shorts with her rear end hanging mostly out, a boy's house to be sure.
David contributed the tables from his work and rented chairs for the occasion. Amber came up with the lovely linens and more decorations. Gotta love the Dollar Store!
That's Nick on the right side of the frame.
Amber spent some time planting a bunch of flowers and really making the back yard look nice.
The entire yard was covered in games. Pictured below is a new one called Ladder Golf, that Jazmin gave to Amber for Christmas. This game is so fun! There are two sets of colored golf balls connected to each other by a string. You toss the golf balls and string toward the ladder on the opposite side trying to wrap it around on of the rungs to score points. The top rung is one point, the middle is two and the bottom rung is three. Fun, fun, but stay out of the way of those flying golf balls.
Amber is shown here tossing a set, and you can see the points scored by her opponent.
David and Betsy relax in the sun and shade before the party moves into full swing. The weather was hot, but the back yard had lots of shade and a nice breeze, so the day ended up being perfect, of course.
David brought both sets of his washers, which were well used during the day.
It was all family at first, which suits me just fine.
The house had a nice covered patio, so it was easy to get out of the sun and eat or relax in the shade.
Amber found some window paint, so she wrote messages on almost every window, which I thought was a cute idea, plus it just washes off with the hose!
I think this might have been the only time Amber sat down all day, bless her heart!
Besides the beautiful veggie tray, I made the best guac ever!
Ladder Golf got moved over to accommodate croquet, which I learned might just be my sport! There were slight obstacles with lumpy tufts of grass on the course, but it was really fun.
Amber had a great idea to have a games tournament. Teams of two would sign up and compete in all the games available, Washers, Cornhole, Ladder Golf, Pool, and Darts. Croquet was ousted for tournament purposes. It was a great idea, however, the actual set up of how play would progress was a bit flawed and they paired the same two teams against each other, moving from game to game. Peggy and I were a team and played against Vicki and her boyfriend, Tom. We started with the endless game of washers, which Peggy and I lost in a dead heat to the end. Then we moved over to Cornhole and talk about a game that lasts forever! I started routing for which ever one of us had a chance to win and end the game. Poor Peggy did not realize she was paired with the least competitive person at the party, and she is more like Monica in that regard and really wants to win. We did battle back from a 12-0 deficit to 19-20, and took forever to score the exact points we needed to reach 21. Tom finally score one point and he and Vic defeated us again. By that time, I think even Peggy was glad it was over despite the loss. We were not only the oldest of the participating teams, but the slowest, holding up the progress of the tournament and by the end of our Cornhole game, everyone at the party was watching and waiting to see if we would ever finish. No pressure or anything.
Here is the board for keeping track of the winning teams. It never advanced farther than this, as we took so long to finish our Cornhole game that most everyone had lost interest in the tournament. Oh well! Games continued to be played all day anyway.
Later in the day things started to wind down. Of course, Odin, Slater, (Jenn & Richard's beagle) and Scooter were in attendance. A few of the other guests brought in dogs through out the course of the day and they were all very well behaved for the most part. Except Scooter, of course, who barked all day and annoyed everyone. We expect nothing less from the little darling and he spent a considerable amount of time locked in Amber's room. But late in the after noon, when there was a lull in the action, Odin and Slater were just exhausted as you can see below.
While the dogs slept, there was no shortage of continuing conversation in the patio.
The party picked up again in the evening when many friends of Jeremy's made their way back to Amber's after making the rounds at other graduation celebrations around town. They brought the Patron and the Jaegermeister (spelling may be off) and the shots began.
All in all, a really good party, lots of fun and games and laughter. I am so pleased I was able to share the day with Jeremy and all the people he loves. The only thing that could have made it better for me was if Josh and Raym had been there. Maybe next time.
No comments:
Post a Comment