More Surprises Than Expected

Okay, so I am finally feeling better so I can now talk about the surprise 50th birthday party we had for my sister, Michelle, on Sunday.

My niece Vanessa did a great job organizing everything and picked a real swanky restaurant to have the party at. Her friend is the chef there so she worked on the food part, I did the invitations and Veronica picked up some of the decorations, along with Vanessa.

Patrick and I headed to BJ's to pick up the cake and we all met at the restaurant about an hour before the guests were to arrive.

Decorations were put up and pictures of Michelle's life were put onto a poster board. Guests started arriving and the place filled up quickly. Some of our relatives were unable to come as one of my mother's sisters had been rushed to the hospital the day before. Friends of Michelle and Mike's came from all over and were all anxious for her arrival. After a few false alarms, Michelle and her husband Michael arrived and the party then went into full force.

One of the things that none of us really thought about prior to the food coming out was the quantity of food you get at these swanky type restaurants. If you have ever been to one of those fancy places you know that quantity is just not there. You get a salad that is pretty much unidentifiable with leaves instead of lettuce. The entree is always quite pretty, but doesn't take up much of the plate.

The appetizers disappeared in moments and if I hadn't been sitting right by one of the tables, I wouldn't have had an opportunity to get anything. The buffet was a salad of questionable greens, pasta and chicken and rolls. In a matter of just a few minutes the food was gone. Gone. Some people were still in line, others, like me, hadn't even gotten up to get anything. After quite awhile another couple of batches of pasta and chicken were put out and, poof, like a magician was there, it disappeared. I think people thought, since it was a buffet, that piling food up on their plate was an okay thing to do.

Unknown to us there was panic in the kitchen because that was all the food they had designated for the party. They scrambled and eventually more chicken and pasta (completely different from the previous) was put out and I finally got to eat. By this time some people had left so we got the cake out and we all sang, which seemed to be something that was very important to Michelle!

As the party wound down, the plan was that Michelle was going to take JaeMae home since Vanessa would have dropped her off 12 hours later. Veronica left with her friend as other people were getting ready to leave. Patrick and I were planning our escape when Vanessa got a call from Veronica that she had gotten into a car accident and she wanted Michelle to go to her.

So Michelle and Mike left, we decided that I would take the baby, presents and balloons to my house until Vanessa finished up at the restaurant. Patrick was nice enough to get the car seat into my car along with JaeMae's 2 bags of toys, diapers, etc.. While I was gathering the gifts, Patrick took the baby to my car and Vanessa got the party bill and I almost had a coronary. It was much higher than it should have been given the food problems so I asked Vanessa if she wanted me to speak with someone about it. She did, so I spent a couple of minutes talking with her friend the chef with my arms full of balloons and presents. I left them to figure it all out and headed to my car.

Patrick had buckled the baby in and covered her with a blanket, so he and I thought we'd go find Veronica at the accident site. We didn't, so we headed to my house. As we were turning onto my road, Michelle called and asked when I was coming to pick up Veronica. HUH? So we headed back, and there was Veronica's cute little car all crunched in the hood on the back of a tow truck! We swapped the baby, presents and balloons for the girls and off we went following the tow truck to the body shop. Veronica was pretty upset with herself for crashing into a pick up truck and was really upset about her car being crunched.

I dropped her and her friend Gina at Gina's car, dropped off Patrick and I went home to my Hannibal, who missed me as much as I missed him.

Within hours, as I had expected, a sore throat and cold had settled in and wiped me out for a few days.

Vanessa got $200 off the bill and Veronica's car will be fixed in a couple of weeks, so all's well that ends well.