PLANNING

Jan 2020 - Mar 2021: Carl talked about a big 80th birthday party back in early 2020. So..Christine and I started talking about having a party on Mar 24th, 2021. Then COVID happened. It was easy for me to just tell Carl "Well, we can't have a party with COVID. Maybe next year."

Meanwhile, Christine came up with the idea of a ZOOM party. She's become an expert on Zoom with her kids' virtual learning and her tutoring. She came up with the idea of organizing several groups and setting up several Zoom meetings.

After the busy Christmas holidays, Christine got busy with researching invitations, decorations and especially the "care packages" to be send to everybody. She found some really yummy Bundt cakes in two sizes. As part of the initial invitation, people were able to order specific flavors of cupcakes along with the RSVP. Carl and I got an assortment of smaller Bundt cakes, while everybody else got the larger size.

Then Christine had to figure out how to get the Bundt cakes to everybody, mailing them all over the country. The party was on a Wednesday, so she wanted to mail them on Saturday (Sunday no mail) to make sure that everybody got them in time. She came up with the great idea to freeze the Bundt cakes and add blue ice packs to the package so they would be sure to arrive nice and fresh. She even rented a freezer to freeze them initially.

There were several hiccups along the way, but the worst was when she had everything all packaged up and loaded in the car. She went to the post office about 1pm (it was supposed to be open until 3pm). But at 1:10pm, when she arrived it was closed. Panic set in, but she was able to find another post office open until 3pm and they all got mailed. I think everyone got them in time.