Christmas fun. . .and not so fun

We had our church Christmas party last Thursday.  Wayne, who helps me out with that kind of stuff, was out of town.  Good thing I was only in charge of the food.  For the entertainment, there was a Christmas play called "The Empty Room" with several very talented people from our neighborhood.  

The bad part was that Benjamin was sick.  He missed school last Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.  He was coughing a ton each night, and he hardly got any sleep.  Which meant that I got hardly any sleep.  Benjamin was also very concerned because he lost his voice entirely, which was just a tragedy for him.

This is what my poor Benjamin looked like for 3 days straight, until I made him come to the Christmas party.

So, I was very concerned about being in charge of anything at the Christmas party.  I dragged Benjamin and Daniel over to the church in the afternoon to help a little with the set up and to drop off a bunch of stuff we needed for the dinner like paper plates and cups.  

We ordered ham and rolls from BYU Food To Go.  It's a great place to get precooked food for large gatherings.  At least, it usually is.  They warned us to plan on a half hour wait to get our food when I called to order it.  The traffic was bad, so it took about 40 minutes just to get to BYU.  We walked in to where we were supposed to pick up the food and saw two groups ahead of us.  And then we waited.  And waited.  And waited.  It was about 45 minutes before they were even able to start putting our order together.  I'm still not sure why it takes so long, but I think it's because they don't start packing orders until you are actually there.  And the other people there had huge orders.  By the time we left, there were 6 or 8 groups waiting in line behind us.  Daniel had, of course, made friends with several of them, and everyone said they were glad my boys were there to provide entertainment while they waited.

We got back just in time to get the dinner set up as people were arriving for the party.  The dinner went great.  It did take a while to get everyone served because there were about 300 people there.  And we had a ton of extra ham, which I can't figure out because we had about the same number of people in attendance last year.  We had the same amount of ham both years, but last year it was pretty much gone at the end of the night.  My only thought is that we got it from Macey's last year (and I cooked all of it myself), and I think Macey's cuts the slices thicker.  Either way, I ordered as much ham as BYU told me I should for 300 people, but we didn't use it all.  I have no idea what the bishop did with all the leftovers, but I'm sure it was something good.

The best part of the evening was how much everyone helped with everything.  I tried to get Benjamin a babysitter for the party, but I couldn't find one because all of my neighbors would want to be at the party.   Also, I didn't want Benjamin at someone else's house where he would get all of their kids sick.  My mother-in-law met us at the dinner and took my kids off my hands for me.  Several of my friends helped with the setup, dinner, cleanup, etc.  There's no way it could have gone smoothly without so many great people.  Thanks to everyone who helped out!