Notes From the Ward Christmas Party

September Writing Challenge - Prompt #11:

One Year Ago

This is a long and overly detailed post. Sorry/not sorry. I actually wrote most of this back in December and never finished it. I thought I would go ahead and post it now because people are going to start planning Christmas parties pretty soon, and those who endure to the end of this post, might get something useful out of it… or be totally bored. Who knows?

Last year I helped with our ward (church congregation’s) Christmas party. As we planned and carried out the event, we discussed documenting some things for future reference. I find that kind of knowledge extremely helpful later if I’m involved in planning another event, and I know, as an avid Googler of Things that the info can be helpful for others, too. So here I’ll give a rundown of our ward Christmas party from 2022, including some of the exciting things we learned (because there are always hilarious mishaps behind the scenes).

My assignment was decorations, so there’s a lot I don’t know about other aspects of the party, such as the food, the invitations, and the program, but there are still a few things I can share in those regards. 

The Theme

The party was centered around a Christian song and music video called “Come to the Table.” In the video, people are presented with a literal invitation to come to the table. The invitations for our ward Christmas party were designed to look like the invitations in the video. 

The message of the song is beautiful. 

Our Relief Society president was assigned to be in charge of the party this year. When she asked me to help, she had a few things in mind:

- She wanted to decor to be simple and humble, centered around Christ, and free from commercialism 

- She wanted a sign that said “Come to the Table”

- She suggested garland and twinkle lights

- She wanted an “earthy” color scheme 

- She wanted to incorporate scriptures about service 

- She didn’t want anything on the stage or anything complicated or large

So with that, I got to work. 

The Decorations

I researched the pricing of garland online and found (as I suspected) that it would be pretty pricey. I needed about 150 feet (we planned on using 18 (8') tables). I knew the odds of finding 150 feet of garland at the thrift store would be slim, but in October, I started checking the thrift store once a week. On my first trip, they had several Christmas wreaths, and I ended up buying them and cutting the pine off them to use as garland. It worked great, so from then on, I just popped into the thrift store regularly and bought all the Christmas wreaths. I had to remove ribbon and ornaments occasionally, but I was able to get quite a bit of garland that way. 

I also hit up Facebook to see if anyone was getting rid of any garland or wreaths. I had a neighbor bring me about 18 feet of garland, which was a wonderful contribution.

I ended up having to buy a little bit of garland from Walmart. For the record, I could have bought all of the garland from Walmart for about $75. I spent about $50 on garland. So I saved money my way, but not an astronomical amount. The stuff I found at the thrift store was also a lot higher quality than the stuff from Walmart, but it didn’t really matter for this project. 

I decided, in keeping things inexpensive, to use the decorations from my basement tree to place throughout the garland. That included stars with the names of Christ, some nativity ornaments, and some glittery balls. I had a ton of burlap and lace ribbon that I bought from the DI several months prior, so we wove that through the garland. I also had some mason jars and battery powered tea lights that I placed around the tables - just things I already had around my house. 

Some notes on garland:

- Garland requires fluffing which can hurt your hands. We wore gardening gloves to fluff (fluffing is the WORST! I hate fluffing!) I enlisted a few friends to help - my very own fluffing committee!

- Garland is very messy, so we had to clean the tables and sweep the floors after we decorated. My friend, Julie, had a great idea to use a Dustbuster to clean up the tables, and it worked wonderfully! So take note: garland decorating should always be accompanied by a Dustbuster! I was worried that the mess from the garland would be unmanageable, but it wasn’t too bad with the Dustbuster. We did have to sweep the floor after we decorated, but with a dust mop, that goes pretty quickly!

- We clipped the garland to whatever size we needed and ran it between bread baskets. I used packaging tape to hold it in place.

To incorporate scriptures about service, I gathered a bunch of picture frames of different sizes and colors (sticking with whites, silver, gold, and wood tones). I used several of my own and then purchased a lot from the DI. My goal was to NOT have to do anything to them (I tried to find them “table ready”) but I ended up having to spray paint about 20 because, by the time the week of the party rolled around, I’d scoured several thrift stores and hadn’t found enough frames in the right condition. Sadly, the price of spray paint has gone up like everything else. Fortunately, I was able to use the leftover paint for a Young Women project the following week. 

