Thursday, March 14th

A nicer day in the valley with a promise of much better days ahead.  No clouds, no wind, no rain; maybe this is the Arizona we signed up for.
  We went to koffee klatch this morning, with double good news; free donuts an dour table was picked first.  This is something I could get accustomed to, a great way to start the day.

 

  After coffee we had to basically take the entire room apart and set he tables up for the Ladies tea.  It was an open square with two rows on the side.  They had 61 ladies signed up for it,  The set up was changed this year to accommodate the salad bar idea.  The tables all had table cloths and decorations on them.  Everyone brings their own tea cup, tea bags and milk if they want it.  Then the organizing committee ladies made the salads up in some large bowls, most were pretty much complete in a bag with the dressing to be added.  The Caesar salad Marg made up was the exception, where she washed and cleaned the Romaine lettuce, made her own dressing and even rubbed the bowl with garlic cloves.  You know it was great and the proof was that there was not left when the hungry hordes were through. 
  When we finished setting the room up we went back to our place to change and bring everything Marg wanted.  This included her teapot that looks a little like the one from Alice in Wonderland and some china cups for decoration and of course the salad fixin's.  That's how they say it here.  I loaded up the 7 1/2 gallons of water and away to the clubhouse, where I got it on to boil.  The other guys showed up and we got carafe's washed to use for hot water.  We pretty much used all the water, and had a large pot of tap water boiling on backup, but it wasn't required.  Some of those gals must have been pretty full of tea.
  Once the ladies were seated, we started serving the hot water and I took some pictures.  At the outset the pastor's grandchildren sang a few songs.  They are pretty good considering they 11, 13 and 15, cute kids.  This was followed by the food and the day was interspersed with gift draws awarded to the lucky ladies drawn.  Then the four of us guys handed out hot water and later ice cream or sherbet in what I would call dixie cups.  The only mis-queue was the fellow opening the ice cream got into the ones for the St Patrick's day meal, so we had way to many opened.  The good news is we all had lots.  By then it was clean up and I washed a ton of dishes while Kenny dried them.  Then when the ladies disbursed we had to put the room back to the usual order to be available for the breakfast Saturday morning.  Moved a lot of tables and chairs today.
  By then we were pretty tired and  went back to our place.  As luck would have it Marg had lots of visitors after and she gave them each a cocktail while they hashed out whatever it was they came to talk about.  I sat at the computer posting the pictures of the tea on the tenants assoc. FB page.  We went for an early supper as we were both pretty hungry.  The salads were pretty picked over by the time either of us got to eat.  Supper tonight was IHop and we both chose well and were happy and full at the end.  After we got back home [yes I guess it's one of our homes], we went to the animal races.  We both won 4 of the 8 races.  I did OK, but after losing the first three races, Marg went from one dime to 3 and then really started cashing in.  It was a large crowd and they were rowdy tonight, so a fun night.