Party Planning

One of my favorite sayings is, “Intelligence is not knowing all the answers, it’s knowing where to find them.” Since the arrival of the internet, we should all be geniuses by now. I use it a lot, but I’m not sure it helps my IQ score. What it does help with is party planning ideas. I saw on one website how to turn an ordinary cupcake into a little wizard by using an upside down ice cream cone. It was a simple idea, which I elaborated on, and the photo today is the final product. It’s my test model, as I need to see if the cone will go soft by tomorrow because I really don’t want to make 16 of these Saturday morning before the party. Friday would work much better, so I made the cupcakes today and froze them and hopefully can decorate them Friday. I found those cute little “silly feet” cupcake holders at Wal-Mart before we left. They were only $8 for a pack of four so I bought two packs thinking we’d have only about 6 kids at the party. When I got here and learned it’s required to have all the kids of the same gender in Kaleb’s class at his birthday party, I went into panic mode. I hadn’t brought enough supplies for 16 kids. I found the cupcake holders on the internet, but shipping them over here was going to be $80 alone. I found them on-line in Oslo, but to buy eight of them would be $80, plus shipping. Who knew such a simple thing was going to run me ragged. I finally bought them via Amazon.com (for $10 a pack) and had them shipped for free to our house in Mt. Vernon, and our neighbor and friend, Nancy Schaub shipped them to me here (plus a bunch of other stuff) for $40. A woman’s gotta do what a woman’s gotta do. The Schaub’s visit in September saved my butt as they brought many extra party supplies when they came for a visit. Most everything for this party is imported from America (but made in China, I’m sure.) I like the looks of my little wizard – it was Kaleb’s idea to add the magic wand. I can’t wait to see how all the kids react to the details I’ve been working on.

I guess if I paid more attention to the details in the Norwegian language I wouldn’t be struggling so much. We got our written portion of the test back today. I passed OK but my paper was all marked up with corrections. The woman that sits on the other side of me didn’t have a scratch on her paper, but then, she’s one of the best students in the class and she’s been here longer. I got dinged on sentence structure and verb tenses. I knew that was going to happen. I was at a birthday party tonight for a woman from our Connect Group at church, and a woman I’d never met before seemed genuinely impressed that I’d only been speaking the language for three months. I explained to her my struggles with the word order in the sentences and the verb tenses and she shook her head in agreement but also said (in Norwegian), “But I can understand you perfectly, and that’s all that matters.” And therein lies the good news and the bad news for me. I know I’m understood, but I don’t’ want to sound like a two year old when I talk. Oh well, I’ll just try to focus on the positive for now.

I wish Kory could focus on the positive. He came home an absolute crank today. We’ve had beautiful sunshine for several days now, but it’s yet it get above freezing. The sun was gone today by 2:30 so the ground doesn’t even have time to warm up. It took Kory a long time this morning to scrape the ice off the windshield, and then the van door was frozen shut and the lock was frozen so he had to monkey with that. He drove to his boss’ house and had to scrape his windshield too so they could take the work truck out to Giske. The truck’s door and lock were also frozen shut. Then after a long cold day of work (hanging insulation, which he hates because it’s itchy), he had to deal with the whole frozen mess all over again not only with his boss’ truck but with our van once he got back to his boss’s house. There has to be a better way, and I’m sure after today, he’ll come up with something. But the ice is really something here. It amazes me that people can drive their cars on the streets as we can’t even walk on them because they are solid ice. Kaleb said he tried to walk up a hill today but he just kept sliding back down it and couldn’t get anywhere. He’s been taking the bus to school because it’s impossible to ride his bike now. We live right next to the bus stop but it takes me five minutes to get there as I have to go out of my way to walk along grassy edges and cross the road with baby steps. We can’t even walk in our gravel driveway as the ice has filled in between all the rocks and turned it into a smooth icy surface. Everyone is saying that winter has come early. This type of cold, ice and snow is often only in February. Lucky us.

At least Kaleb had an uneventful day. After he finished his homework tonight he went over to Tobias’ to play hide and seek with him and his brothers. I’ve never seen him do his homework so fast. It’s amazing what a little motivation will do. If only I could find some….