'Twas the Night Before the 4th of July

I had to work the night before our “VERY-American-4^th-of-July-party-on-the-5^th.” I didn’t get off until 11pm, so I declined the option of going out to The Valley with the boys and Taylor’s sister on her last night in Australia. Instead, I stayed up chatting with McKenzie (Taylor’s younger sister), and painting the cornhole boards, which had to be done by the next afternoon.

Let’s talk about this cornhole game. If you don’t know what it is, then you must not be American. Kidding, but it’s definitely a game worth playing…and it’s an easy DIY project, too.

We knew we wanted to introduce our Australian friends to this game, as well as the pcp pipe/beer bottle/Frisbee throwing game (not sure what it’s actual name is, or if it has one), about a week before the big day, when we REALLY started all the planning. That’s plenty of time to get things done without rushing, right? Right.

Weeellll, the boys like to procrastinate. The day we decided we were going to be playing cornhole, we also decided that Ethan and Taylor would be in charge of building the boards, and I would be in charge of sewing the beanbags and painting the boards (as an American flag) once they were finished. I like to get things done early so that I have time to organize, perfect, and stress a little less…the day we made the decision to play cornhole was the same day Ethan and I found a fabric store, and the same day I had the bags three-quarters done. The only reason the bags weren’t finished that same day was because, as a house, we couldn’t all agree on what the bags should be filled with.

• Ethan said beans, because “helllooo, they’re called “bean” bags…obviously you put beans inside.”
• I thought rice would be nice (didn’t purposely rhyme there, but ok) because rice molds a little bit easier when your trying to grab the bag just right. It just sits nicely in your hand.
• Taylor and his family mentioned sand, because it’s free (good point there). 

We finally decided that we were going to put beans in the bags, but when we went to look for dried beans, we couldn’t find them anywhere. It wasn’t until THE MORNING OF that we found beans, so I had to fill and seal the bags as people were arriving! Cue the stress. 

  

Let’s rewind back to the night before the party when I decided to stay in and paint the boards. Ethan had finally put them together after work that day, and now it was my turn to paint them. Well I had to work, remember? And didn’t get off ‘til 11pm, so I stayed up late to working on them. I think it was around 1am that I finished the stripes and the blue base of the flag (I was waiting 'til morning to do the stars because I needed a smaller paintbrush). Obviously I had painted the boards outside because that made the most sense in case I was to make a mess. It took me about an hour ‘n a half to get the blue base and the stripes painted straight enough without using any tape or a ruler. I eyeballed everything. And that’s not easy coming from a perfectionist like me.

After finishing with the paint, I wasn’t quite tired enough to go to bed. So I decided to catch up on a few TV shows. About halfway through the first show, I wanted a glass of wine. I went to the kitchen, grabbed a glass, and right as I was reaching for the bottle of wine to pour something outside caught my eye. When I looked at my boards I noticed a pool of red on the concrete below them. Weird, I thought. I had painted a thin enough layer that it shouldn’t have been running, even if the board was slanted down because of the way it was built. So I walked outside to take a closer look…IT WAS SPRINKLING! And I had no idea for how long, except that it was long enough to ruin all the work I had done.

Fast forward back to the morning of: since the rain had messed up my paint job, I had to wake up early to repaint everything. 

It also wasn’t until that morning that we did all the grocery shopping for the party; and since the boys went out the night before, they were pretty tired. Luckily, Taylor had to take his family to the airport at 8am, so Ethan got up around that time to tell them bye. It still took him a while to completely wake up and start moving around though, so we still got a late start…around 9:15am. People were supposed to be showing up around 11 or 12; we had a lot to do before then! Our grocery list included things like: 

• queso
• salsa
• sugar cookie dough
• ping pong balls
• frisbee
• red solo cups (because apparently these are a very American thing)
• sparklers

The list was far more extensive than this, but you get the picture…and these were a few of the more difficult things to find. First off, you can’t get any of this in the same store. Ethan put it best when he said, “I’ve never missed Walmart so much in my life!” I think we went to five different stores before finding “everything.”  And “everything” is in quotations because we had to do a lot of substituting; if you ask for salsa here, they give you marinara sauce…there’s no such thing as velveeta cheese…you can’t find pre-made sugar cookie dough…and frisbees and ping pong balls can only be found in one store (but separate stores, at that).

We ended up getting everything we needed, just before 11 o’clock. And then it was just a race to get the board finished, the bags filled and sewn, the house picked up, and the food semi-made. Did we get it all done in time? Nope.

XO – Cristin