The Party's over...

Now the clean up begins. They are still working on cleaning up the town. For the most part things are done. The Monday after Cranfest Will and I road around for hours and hours with the garbage truck (hanging off the side of the truck no less) and cleaned up every bit of garbage and cardboard we could find. Yuck! Although it was kind of fun riding on the side of the truck. Of course I had to sing while we were doing it. The guy driving the truck thought it was interesting that I was an executive officer on the board of directors and here I was riding around on the garbage truck. I did sort of have an ulterior motive though. I got to spend time with Will AND I got to see what packing lists and addresses were on the huge mounds of cardboard that the people signed the application saying they would take with them. Now I have a huge list of people to send reminder letters to telling them that they neglected to take their cardboard with them and remind them sternly to do it next year.
LET ME SAY FOR THE RECORD: My hubby did a wonderful, wonderful job both singing and announcing the parade. I was very, very proud of him.
We had record crowds this year. On Saturday God blessed us with a beautiful day and the people shopped and shopped and shopped. All three parking lots were full ( just one of those lots is almost 80 acres in itself). We had 71 commercial bus tours pull up full of people and then also many, many shuttle bus trips were brought in from Tomah. I figure we had at least 50,000 people there on one day.
Our Countdown to Cranfest giveaway was a HUGE success. We had people calling the DJ's and station managers at home trying to find out the answers to our trivia questions and wondering when the next basket would be given away. Our "official cranfest radio station" during the fest was great. Not that you should be thrilled with all of that, but it was my "idea" and so I'm glad that it turned out well. You really never know what will work, so I am glad this did.
Now after I type up all my reports and get things finished up for this year, we will have elections for offices and then will be done with Cranfest pretty much until after Christmas. Then it all starts again, but not quite so hectic.
The kids and animals are glad to have things back to sort of normal. They enjoyed having Will be "Mr. Mom" and he did a wonderful job, but they are all creatures of habit and I guess I am habit forming. They like having their schedule and I know Will loves having his wife back. Sam just wants his Mama back. Gabby the cat is glad to have the staff back. So now we are working on our routine again and everyone is happy.
Fall is here the leaves are turning beautiful. The weather is chilly at night and sunny during the days for the most part. Now we start our fall clean up. We will mow the lawn one last time, clean each courtyard, finish cleaning up the wood and stack it and many other tasks. I enjoy it because we have great bon fires here at the house. All of us sitting around talking and singing is a hoot. We are planning our first for this next Saturday.
Well, time to do laundry. It's my favorite job you know. Ranks right up there.
Have a great day!