End of Year

The end of year (school year that is) is a busy time.

People are leaving so everyone feels they have to DO something. I figure one "something" is enough, but seems no one agrees with me as everyone is doing their own "something" for all the same people. Tell me the logic of that?
Other news first. No dead cats. Two fine boy cats and one quite angry girl cat, but no dead cats. Definitely an improvement over last time. Even better, the cats are on antibiotics for 5 days and that's not as miserable as it sounds. The first pill was a pain as I shoved it down each little kitty throat. But after the check-up with the vet he recommended mixing the crushed pill with a little honey or jam and rubbing it on their paws. It works. They hate having anything on their fur, they lick it off no matter how vile it may taste. Masala and Tandoori are all healed up and hopping around the house, Tikka is a hissing sausage (she's all wrapped up to provide abdominal support) sequestered to the cat room until she can play nice again. All will be well.
The end of year party at school on Friday was fun. I watched over the Sponge Toss, which is exactly as it sounds. Half the kids on one side, half on the other, water and spongers. Wet sponges... throw. Simple enough and the kids didn't mind soaking their already soaked classmates for 15 minutes straight. There was a break in the schedule when Nicholas was swimming, so I played with him in the pool. I only caught the tail end of the disco, the girls had a blast, and next year I know to provide fruit of some sort not the requested cookies or chips.
Nicholas had a friend come over after school Friday, and we all picked up the cats from the vet. That evening Ian picked up TDYers from Manila and came home at 1 a.m. It was a tiring start to the weekend for him.
Saturday's party went off well, but as a neighbor said, it would have helped to advertise. An e-mail invite went out on Tuesday, the plans were in place for 100 people for dinner. I think we had half that. Our fridge is packed with leftovers. The earlier kid time was well-attended, bouncy castles packed and face painters busy. The women's time was well-attended as well, I bought a couple pieces of jewelry as gifts and passed on the manicures/pedicures in favor of chatting a bit with Ms. Whitson, Jonathon's teacher for next year. I didn't know he'd been assigned to her, but she knew and brought it up and thankfully is excited about having him.
So now we know 2 of our teacher assignments for next year. Jonathon has Ms. Whitson and Rebecca has a new hire, Ms. Forgie. She's not completely new to us and here's one of those small world moments... Ms. Forgie was a 2nd grade teacher at IS Manila when Katherine was in second grade at ISM. Ms. Forgie says she remembers Katherine even though she wasn't in her class. They did cross grade teaching there just like here.
So the evening dinner of biryanis, dhals, raitas, green salads, fruit salads, chapati, cakes and desserts was well-received. Oh, Ian assured me no one would be in the house except to get food and use the restroom, but we cleaned up anyway and the tents in the yard went largely unused as folks came in for food and stayed for the air conditioning. The last folks departed around 11, minor cleaning was left for the morning.
Today, we have a family coming over for lasagna and swimming. This is the family in charge of the girls on their trip to Virginia on Friday, but really the girls haven't spent much time with them. I need to get cracking on putting the lasagna together, but now I'm thinking if I do it early where will I put it? The fridge is bursting. As it is, the fruit salad from yesterday is in the pantry awaiting its demise into fruit shakes this afternoon. I'll probably do the lasagna right before out guests get here and just put it straight into the oven. The nice thing about the cook working yesterday evening (she never works on the weekends for us) is the kitchen is clean and the dishes are washed. I can make a mess today.