Some notes on frames:

- They take so much longer to clean, paint, and put photos in than you would ever think

- If you take them apart to paint them, make sure you use a sophisticated system to keep track of which glass/backs go to which frames (I knew this, and I still messed up and ended up having to take apart frames over and over again)

- Spray painting in the cold is never ideal - it affects the quality of the paint (again, I knew this, but left myself with no other choice in the end)

The Sign

Like I mentioned, the Relief Society president wanted some sort of sign that said “Come to the Table.” I found a whitewashed, blank sign at the DI for $3 and painted on the lettering. Then I stapled some garland to it. I had a flickering lantern that my friend Christie gave me for Christmas one year, so I decorated that to match, and then I found an old book (from DI) that had a picture of Christ at the table (see what I did there) for the last supper. I cut it out and put it in a frame. 

I also found a sparkly piece of fabric on clearance that I made into a table cloth. 

The Food

For this dinner, we served soup. I wasn’t involved in the food planning, so I don’t know much about quantities and the like, but we had zupa toscano and chicken gnocchi from Olive Garden (the real deal - actually ordered from Olive Garden) and chicken noodle from Kneaders. Then there were bread baskets on all the tables with a variety of rolls.

(I wasn’t in charge of the baskets, but I can tell you many of them came from the DI. They were lined with napkins and burlap). 

A few things I do know:

- The food people said that Olive Garden soup was a lot cheaper than Kneaders - FYI for anyone ever wanting to order soup. However, a normal ward budget doesn’t really allow for Olive Garden and Kneaders soups (we had a bit of a “budget blip” for this party).

- The soups were packaged in gallon sized buckets, and we poured them into stockpots to serve them.

- Olive Garden did not label their soups, and the zupa and gnocchi looked very similar, so we ended up having an accidental miscellaneous soup because they got mixed together in a large stockpot.

- Soup leaks through compostable bowls. Luckily, someone boiled some water and poured it in one of the bowls they were planning to serve in to test them out to determine if we should let people carry their soup bowls from the serving table or wheel it to them on a cart (I was pro-carry because I think it would have taken way too long to serve by cart. I’m a strong advocate for efficient food lines and gettinge people served quickly while the food is hot). The liquid seeped through the bowls, so they had to buy different bowls. That would have made for a memorable Christmas party! (The Amazon listing for the bowls said they were good for hot liquids - apparently that is not the case). 

The Set Up

We used 18 (8') tables (six rows of three), which was perfect for our ward. Here is where I messed up, though. I intended to count how many people came to compare it to how many people we planned on. I didn't write those numbers down. But as far as set up, we had enough seating (we usually set up extra tables in the overflow and only open it if necessary, and we didn't even do that!)

I think we originally planned on about 175 people, but then as the event grew closer we reduced that to 150. I’ll bet we ended up with about 130-140. 

Now here are some things I learned and/or observed that I wanted to take note of:

-I think it would be helpful to keep the kitchen window closed and keep ward members out of the kitchen area unless they have an assignment requiring them to be in there. If you leave the kitchen accessible, everyone thinks they can pop in and take whatever they want. This was a problem at dessert time because there was a line of people waiting at the serving table for dessert, and ward members kept bypassing the line and coming straight to the kitchen and taking the plated desserts which kept us from getting them out to the table in a timely manner, so all of the people in line were getting short-changed by the stinkers going in the kitchen. I really wanted to put a stop to this, but I wasn’t in charge, so I just silently cried for the people waiting in line.

-I am always in favor of having the line go down two sides of the table. This didn't work with serving soup because we had people scooping the soup, but perhaps we could have done two serving tables.

-If you want to do the program before the meal, consider having some type of appetizer. “Hangry” is real, and the children (and this mom) are hangry. People ate the rolls before the meal was served and then wanted more with their soup, but we didn’t have extra.

-When serving a one-dish meal (like soup), you need a lot more than one roll per person. I would plan on two per person, that way, some can eat 1 and some can eat 3, and in the end, hopefully everyone will be full and happy.

-When setting up chairs at a table, always make sure to leave enough space between chairs to accommodate the average human thigh. Our chairs were placed so close together that people couldn't get into their seats. I was planning on 24 chairs per table, but the men who set them up did 28.

Overall, I think the party went very well. When I jotted down my notes afterward, I had no idea that our ward would be dissolved less than a year later, and that it was our last Christmas party. I thought I’d be able to pass on some good information to whoever headed up the party this year, but everything will be different this Christmas since we’re in a new ward. 

Maybe I won’t have to be involved this year. Or maybe I will. I’m sure I’ll find out soon. This new ward isn’t wasting any time. I’m already subbing in nursery this week, and I got a call from the executive secretary today, and we haven’t even been to church yet! 

