Work Work Work!

I volunteered to help cousin Kari (above with baby in one hand and mixer in the other!) make food for the Jesus Women event held tonight at Philadelphia Church.  I’ve done it in the past so I thought I knew what I was in for – a few hours in the kitchen prepping food and I’m done.  But today didn’t quite work out as expected.

Work started at noon, so I spent four hours chopping vegetables, as it was a summer party theme with lots of veggies and dip, fruit and dip, marzipan cakes and finger food.  I had to leave for a few hours to go home and make dinner for Kory and Kaleb so I went from one kitchen to the next.  At least I took 15 minutes to lie down and close my eyes as I was still feeling a bit under the weather and the rest did me some good.

Kaleb was busy all day doing extra school work on his Algebra class, trying to get it done before we leave Norway so he won’t have to do any school work once we are back home.  Smart boy. 

Kory spent a good deal of time in the garage trying to figure out why our brakes are squeaking so much.  He discovered it was the brake pads wearing down, so he went to the car parts store to buy new brake pads (knowing they wouldn’t cost forty dollars like they do back home), but was shocked when they wanted over three hundred dollars for them.  He decided to live with the squeak (easier for him since he’s hard of hearing) and just bring them to Norway next time we return, unless I can find them on the internet cheaper.

I headed back to Philly to attend the Jesus Women event and got sucked back into the kitchen as Kari was running a bit behind.  I never did go to the event as there was too much to do and it didn’t stop until midnight.  I was completely exhausted after six solid hours of running here and there, filling up food that was running low, making coffee, cleaning tables, prepping more food.  Sadly, there wasn’t enough food for everyone as there were far more women that showed up than she expected, so that added a bit of stress to the whole thing.  I felt like I was in one of those reality TV shows where they show all the action in the kitchen that no one sees, as Kari was frantically sending people to the store to buy more food and telling us helpers what needed to be done next.  She never lost her cool though and later said she loves that kind of stress, but it about did me in.

When I got home at midnight, everyone was in bed and the house was quiet, thankfully, as I’d had enough commotion to last me a while.  At least I got to bring home a piece of marzipan cake and now I even know how to make them!