The Museum of Meri

 It was a doozy of a weekend!  Robb brought the tables and chairs that we borrowed from church and stored the first batch of them on the deck for the night.  The rest stayed in the van.

Due to possible rain late Friday night, we couldn't do the setup of the deck and driveway until early Saturday morning.  Meri and her friends had strung up her Polaroid shots all over the house the day before, blocking certain cupboards.  Yeah... how are we going to make pizza for dinner??

Maddy and Matthew arrived and were a god-send in helping with everything! After the pizza was eaten first of course.

They set up the tent frame as far as they could go.  Whew!  That saved tons of time!  They helped us move the old car that doesn't work OUT of the driveway.  It's going to Teen Challenge within the next week or three.

Then at 4am the next morning, my alarm went off.  I'd only gotten about 4 hours of sleep as my mind had been racing about all the things I needed to do when the alarm went off.  And when I thought to myself, "GET YOUR MIND OFF THE SETUP!!!" I started thinking about what needed to be done for the tear down... "STOP IT!"

So anyway, the alarm went off.  We started dragging mannequins, tables, chairs, moving cars, setting up the tulle, positioning the piano and counter for the slideshow.  Got the IT guy (Robb) involved to coordinate getting the pics off my office computer and out to display on our big screen tv.  Teamviewer wasn't going to do the trick for this one.  The house wifi was JUST out of reach where I wanted the tv.  He also was in charge of being the choir/jazz band dj at the kitchen counter, playing my youtube videos of Meri's performances.

Beauty and the Beast played on the living room computer non-stop.

 

SO many friends and family came through.  Even though only about a hundred signed the guest book, Meri knew that lots hadn't done that and in looking at the cards that people left, we think we were at about 200 guests.

Matthew went around with Robb's cell phone and took loads of pictures for me to commemorate the day.  YAY!

  

As I was talking with some people inside, my mother-in-law asked, Who is that tall man on the porch, talking to Meri?  Hmmm..

 

Didn't know immediately, so I went out there.  Lo and behold, it was our best man from our wedding and his wife, whom we'd never met!  

 

They live a whole 12 miles away and we haven't run into them the last 5 years they've lived there.  REALLY?!!!  Yes.  What a great surprise!  We visited inside with them for a good long between filling up the bagel buckets and draining ice from the cream cheese spread varieties.

Another surprise guest was Meri, Ryan, Maddy and my old Taekwondo instructor!  I'm so glad he was able to come!

Maddy is the only one that didn't make it to black belt under his instruction.

I got some good visiting in with my favorite cousin, Julie, and her husband, who is the favorite cousin-in-law, through marriage.  It's who you know.  

Got a tight bear hug from an uncle with a big smooch on the cheek.  He always makes you feel super!

My brother and his friend came too!  I only got a pic of their backs.  darn.

Of course, Matthew got some pics in of his bride.  They will be celebrating their 1st anniversary in a week or so!

When I'd talked to Mark on Friday, he wasn't sure if he could make it, but he did!  It was a day of surprises.

We dubbed the deck display of Meri's life, the "Museum of Meri."  

 

All the dress making dummies looked awesome and we filled all eight of them.  

 with three tables full of memorabilia from babyhood on.

 

I was afraid we wouldn't be able to, but wow...  I even had to leave some costumes upstairs! 

 

 

A few of my sewing buddies showed up and admired the set up, then sat inside to talk.  I may be doing a write up for the next sewing newsletter, talking about the kindness of sewing friends!  :) 

On the back deck, we set up the 10-20 foot tent that we'd purchased for Maddy and Matthew's wedding.  We put a small rip in one corner while we put it up this time.  When we use it for Meri's future wedding (some day), We'll put flowers over that corner.  The tent was perfect and filled up almost all the deck.

We served bagels and Meri and her friends had made 3 kinds of spreadable cream cheeses.  Plain (they added a little milk to regular cream cheese), berry (raspberry, powdered sugar and some strawberry preserves), and honey/walnut (lots of honey, walnuts and powdered sugar).  All delish!!!  I may never have to buy Panera's spreads again!  Maddy and Matthew went at 6am to pick up the bagels from Panera and then helped set up everything.