Today We Snackle

September Writing Challenge - Prompt #8:

Menu

I pack my kids’ lunches everyday. I respect all the reasons to not do this (primarily self-reliance), but it’s something I do for my kids that I haven’t quite been able to give up. I know that if I put them in charge of their own lunches, they’ll just pack junk food, eat from a vending machine, or starve and be miserable. I don’t want them to have to worry about food, and I want to make sure they eat some kind of nutrient. I’m not the Queen of Healthy Food, by any means, but I’ve been known to sneak a carrot or a grape into the mix. 

Some of our most common lunch items are:

-Sandwiches 

-Muffins

-Crackers, cheese, and pepperoni

-Celery with peanut butter

-Tortilla chips with refried beans or nacho cheese for dipping 

-Cold chicken nuggets (Bare Lightly from Costco)

-Salads (mostly taco and crispy chicken)

-Noodles and parmesan 

-Veggies and dip

-Yogurt parfaits

-Fruit/goldfish/string cheese/pretzels/applesauce/etc.

I’ve tried sending hot foods in thermoses, but we haven’t had much success. The food doesn’t stay warm enough, and my kids say it’s gross. Over the summer we experimented with chicken nuggets and pizza rolls in the thermoses, and I left them in there for the amount of time it would sit in my kids’ lunch boxes. Then I checked the temps, and they were luke warm and kind of soggy. I followed the advice online to pour boiling water in the food jars to heat them up and then put paper towels in them to absorb the moisture from the food, but none of us were impressed with the results. Plus, packing hot food is a lot of work, so I don’t usually bother. 

Zoe is my hardest child to feed. She doesn’t like anything. She won’t eat sandwiches - the staple of lunches - which makes lunch very complicated to provide for her. She will like something one day and hate it the next, so I get really excited when she likes something new and then really disappointed when she suddenly won’t eat it. For now, she likes muffins and celery with peanut butter, but that could change any time. If she had her choice she would eat ramen or chicken noodle soup for every meal with an occasional tamale. I don’t know why she like tamales! The kid has so many sensitivities to textures; I don’t know how she’s okay with masa. 

For Friday lunch (or whatever day is a short day - this week it’s Thursday because there is no school on Friday), I make them snackle boxes (except for Nicky. He needs something more substantial because he usually has things after school and doesn’t come home until 5:00 or later). My kids have always loved for me to make them “snack plates,” which is just a random assortment of whatever I can find around the house or need to use up thrown on a plate (I used to use 6 cup muffin tins for “snack plates,” but they got rusty, and I never replaced them). Eva especially loves snack plates and always asks, “Mom, will you make me a snack plate?” So I bought them some divided containers, and on short days, I make them snackle boxes for lunch. It’s really hard to make an entire snackle box for Zoe that she’ll actually eat, so I just give her a little bit of this and that, and I tell her it’s a “try it” box. I’m sure she throws a lot of it away, but I’m not there to see it, so ignorance is bliss!

Can we all just take a moment to roll our eyes about the fact that a bag of Welch’s fruit snacks only has six fruit snacks in it?

This year Eva’s teacher has snack time during class because their grade has a late lunch time, so I throw together an additional snack for Eva everyday. The teacher has some snacks on hand for kids that don’t bring one from home, and I found out that Eva lies to her teacher and says she didn’t bring a snack because she likes the teacher’s snack better. This worked great for her until the day the teacher ran out of snacks!

The little stinker!

(Eva. Not the teacher).

So there’s a little glimpse into our lunch menu. Today, we snackle! Tomorrow… oh boy. No school. 

Update: All this talk of snacks had me needing a 10:00 am snack plate of my own! Tell me I’m not the only one who still occasionally eats from a divided baby plate. 

Pepsi is snack

He Said/She Said

September Writing Challenge - Prompt #4:

He Said/She Said

He said, “What’s an Oxford comma?”

She said, “I’m not going to try and explain it to you.”

He Googled it.

He said, “Yeah, good call. I have no idea what that’s talking about.”

A few days passed.

Daughter said, “What’s an Oxford comma?”

She said, “You know when you list three things in a sentence, like ‘Blue, red, and green?’ It’s the comma before the ‘and.’”

Daughter said, “Ooooh, okaaaaay.”

He said, “Wait a minute! You put a comma before the ‘and?’”

She said, “Yes! That’s the Oxford comma!”

He said, “I don’t do that!”

She said… nothing. Because even though she has always known this man is not a stellar speller nor a great grammarist, she didn’t know she was married to someone who intentionally does not use the Oxford comma. 

