Roxiticus Sunset Party on Friday!!

Everything is coming together for our 5th annual Roxiticus Sunset Party on Friday evening. It will be our biggest party ever, with 134 guests: 67 kids and 67 grown-ups (including 8 teenage "babysitters" to provide supervision). Last year we only had 81 guests. I think most of the increase is due to Maddie's great year in kindergarten at Mendham Township Elementary School...she delivered a whole new gang of friends for the whole family!

Rex and I were getting a little nervous about all of the additional guests (we didn't really expect everyone to say yes!), but we talked to our Grillmaster, Carl Posey, who has catered our party five years running, and he's actually excited. The menu includes jumbo grilled shrimp with Bacardi cocktail sauce, grilled steak with goat cheese on garlic croutons, rack of lamb "lollipops," our favorite Blue Cheese Burgers, hot dogs, and the most amazing chicken fingers for the kids.

Now I know that I owe my loyal Roxiticus Desperate Housewives readers a Father's Day Weekend recap, which I will post as soon as I can get to it over on my Bay Head Blog, but things have really been hectic between investment banking (potential new clients as well as helping existing clients to get to the finish line despite the high hurdles) and getting ready for the big Roxiticus Sunset event. I never seem to get to all of the tasks at hand. In fact, please don't check back on any of the posts where I promised to write more later (thankfully, that's not one of my tags). You already know I was almost the Mom Without Brownies last week on London's Incredible Kid Day. Both of my girls finished the year without any patches sewn or ironed on to their Brownie and Daisy Girl Scout vests...my friend Lynette suggested that I use a stapler, but I'm thinking of reaching out to The Sewing Mom.

In my most recent real-life example of waiting until the last minute, I had seen the Ion Portable PA System for my iPod (pictured below) in Hammacher Schlemmer over the winter, and thought it would make a great addition to the party for my karaoke kids. They have a band we call the Singin' Van de Kamp Sisters. But did I order the little luggagelike metallic beauty over the winter, with low cost shipping? Noooooooooo.....I kept mentioning it to my family, and saying "I've got to order that, or it won't get here in time for the party." Finally, on Monday night, the girls and I were having Hills Pizza Brothers (908-470-4457 for delivery in the Bedminster, NJ area) pizza and wings and cheese fries in the family room because Rex was away at a Board meeting in Connecticut, and London started doing her Hannah Montana moves and singing, and I realized that I was in big, big trouble. I called Hammacher Schlemmer and they told me they could get it to me with 2-day shipping for an EXTRA $210....aaargh! But I Googled and Googled and blew up the photo so I could see the brand name, and finally I found it on a site called Same Day Music....they shipped it today via UPS (have I mentioned what a great UPS delivery guy we have on our route? Go Big Brown!) to arrive on Thursday....for $24 extra!! Huzzah!