Posts Tagged ‘drinks’
Family Ties
Families come in all shapes and sizes. The older that I get, the more that I realize that the important people in life are not necessarily those that I grew up with or who raised me. I am close to my extended family as I’ve spent a lot of time around my grandma’s siblings and nieces and nephews and their families.
One of the things that I inherited from my grandma is that we claim people we like as relatives regardless of bloodlines. For instance, she had a neighbor who we all called Grandma. Her name was Grandma Meinhardt. Even my grandma called her Grandma. I had no idea until she died that her real first name was Mabel. She was a very dear friend of our family. Grandma also accepted her in-laws as relatives right away. She loved inheriting nephews when her little brother’s eight daughters started getting married. She remembered everyone’s anniversaries and birthdays and always sent cards.
Claire was a dear niece of my grandma’s…Grandma loved bragging about Claire, her niece who was a nurse practitioner. I actually forget that Claire was married to grandma’s nephew, so she is actually related by marriage, accept for the fact that they aren’t married anymore. But she’s still one of my favorite cousins and always will be!
One of my all time favorite things about Claire is that she really doesn’t seem to let much bother her, and she cares so much for her four daughters (3 that she helped raise when she married their dad, and one biological).
Claire invited me on her annual New Orleans trip in June and I happily accepted! The funny part of this trip was when a friend of mine asked who I was going with. Now, I really don’t have a complicated family tree, but when you consider the fact that I’m so close to my extended family and we start getting into Grandma’s nieces and nephews and their kids, it can get a little hard to follow. So, I found myself laughing as I was explaining it.
Claire, and the oldest of the three daughters who she helped to raise, as well as the daughter’s biological mom and step dad were going to be going on the trip along with another one of our cousins. And then me, the random second cousin (I think?)…Six very different people with different personalities from various branches of the family tree living it up in the Big Easy! Half of us had been before and the other half were newbies!
We had an awesome time and the entire trip I kept thinking about how grateful that I am to be connected to these people and how they each have a unique life experience that I can learn from. It was also fun to experience New Orleans with people who had never been before!
Here I am with my unconventional family at a nice lunch at Commander’s Palace, home of the 25 cent martini! I won’t rat people out and tell how many we drank!
Another great trip in the books and another reminder of how grateful that I am for my extended family!
Life in the Land of Oz
I hurried out of work at 4:00 last Thursday afternoon so that I could get to the airport for a 6:00 flight. The sky was gray, but didn’t look bad. I hopped on the highway and turned on the local talk radio station to hear that there were tornado and severe thunder storm watches all across the metro, including in areas along I-635 and I-29, my usual route to the airport from the office. The talk show hosts were telling people to take cover. I kept driving. A guy texted into the radio station and said “I’m in my basement because I’m not a GD moron!” I thought to myself, “I’m not a GD moron, I’m in a hurry and have a flight to catch!”
I kept driving and the farther north that I drove, the darker and scarier the sky looked. I had been in the car for about twenty minutes when I heard that the airport had been evacuated because there was a tornado spotted minutes away. All that I could think about was my little car getting sucked off of the freeway into a tornado. I finally got freaked out enough to pull over at the next exit and found a parking garage in a mixed-use development to wait it out. The tornado watch expired and the airport was open again, so I got back on the road again!
The sky was still black and scary, but I thought, I can survive another twenty minutes in the car. Rain started pouring down in sheets, and hail started beating down on the roof of my car. By this point I wasn’t yet afraid for my safety, I was scared that my poor little car would be all beaten up! The rain got so bad that I couldn’t see and I started driving 20 miles an hour while saying a few Hail Marys just praying that I wouldn’t hit or be hit. I couldn’t pull over because I couldn’t see the side of the road. I’ve never driven through anything like it.
I FINALLY made it to the airport and after driving around the parking garage for 20 minutes, I found a covered spot for my car. I checked the airline app and it said that my flight was still on time. I knew if I hustled, I could make it through security in plenty of time to board. I had NO idea that I was about to walk into a line of about 6,000 people all waiting to get through security. These were all of the people who had already made it through security before the tornado, but had to be rechecked after the evacuation.
People kept cutting in front of me to get to other lines, and I was so angry. Obviously that made no sense because they weren’t doing anything wrong. And everything about this situation was out of my control, so I had no choice but to just go with the flow. So why was I wasting all of that energy? Beats me! I ran into some friends from high school who were trying to catch a flight to Arizona. And then I started making friends in line. After about 90 minutes in the security line and a random airport employee trying to convince me that my flight had been cancelled, I made it through to the other side! I checked at the gate and my flight was delayed for an hour, which didn’t seem so bad.
