A Treehouse Point Of View

Well the new year has started with a bang.  We got through Christmas wonderfully and managed somehow to fit all of William's new things in his rapidly full room.  If he had a twin bed right now instead of a toddler bed we'd really be in trouble lol.

Drew's the president of the JC's this year and I'm the Membership Director.  So no more Treasurer duties for me, *cries*.  I actual miss it lol.  But I'm still doing all the membership spreadsheets and all that jazz that I was doing last year since I had basically took over for the VP/Dir that weren't doing anything.  But I don't mind it, it's been fun.  I've also taken on the task of Newsletter Editor.  Which holy crap I'm loving!  I had never used InDesign before but I'm finding that I adapted to the program really well and been so much fun to put together.

Quiz

So things have calmed down a bit since fest is done.  The final paperwork is mostly finished.  As I've very much turned in Yonder in some aspects, I'm sure I'll be messing around with the spreadsheet for months figuring stuff out heh.

We still have the explostion of fest stuff that has yet to be put away.  At this point it's getting everything washed and then finding places to put things.  Besides the computers, our third bedroom has mostly become a large room of storage that is rapidly running out of walking space.  There's currently just enough room to step your feet inbetween the stuff to get to the computers.

The actual fest is done.  We've got recovery party this weekend which should be tons of fun.  Then for me it's wrapping up the final numbers and getting CKC/Day Distributing paid off.  Not to mention figuring out, well just how much did we make this year.

We would up not breaking the promised land of 1000 regular kegs, we did break the number with the virtual kegs from the bottle pub.  Last weekend was so-so and ended just about the way we came in, with lots of rain. 

It has definitely been a fun year, I didn't get my official kilt inspector t-shirt because I waited too long and they were outta my size, but oh well there's always next year.

Fest is almost over.  Last weekend is coming up, and then we'll be having our recovery party next weekend.

It's been a really good year, we've already surpassed overall keg totals from the last 2 years (which were tied at 804) and it's looking like we'll easily be able to pass up the total from 3 years ago which was 886.  If we have a weekend like last weekend we could even pass up 4 years ago which would put us over 1000 kegs which would be awesome.

They are predicting rain right now which could put a damper on the weekend.  I'm hoping that as the weekend gets closer the forecast will change enough to give us that great weather we've been having.

So last week we attempted to go to the JC meeting together, all 3 of us. 

We showed up at the VFW to find that there was a tool sale there and after standing around for 15 minutes watching the rain clouds coming in threatening to down pour on us...Dana went inside to find out what was going on.  Low and behold it turns out that they've been telling everyone that our meeting is at the KC hall tonight and didn't bother to inform us, big surprise...note strong dose of sarcasm.

So far fest is going pretty well.  We've hit the halfway point and so far we're ahead in kegs from last year since the last time I checked.  Which is great considering that it's been a steady loss in keg counts the last few years.  The weather has been great this year, first weekend we just don't consider having happened since it was a complete wash and definitely the smallest Wk 1 beer payment we've ever made to CKC.

And for the first time ever I actually have more alcohol on site then Drew does lol.  With the remainder of my Smirnoff from last year and a couple bottles of yummyness that I picked up recently, I also received 2 cases of mystery Smirnoff from Jason at Day Distributing.  Weeee hehe.  After having been rather plowed this last weekend, I'm looking forward to continuing in that tradition the rest of the run, but not to quite the extent that I got this past weekend when I forgot to eat dinner but still had plenty to drink.  I got to the point where my heart wouldn't stop racing and felt like I'd gone up and down the hill several times.  But a soda seemed to help and was a brief distraction, then it magically transformed itself into a mug of cider, love how that works hehe.

Turns out we actually killed two kegs first weekend.  In addition to the GB from Dragons, Sots had a Smithwicks in the cooler that was done with.

In other news:  We spent Tuesday evening in the emergency room with William.  He was having retractive breathing, asthma like.  They had to have him use the nebulizer a few times, which became ultra cool when they brought out the mask with the turtle face on it.  When the night started getting pretty long and William was obviously tired and wanting to go home they put on one of the Land Before Time movies which was perfect since he's so into dinasaurs lately.  Then he was so into the movie that he didn't want to leave heh.  But they sent us home with a nebulizer and some meds, and said he may never have the problem again or it could happen again, no way to tell.