A different bucket for every type of bagel.  And a tub of ice for the cream cheese spread.  

 

There were so many bagels leftover, I gave a flat to my sister-in-law and said, here!  Take some to work on Tuesday!  Did the same for Robb and a couple others.

Still have a full deep freezer...

We also served thawed mix fruit from Sam's Club, the mints that we'd made, Robb made several egg/breakfast casseroles and Meri asked one of her friends mom's to bring several pans of her famous cinnamon rolls with frosting to die for!  Oh yum...

Drinks were coffee, peach tea, lemonade and bottles of water.  We also had three toasters for those that wanted to toast up their bagels.  We froze a couple tubs of the tea into huge blocks of ice to put in with the tea so that as it melted, it wouldn't get watered down.  We also dumped some frozen fruit in with the lemonade and it was delicious!  Up until it kept clogging the spout...  Oh well, we scooped out from the top also. 

The weather was perfect!  It did heat up slowly during the morning, but with the tables in shade for the morning, the guests slowly pulled them closer to the garage to get them out of the sun.   By the time the party was over, we let the tables get sun.  no big.  until we had time to tear them down.

Meri had glue sprayed the boards and plastered on all the photos I'd saved on my computer since she was a baby.  She ran out of boards by high school and we improvised with some square plywood boards we had in the garage.  Now she has a couple things she can take to her new apartment in August!

 We'll do something different with the tall boards.

The red/black tulle started at the front pergola and wrapped around the porch posts to the back.

Meri had a tray of her senior pics that we had printed at the last minute at Walmart.  Not too many were taken by guests.  Bummer.  I think they passed there too quickly and didn't see them. 

Now we'll have to make playing cards out of them... :\  OR give them out with the Christmas letter this next December.  Yeah... we'll do that.

Her best friend made her those map roses.  Aren't they adorable?

The t-shirt boards and then more pics of the Museum of Meri.

AND the Beauty and the Beast corner.  Actually it should be the Belle corner because we didn't get the Beast costumes for it.  But it looked great on the deck!

On Sunday, when we got home from church, Maddy helped Meri pin on her cap and do her hair.

Then the obligatory "before the actual graduation" pics and encouragement.

 "Family that was there" pic.

 AND the ceremony...  I had kleenex handy and needed them.

  Processional

Choir.  They sang, "Only in Sleep" with Meri's beautiful solo.  If you missed it a week or so ago, you can click here.  Even in the stifling gym, we got goosebumps.

Apparently they get air conditioning NEXT year...

They played "We had the time of our lives" by Green Day and the seniors all grabbed a rose and took it their moms...  *sob*  Meri was crying by the time she got to me and I sobbed too, hugging her.  She got snot on my shirt.  The rose still sits in water by my sink.  SO pretty!

They even pronounced her middle name correctly when she walked across the stage!!!!

Meredith Aoife McVal.

 THEN she was graduated!

As soon as we wanted a pic with Meri, we were given the diploma instead.  So we'll take what we can get and posed with it.

She's so tough...

 Not really...  I love that girl.

 And we got her in one too with the both of us!

The Beast came by to congratulate her and I managed to grab a pic quick before he dashed off.  His grad party was immediately following this.

  

On the way home, we stopped for Slurpees or whatever they're called now!  We're making it a tradition!  If you graduate, we'll spring for Slurpees!

Well, that was the weekend in a nutshell.  The deck got back into place and the contents of the party are slowly sifting back into the house and memory boxes for Meri to share with her kids some day.

Maddy and Matthew stuck around until Monday afternoon, then headed back to Wisconsin.  We'll be helping them move into their house soon that they just signed a mortgage for last week.  

And Leon lost his second tooth and just realized that he could whistle now.  But couldn't figure it out when we asked him to do it again.

One hit wonder.

He wants a Museum of Leon party when he graduates from first grade. Ummm we just celebrate with ice cream at the end of each year, but the 12th grade is the biggie.  Ok he says.

The kids are ALL growing up!!!!