I ran into my line friends, some trying to get to Tampa, some to Denver, Albuquerque, Chicago, Nashville, and who knows where else, at the hotel bar. Well, it was more like a kiosk with a couple of stools and a cash register. It couldn’t have been a real bar because when I asked for sparkling wine, the bartender said, “we don’t have wine, but we have champagne.” Then he proceeds to serve me sparkling wine…Turns out, the 6,000 people from the security line ended up at the bar/beer kiosk! However, at the time, I had no idea that there was a line and ended up walking right up to the front where my new friends had found stools and cut in front of about 60-70 people. Ooops!
I ended up telling my life story to some guy named Turner, and made some new friends who live in Westport that I’m going to meet up with when they return from vacation in Florida. Before I knew it, I realized that my crappy, energy wasting mood had turned into a cheery, happy, and optimistic attitude. I didn’t seem too stressed when my one hour delay turned into two hours, then three, then we were finally in the air four hours after the regularly scheduled departure! I ended up missing my connection and wasn’t able to get a flight to my final destination until 4:30 the next afternoon,
Gotta love severe weather in the Midwest!
Here’s To 20 Years
Six months ago I was asked to head up the committee that planned and hosted our firm’s 20 year anniversary celebration. I was really excited as I LOVE planning parties. I love it so much that I am planning at least four parties over the rest of the year.
We decided that we would have the party at a local brewery and that we would incorporate a sunflower theme from our save the date cards to invitations, to event space decor. We invited all of our clients, firm members and their spouses, and some of the associated professionals that we work with. All in all, the guest list was over 400.
We spent six months organizing and securing vendors from the event space, to the caterer, baker, and DJ. The brewery provided space for up to 225 people, a bar stocked with their beers and house wine, soft drinks and coffee, a limited number of sunflower centerpieces, and commemorative pint glasses with our logo for party favors for our guests. The caterer is a well known local catering shop run by a husband and wife team. We have used them for several office functions in the past. We chose to have a heavy appetizer buffet for our casual “open house” style reception. We asked for a mix of hot and cold choices with a mix of beef, chicken, seafood, and vegetarian options. We told the DJ that we wanted to be able to play music that would appeal to a wide variety of people, including a diverse age group. He told us not to worry as he had a music catalogue that contains 35,000 songs. The dessert would be cupcakes with simple designs….some had 20s and some were decorated with sunflowers to continue our theme.
215 people RSVP’d that they would be attending our party from 6-10 on Thursday evening. We asked our staff to be available at 4:00 so that we could have all hands on deck to get the event space ready for the party. The event space staff took care of setting up the bar and the caterer put out candles on each of the 8 top rounds and high top rounds and they set up the beautiful food buffet. The baker came and set up a simple but elegant cupcake display complete with white, chocolate, red velvet, and lemon cupcakes. We set up the registration table with preprinted name tags for the guests and trivia questions. We had slips of paper for each guest to answer four trivia questions to be put in a drawing for door prizes.
Our company office manager made a really neat slide summarizing the history of our firm, what we do, our clients, and a slide for each firm member showcasing their families and leisure activities. It played on two jumbo screens throughout the duration of the event.
Before we knew it, guests began to arrive. We had several local clients and associated professionals as well as clients that traveled in from Missouri, Texas, Pennsylvania, and Virgina.
We stopped the music at various times during the event to introduce our firm members and do the drawing for trivia question winners. We had four questions and therefore, four winners. Each winner received a sterling silver piggy bank.
Everyone was raving about the how great the party was and how delicious the food was. The DJ did a great job keeping the music selection varied and pleasing to all in the room.
Finally, by about 9:00, I was able to take a load off and enjoy some food and have a meaningful visit with a couple of clients. The party was a success, but the worst thing about it was that I spent about 15 seconds talking to each person, and there were even people that were there that I never saw or talked to. I guess that comes with hosting a party. But, I was disappointed, it felt like guests started to arrive, and FLASH, the party was over.
Anyway, I’m so glad that we pulled the party off without any major hiccups and that. I’m happy to add a party of 200+ to my list of events planned to date and I hope that I was able to show the company that I can handle a few extra responsibilities.
And that is how the birthday month ended.
To the next 20 years!
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