8:30 – Wake up
9:00 – Go to my parents house to borrow Christmas lights, dishes, ice chests, propane heater and bother Spidey who wasn’t allowed to go to the party
9:45 – Hit the mall for one of my signature Christmas ornaments, coffee bean, and one last check in a few stores for an outfit to wear that night. No such luck.
10:30 – Costco to pick up the food trays and a few last panic items just in case we ran out of things
11:00 – Grocery store to pick up approx 40 two liters of soda and other assorted mixers
11:30 – Finally we get back to the house and begin unloading the things we bought, mostly without help from the anchor because he has to go meet his brother to change cars “RIGHT NOW” and of course go to the gym while waiting for his friends to show up to help him with his list of things to do
At that point The Ringleader went home to get ready and I took a shower AND washed my hair all while answering The Anchors 200+ phone calls about things from ice to propane. At 4pm the glorious Mrs. TNA aka The Life Saver showed up with outfits for me to wear, hundreds of cookies, and 8 extra hands (well actually 2 but hers just seem to do so much more than mine or anyone elses) to help with the set up and final baking.
By 6pm we were all dressed, bartender was in place and Rockband was successfully assembled and stashed away for later. It was awesome to see our weeks of planning and hours of baking finally all coming together, there was nothing left to do except drink and make sure the oven was in constant rotation. As the booze flowed the Rockband eventually had to come out and The Mean Girls managed to FAIL at Damnit! of all songs.... However, Livin on a Prayer made the whole party erupt into song and I'm pretty sure there were even a few lighters up. Eventually I had to literally turn the T.V. off to shut down the band and get them to help with the clean up. The clean up alone could use its own blog.... Even my parents showed up thus completing the final links in the Lilo DNA chain for all of my friends. Like me, my Mom is a big fan of the "back office" and doesn't really care to engage in mindless chitchat just for the sake of talking. On the other hand there is my Dad who can work a room with the best of them; talking, schmoozing, drinking, and telling awesomely embarrassing stories from my teenage years. THANKS DAD! I'm pretty sure my Dad came away from the party with more friends than I even had there.
The next morning The Ringleader, myself and Stilettos all woke up in various places in my room feeling like we had been ran over by a bus and dragged several hundred feet. I was awoken at around 9am with a phone call from an HOA board member requesting that I clean up the mess we had left at the clubhouse. So I grabbed a trash bag, some paper towels and headed back over to pick up the trail of cookies, pigs in a blanket and toothpicks that had been dropped in a steady trail from my condo to the clubhouse by my intoxicated clean up crew. When I returned to my house I was sure that there had been some sort of natural disaster because there was shit EVERYWHERE. It was so overwhelming that my only choice was to go back to bed I couldn't even make it to IHOP and instead had to request that I be brought back a bacon & cheese omelet and hash browns. The rest of the day was spent laying in bed until I managed to make it over to my parents house to lay on their couch and eat their food where there was not a hazmat worthy cleanup at hand.
All in all it was a success!