I stayed home with him yesterday and only had to use the neb in the morning, the rest of the day he was breathing fine.  So hopefully when he gets up in a little bit that'll still be the case.

Definitely not how I thought we'd be spending our Tuesday night, but the results were fairly positive so that makes me happy.

Well first weekend is in the books and a record weekend, though not for the kegs killed. 

Kegs killed = 1  Rain = Drenching to the point of them actually closing festival early on Sunday  Fun factor = Off the scale

Despite the rain and crazyness we were still having loads of fun last weekend.  On Sunday the rain was so bad that there was a lake out front of Foaming Stein big enough for patrons to be belly flopping in.

Definitely one to remember hehe.

Well, William's b-day party is tomorrow. 

We're mostly ready for it, but there's so much I've got to do yet.  I've still gotta do another run with the vaccum sometime today and a little spot cleaning in the bathrooms, maybe some brief dusting and I'll be happy with the status of the clean factor in the apartment.

But I've also got to bake cakes sometime today, gotta pick up ice for the cooler tomorrow, get balloons blown up at the party store, pick up William's present from my parents at Toys R Us (it was too big for my car so I've gotta procure Mandy's assistance), cut up meat & cheese and prepare it all on a lovely tray arrangement, oh and any other food lay out that needs to be done.

In the midst of all that today we've gotta get our tent set up, attend the ale tenders meeting, and I've got to continue working on get the spreadsheet ready for fest next weekend, as well as get my email sent to the bank to get the money ordered for first weekend, and tons of other stuff.

So needless to say, it's way too much stuff to pack into the time frame I've got and I'm hoping that by the time William's party rolls around tomorrow that I'm not in a sour mood because I haven't gotten everything done that needed to be done heh.

I started a photo gallary with some pictures of William over the last year.

http://picasaweb.google.com/jennifer.nerdahl/William

Lots of fun was had on the 4th at what seems to be turning into an annual deal.  We once again went to the Evans household, this time sans the elder Evans.  This year Mandy was throwing the bash while the elders were outta town.  And as commonly happens with younger folk, she had a bigger turn out then dear ole dad did last year!

Mandy had some pics from the weekend which I shall link to http://picasaweb.google.com/MLEvans16

This last weekend we went down to my parents lake house on Lake Okoboji for the weekend.  It was so much fun.

We started out the weekend with a trip to good ole Walmart in search of some sandles and then followed it up with an excellent dinner just the 3 of us at a restraunt while waiting for my parents to get into town.

The next day while Drew and my Dad went golfing my Mom and I did a little grocery shopping and took William to this awesome toy store.  The had so many things he could play with in there, he had too much fun and didn't want to leave of course.

Later in the day we went out on the boat and parked at this little spot that my parents like to go to where some of their friends do too and tied up.  This time William was not so afraid to get in the water and have some fun.  Pretty soon he was jumping off the boat to me.  Definitely a switch from last time.

We wrapped up the evening with a grilled meal outside on the porch watching the boats go by and a camp fire to end the night.

Seeing Serenity on the big screen last night was definitely worth it. 

The organizers of the event I think need to change a few tactics but what do ya do.  For example they had everybody in the same line waiting outside, will call or people that hadn't purchased tickets yet.  Then when they finally let people inside they had people that hadn't purchased tickets yet coming around through the other door, basically getting in before all these people that pre-paid to get in. 

Plus Drew & I didn't get given a ticket to put in the door prize drawing when we walked in even though we should have for being the first 100 in the door, which also meant we didn't get the little goodie bag that came with that.

They also could have started letting people in sooner so that it didn't take so long for all the people putting their raffle tickets in for items.  Instead of starting at 11:30 pm and then starting the movie by 12:10, they didn't get the movie started until 12:37.

But despite all that stuff, it was a very fun night.  The organizer chick wound up interviewing Drew afterwards because he was wearing a shirt that said "I married Saffron".