Summer Festival

The last day of the first trimester of school ended on Saturday July 21st around noon. Then for two evenings the school celebrates summer with its annual festival. This year was its 22nd year. It is put on by the school (PTA, teachers), local merchants, and our school's dads group. It is quite the collaboration. Younger grades are responsible for single booths while 4th and up have a booth per class. Sixth grade class one is in charge of tickets (printing, selling, counting, etc.) and Sixth grade class two is in charge of hot dogs. I am the room mother for class two and the one responsible for summer festival. There is also another mom from our class that comes into help strictly for the festival and I work closely with her. The planning starts in April when school starts. It is quite the production.

We set up on Friday and Saturday. We start boiling hot dogs about 2 hours before it starts, pack them so they stay warm and start grilling and putting them in buns with ketchup abour 20 minutes before it starts. Lines are already forming. We have 1500 hot dogs to sell in 2 days. The festival runs from 6-8 pm. A lot of the kids (and some of the moms) are in summer kimonos. We sold 840 hot dogs on the first day and sold out about 10 minutes before closing. We sold out of the remaining 660 about 20 minutes before closing on the second day. We cooked hot dogs continuously. Takeshi helped out on the second day for most of it.