I didn't really have the heart to say no then. Maybe I just didn't want to say no because I wanted to do it, too.
So I do my drill, get on the internet, try to brainstorm for ideas to make the party a little different and even more fun this year..... and that's when I decided to make some more games..... including Plinko, yes.... everyone's favorite game from the Price is Right (minus the $10,000 cash prize, of course). I searched through a few plans and although I didn't use any of them exactly, I did borrow ideas from 3 or so different plans, and then tweaked them a little to make it just like I wanted it. So after church on Sunday, we all went together as a family to Lowe's to load up on plywood, and machine screws, and nuts, and plexiglass..... (yes, me in my high heels and dress carrying 4x8 sheets of plywood.... the guys working there looked at me like I was crazy!).
And, that leads me to my soap box.... Huh-hummmmm.... I'd like to take this moment to gripe a little about certain males, who shall remain nameless, (mainly because I don't know their names), but who aggravate me nonetheless.....
Why is it that if a man & a woman are together at a home improvement store, the guys working there always default to the man when they speak??? HELLO!! I'm the one who wears the tool belt in the family.... HELLO.... Just because I'm wearing a dress does not mean I can't handle a power drill. Don't these men realize that most projects come about because of the desires of women....... women who even if they are not the ones holding the tools, they are certainly the ones giving the orders? If it weren't for women, there would probably be no home improvement stores..... there would just be beer stores and enormous HDTV flat screen stores..... and therefore these men would have no jobs in the first place.
OK, sorry, I'm stepping down now......
Anyway, back to my project....... I asked Jonathan the night before to help me, saying, "C'mon, it'll be fun.... something we can do together." And to my amazement (he usually stays as far away from my projects as possible), he said he would. So we did..... and we only fought a wee little bit..... and it was fun...... well, that is until Jacob came out to help, knocked a full gallon of paint over and stood there helpless with thick, white paint swirling around his toes. Whoops! And in my panic to clean him up and then get the paint off the garage floor before it kept spreading out, I didn't notice that it had gotten all over the extension cord plug to the outside deep freeze and refrigerator. Next thing we knew, we had no power in the garage, which meant no power to the frig & deep freeze, and then later we discovered that the cable was out and heaven forbid, the INTERNET, too. Now people, I can deal without a little cable TV but
don't be messing with my internet!
So after a few conversations with Charter cable, who by the way would not be coming until Tuesday to take a look, we finally figured out that the liquid on the plug had blown out the power to every plug outside the house and unfortunately our house is wired with every high-tech kind of wiring that I do not for the life of me understand, and the hub to all of that wiring is YES, you guessed it, in the garage. Long story short..... no internet.
Thank God for Jonathan's dad, an electrical engineer, who later the next day said, "Jonathan.... go look for the reset button." Yep. The reset button. All of that stress for nothing. Push that green button and Waaaa-lahhhh..... power and cable and internet again! Obviously, you must need an engineering degree to possess that kind of profound knowledge since neither my husband nor I could figure it out ourselves....
So everything's back to normal..... Jacob's feet are clean...... our meats are still frozen..... I can blog again AND we finished the project..... FINALLY..... and, best of all, now we have a Plinko board if anyone gets a hankering to.................
COME ON DOWN!!!
Here's the board after many hours of work.... we had measured for all the holes, drilled them through the plexi and the backboard, screwed it all together (114 screws!), and glued the dowels in place, and then painted..... thank goodness Jonathan helped.... it was quite a project 
And the beginnings of paint
Here's mama, the insomniac, on Monday morning (I'd been at it since 5am), painting it to make it look like the real thing..... Please excuse the outfit (I wasn't quite camera-ready)..... but I do LOVE my fuzzy pink booties (notice all the paint on them.... they're a requirement when I work on early-morning projects)
And here's the finished board (well, except for the winning numbers I'll have to put in --minus the $10,000, of course)...... the kids have loved playing with it, especially Jacob.
I think Jonathan's a little worried about me though....
he just called and asked if I was getting anything done this morning with the kids all off at school or if I was just in my jammies playing Plinko.......
How did he know????
