The Blue and Gold Banquet

 As you can see, I mostly managed to survive the Blue and Gold Banquet. There was a short time there when I wasn't sure that was going to happen!

I chased around all day yesterday, trying to pull together the tablecloths (that ended up being white; nobody had yellow) and food together. Then my sweetie nicely took the day off to help with the preparations. We were expecting about 100 people.

Fortunately, there were other scout leaders helping make soup. My sweetie made two extra large crockpots of chili while I headed to Costco with the Gym Rat. He still has a card, and I'm a Sam's Club girl. But the main thing we needed to buy was rolls and Costco has the best rolls (ok, my sweetie makes the best rolls, but there was NO WAY I was going to add that to our craziness).

After Costco, the Gym Rat took off so he could get ready for work and I made three more stops before I finally got home just in time to take Scout to kindergarten.

I was in charge of making the dirt pudding. I had a huge can of pudding we had purchased from the cannery, so I assumed that would be about right for feeding 100. Boy was I wrong.

I mixed the pudding and poured it into cups while the Drama Queen smashed Oreos with a rolling pin and sprinkled them on top. Curly stuck a gummy worm on top and set the cup on the tray. We made a great team...until I ran out of pudding mix.

After searching our storage room and not finding another can, I started calling the neighbors. I didn't want to change brands in the middle and Jello brand is expensive! After half a dozen calls, I finally found a can that one of my awesome neighbors agreed to donate. (Thanks, Modina!) After running to pick it up, we finished the last 30 cups. Then it was time to deliver the reminder fliers to each cub scout's house so they didn't forget.

The Dog Walker did all the running (good thing because I was starting to run out of steam). By the time we were finished, it was time to head for the church and put up the tables. My sweetie drove over in the big van and I took the minivan. I was going to swing by the grocery store first and pick up the ice and balloons. When I walked into the store, it was pretty evident that my pre-order hadn't worked. We waited for about 10 nail-biting minutes. It was nearly 4:30 by the time we got to the church and dinner was at 6:00.

It took us about 45 minutes to transform the gym into a party room. Then we headed back home to get the food. Things went off without a hitch after that. We fed lots of people and the Dog Walker gave an awesome speech. Then he and I slipped out and over to another Blue and Banquet going on at a different church so he could speak there too.

I was a little worried about missing Sport receive his Wolf badge, but I shouldn't have worried. My sweetie just took plenty of time with the cheers and other awards. When we walked back into the gym it was about 2 minutes later that the awards were given. Bean Dip earned his Bear and Taco got his Bobcat.


After many "good jobs" from the parents, we finally got cleaned up and arrived home about 8:30. That was just enough time to get the kids settled before I headed off to basketball practice. I was so tired I could hardly run down the court! It's about 1:30 AM here now and I probably should have waited until morning to write this post, but I knew how anxious you all were to hear how things. went. Maybe now I can actually get some sleep!