Mommapalooza...Behind the Scenes

The first year Ryan and I were first married, we set about figuring out the division of the holidays among all our families. Since Ryan's family has a massive Father's Day bash, and since my birthday is so close to Mother's Day, that first year, we chose to spend Mother's Day with my family and Father's Day with his. But his mom wanted to be with him on Mother's Day, so beginning the second year, we organized what we named Mommapalooza. It was a gathering for both of our families, and we have loved hosting it every year since.

We've done all kinds of themes over the years: the backyard cookout, the indoor cookout with the roll failure, the second indoor cookout with the second roll failure, the brunch, and the fiesta.

This year, we weren't sure how the day would look, since Ryan's mom is gone, and it was his sister's first Mother's Day. We thought maybe some of the usual crowd might need to change up their traditions, and we wanted to allow them to do that!

It did look very different, but we still had a good crowd, and we had fun! I'll tell you about the day itself on Monday, but today I wanted to show you our behind-the-scenes prep day!

It has become our habit to spend the Saturday before Mother's Day planting all our flowers and sprucing up the landscaping. It's a little risky to try to do it earlier than that around here, because there's always the chance that winter was just kidding about being done. While it's true that this spring cannot be accused of being warm in any way, the bigger problem has been the rain. Everything is just soppy and gross! (And cold.)

So we decided we wouldn't buy all the flowers that day. We'd do just a little bit of sprucing to make the house look nice, and then we'd finish the work later when it's warmer. Nicer. Something. But we still made last Saturday a big old work day.

We scoured the gift card collection to see if we had any eating-out options, and we did! Cracker Barrel for the win! If you heard the podcast this week, you heard a bit about this crazy happening.

I ordered from the healthy breakfast menu, and I was trying to choose between two different breakfasts. At last, I settled on the one that gave me a fruit and yogurt parfait with granola, scrambled egg whites, and two pieces of turkey sausage. I added a side of toast, because I figured this meal was going to be both our breakfast AND lunch, and I wanted to be good and full and ready to work on our chores!

When the meal came, it turned out to be a combination of BOTH breakfasts, and I looked like a big fat pig with all my plates! #facepalm.

(My extras were tomatoes, grits, and this MASSIVE muffin that was about the size of my head.)

Meanwhile, Ryan said, "Hey take a picture of me with my breakfast!"

Smartypants.

Actually THIS was his breakfast. I am still a pig.

After we ate, we ran around town doing chores. We purchased our ferns, got all the paper plates and such for Sunday, and then we headed home to get busy.

Our garage had sort of piled up over the winter, so Ryan wanted to organize it and clean it up really well, since it serves as our party space. I had tons of cooking to do.

I made a big batch of Peanut Butter Triple Threat Cookies, and they turned out perfectly.

I planned to start lunch with a little plated salad like you might get at a tea room somewhere...one of the spinach salads with candied walnuts, mandarin oranges, and a fruity dressing. So I needed to make candied walnuts and a raspberry vinaigrette. (Both of those were first time experiments for me. Ryan asked why I always try things out for the first time when we're having a big crowd. Great question! Unfortunately I have no idea. BUT they both turned out great!)

The main dish was going to be poppy seed chicken, and although I didn't plan to assemble it until the next day, I wanted to get all the chicken cooked the day before. So I did that and also prepped the strawberries for the cheesecake stuffed strawberries. (Again, I didn't fully assemble until the next day.)

Then I made the Dashing Dish Lemon Berry Trifle, and it was AMAZING. That is a 100% keeper recipe!

Ryan mowed the lawn and cleaned up the garage, and before he gave it the final mopping, I potted the ferns. (Rain was back, so I had to do it inside.)

I made the menu board...

And we decided to call it a day! :) The rest of the cooking would need to be done on the actual day, so this was the end of our prep day! I guess somewhere in there, we cleaned the house, too. I forgot that part. No pictures. It wasn't that exciting. LOL!

There you go! Behind the scenes of Mommapalooza!