Ok, where do I begin, I guess in the morning. We all woke up around 8am, in our separate rooms, and joined up for breakfast downstairs. They really do do a nice job. One thing though is that ever since the St Regis Hotels was bought by a large Asian company, they hired or imported all these asian employees. I think most are from the far east which is fine except they don’t understand english! Now I don’t care if your at the pool, the restaurant, the gift shop, or almost anywhere, the employees are all asian. They’re all very nice, they just don’t speak or understand english very well. I’m kind of shocked as it was a common topic of discussion among guests of the hotel. Oh well, it is what it is.
After breakfast we headed for the pool for a dip (the boys that is) before loading up and heading a few miles away to our friend Peggy’s house. There, her and the misses talked wardrobe and tried on different clothes and accessories for the party last night. After this was over we literally went a stones throw away to the other side of the highway to our friend Rollie’s cousins house where she was staying. Rollie came up to go to the party with us and insisted we come over for a picnic lunch by the lake, whatever that meant. When we arrived at her cousins place, we went in and were greeted by them and three dogs. One was a rescue named Dennis and the other two were small scottish terriers or something. In any case, they were thrilled to have kids around. The house was amazing as he was the founder of Merrill Lynch which I’m sure we’ve all heard of. Arron and Barbara have lived here for 30 some years. I think they’re putting the house on the market for
$30 million which gives you an idea how fantastic it was. In any case, they took us right in and after visiting, sent us down a path to the river which you then follow to a private lake that 5 houses share. It had boats and a trampoline in the middle of it with waterfalls on each end that must have been 20 feet or higher feeding the lake. We took the dogs, had a picnic and the boys and I were all rowing around the lake, what fun. A few hours later we decided we better get back to get ready for the big party.
First up though was more swimming for the boys. The pool is too small for the hotel and lots of people came and went wanting to swim with no place to sit. Our boys though were in the water so it didn’t matter.
Soon it was 6pm and we were ready to head downstairs. The boys were set up with pizza and chocolate milk and a movie while we went downstairs. It started off with a silent auction for 2 hours and everyone milling around all dressed up. We didn’t bid on anything except a signed ski racing bib by Julia Mancusco who won a bunch of medals in the last Olympics. To our surprise we won for less than $50! We’ll have our friend frame it. We put up Bocelli tickets and Lori and Diane and Peggy all hovered around it making sure no one bid on it but Diane. She won the tickets for I think $400 or $500.
Next up was dinner downstairs in the Grand Ballroom. It was good food, just a bit overcooked as these events always are. It’s hard to feed 500 people and have the food be warm. The wine (which we donated) was great, ha ha. During dinner was the live auction which was fun. The hit of the night was the Tuscany package we donated that sold for $40,000! On top of that, they had called me earlier in the day and asked if things went well, it they could sell two packages. I said yes if they bucked up the 1000 euros for the second lunch to which they said they would. So when the auctioneer was at $40,000 with two people bidding, he then said they both won meaning they raised $80,000! Now the people that put this on arranged for the villa in Italy which was part of the package but the thing that made it was a tour of the Bocelli estate and a lunch for 12 there, so they were very thankful to us for generously donating not once but twice. The Buddy Program which is what this was all for) was started 40 years ago to provide mentors or “buddys” to kids that need help. They have all kinds of success stories of kids that have gone on to great things in the past 40 years. In total they’ve helped over 2000 kids. So it was a great success. After this they just asked people to donate cash and they started with $50,000 donations, then $25,000, then $10,000, then $5000 all they way down to $100 and lots of people donated at all levels. All in all they had to have raised $1 million or more.
Next up was the dj in the Fendi Lounge, an area for dancing they arranged with a bunch of bars. We went upstairs with some people to hang out where it was a bit quieter. Peggy and Rollie stayed downstairs wanting me to stay and dance but I managed to pull away just in time. Soon it was 11pm and we decided we were calling it a night. Jag was up still watching a movie and Ty was asleep so I carried him up to Mom’s room. This morning we’re packing up for the trip home. The boys of course want to stay and continue the vacation but we’re going home. It was a fun time with genuine fun people who are all very
very kind to us. It’s like they’ve taken us in like family even though we’ve known most of them for only a few months. It’s good to know there’s still good people out there!
The misses will post pictures later today. God Bless.