A Green Day Under The Sun

This past weekend was our annual Summer Festival for our Senior Living Community in Yorba Linda with a Green Day theme.

In the before time, the Festival was two days and primarily populated with booths run by the different Grand Officers and their subordinate officers and other different groups of members.  A few years back, the Festival was changed to a one day format, which for the past two years meant closing at 3:00 pm.  And in 2010, the Festival added vendors and a car show to increase the draw from the public to attend.  There is also usually a giant Estate Sale and that brings a lot of people too.

And in years past, the Festival was in June, but this year it was April.  We were worried that we might get rained on, but the day was bright and sunny.  We were hoping for cooler weather than June and it was some cooler it seemed to me, but it was still in the high eighties and the sun was really, really bright.  (Hissssss!!! Bright Sun bad and mean - Shade good!)

The Associate Matrons traditionally have a booth selling strawberries and ice cream and this year, because no one else was selling coffee drinks, we had iced coffee drinks also.  We went through five cases of mix for the ice cream machine and ran completely out by about 2:30 pm.  Wow!

Unfortunately, we learned that maraschino cherry juice does not come out of clothes and I think that I will need to be buying my chairmen some Target gift cards as a thank you so that they can buy some new things.  It was going to be chocolates or books, but I may have to change that intention now.  Of course, when the cold water just turned the red to pink on the white shirt, I did have a moment where I thought that the thing to do was to dunk the whole shirt in the juice and then it could be a nice even pink everywhere instead of half pink and half white, but of course it wasn't my shirt, so it is easy for me to think that way.

This year was way, way easier than last year when I had the dress booth.  Last year I was there for two or more hours packing up.  This year after we ran out of ice cream, it was just a matter of closing up the containers, wiping everything down, packing it in boxes, taking the loose stuff back inside and letting the guys come take the machines and the tables away - less than an hour and none of it heavy lifting!  Of course we did have a couple of wonderful brothers who took away the trash for us, so that helped too! :-)

We also had lots of meetings this past weekend.  I had five to attend, but only made four of them.  My partner had to make the other ones.  I must say that texting has made that a lot easier.  I went to my first meeting, he went to the other one and when he moved to the third meeting, he was able to text me when they were coming up on something I had to be there for and I popped out of the one meeting, went across the parking lot, appeared at meeting three, got done there and went back across the parking lot.  Then I had to go to meeting four that day and meeting five was on Sunday - Whew!  But at least I think my budgets are done - Yay!

Next weekend, I am going to be in Chowchilla, but not in Tulare.  I have more meetings - Sigh!