First things first... As of Thursday Mike is now a registered EMT-Paramedic. This is an upgrade from EMT-Basic. I sewed his first Paramedic patch on a uniform so he would be good to go for work on Monday. For now Mike's work schedule will remain the same.
Saturday morning we practiced obedience inside on mats in Harahan, LA. John Runnels was gracious and shared his 30 minute ring time with us. Bern and Grace looked good on the obedience exercises. I was very pleased with Bern's retrieves. Hopefully, he can keep it together for the obedience trial the next 2 weekends.
We dashed home from Harahan to finish LCCOC awards and holiday party preparations. I figured the most folks we would have would be 40 but I think we exceeded that number by about 5. I fixed lemon pepper pork tenderloin, pineapple sweet and tangy shrimp, and beef stroganoff meatballs. To this we added 25 Raising Cain's chicken strips and rice. There was some leftover meat but the bulk it was eaten. LCCOC club members potlucked the rest.
There are several takeways from the party planning and execution but most were not related to us. Mike and I did great... we had a well thought out plan. However, we were disappointed at the food presentation and lack of serving utensils by the club members. I grabbed cooking spoons to supplement ... my nice stainless stayed safely in the drawer. At the close of the party several folks just abandoned their food plus serving dishes and left them on the buffets. I managed to get a few folks to take some extra food home with them. Most of the abandoned foods were store purchased items in disposable containers - all of it went into the trash (except a few homemade brownies). Between party prep (opening bags of frozen shrimp and meatballs), disposable tableware (40+ appetizer plates, 40+ dinner plates, 40+ dessert, 40+ cups, and zillions of pieces of plastic cutlery), the pirate gift game, and abandoned food, the party generated 3 HUGE garbage bags of trash. Our polycart is full.
Mike and I were elated that we had figured out a way to get the ceiling stereo speakers to function using Mike's Crosly unit. There was a MP3 player playing 166 shuffled holiday songs during the party... the party was so loud nobody even knew it was playing!
I managed to snap several pre-party photos of the house but only one photo during the party. Here is the comparison shots! Michele, our club webmaster, has created a party photo album.
I managed to snap several pre-party photos of the house but only one photo during the party. Here is the comparison shots! Michele, our club webmaster, has created a party photo album.
 |
| Living Room at 5:30 PM |
 |
| Living Room at 7:30 PM |