He said, “I’ve never put a comma before ‘and,’ but Microsoft has started suggesting it in my documents.”

She said, “Listen to Microsoft! Our marriage depends on it!”

Son said, “Mom, why are you acting like such a 5th grade teacher?”

She said, “I don’t know what you mean.”

Things I Wouldn’t Change

September Writing Challenge - Prompt #12:

Rewind

Those of you who have been reading this blog for a long time might remember the days of Scotty and me attending school. We gained our educations a little “non-traditionally” in that we got married, bought a house, and started a family before we finished our degrees.

After high school, Scotty’s plan was to work for an electric company for a year, serve a mission for our church, then come home and do a trade program to become an electrician. He worked for the year and went on his mission to South Carolina. While he was gone, two major events happened: September 11 and the Salt Lake City Olympics. Both of these events affected the work, and by the time Scotty got home, the company was unable to hire him back because they were doing layoffs. Scotty took a job he thought would be temporary, and he ended up being there for 5-6 years. His boss was very anti-education and kept telling Scotty he didn’t need to go to school. Scotty felt otherwise and ended up starting school during his last year at that job (while I was pregnant with Nicky). Then the company sold and moved across the country, and Scotty was laid off. 

(Side note: guess who ended up with a masters degree a few years later? Scotty’s education hating boss!)

Scotty got a new job an hour away from home. Once again, we thought this would be temporary until he found something closer to home, but he ended up working there for about ten years. It seemed inconvenient and even kind of stupid at first, but when it was time for Scotty to transfer to a university, he was able to go to Utah Valley University right by his work. Little did we know, we were set up to be in the right place at the right time.

It took Scotty eight years to get his Bachelor’s degree. It felt slow, but we ate the elephant one bite at a time. The credits added up, and pretty soon, Scotty was donning a cap and gown.

I don’t know how we survived those eight years. We had three of our four children while Scotty was going to school. Many days, he left at 6:00 am, and he didn’t get home until after 10:00 pm. I did Halloween alone for many years because Scotty always had class. A few days a week, our kids didn’t even see him. 

In hindsight it’s all a blur. I know it happened, but I have a hard time envisioning it now.

Scotty’s graduation (he actually finished prior to this, but he didn’t “walk” until the following spring. At this point I had started school, and Eva was two weeks old). 

After I graduated high school, I went to a junior college and got an Associate’s and an accounting certificate. Scotty returned from his mission two days after I started college. While I was going to school, I worked at the local dairy. Then after I graduated, I started working at a special education school. I didn’t transfer to a university.

Right after Scotty graduated, I felt a strong impression that it was my turn to go back to school. It wasn’t what I wanted, but I couldn’t set it aside. I applied and registered for BYU-Idaho, then I found out I was pregnant with Eva. I was also the primary president and a bit nuts, I guess, because I kept up on all three for a while. I was a different person back then - I could handle a lot. I kept up on my classes, grew a fetus, scheduled an induction after finals, and started the new semester from my hospital bed. Then I got released as primary president. Phew. (You can read a more detailed version of the story here).

Now nine years ago!

It took me three years, but I completed my Bachelor’s degree. 

As you know, we are religious people, so we did all of this prayerfully. Even though it may seem like we worked backwards, we did what felt right for us. 

My mother-in-law asked us the other day if we are encouraging our kids to get their degrees right after high school and not the way we did it. While that’s what we would recommend, what we really want for our children is for them to make that decision prayerfully. We’ve been asked if we wish we had done it differently, and our answer is no. We didn’t do it “wrong.” We learned and experienced some amazing things on our journey, and I would never trade that wisdom for something more convenient or traditional. One of the greatest evidences of God’s hand in our lives has been the path we’ve followed in our employment and education. I even feel a little spoiled because we got to have it all! We got to have a house, a family, an education, and a career. In the end, we did what we felt the Spirit guided us to do, and we wouldn’t change a thing.

A Churchy Change

September Writing Challenge - Prompt #31:

Change 

Over the weekend it was officially announced that our ward (church congregation) is being dissolved. In our church (the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints) we participate in congregations according to our geographical area. Our ward, as well as many wards nearby, are getting smaller in numbers, so it became necessary to adjust the boundaries to a greater radius. It was decided that our ward would be discontinued, and the members would be divided among two existing wards. 

We’ve lived in our ward for just short of twenty years, so it’s a pretty big change, but I feel okay about it. We will now attend church with my in-laws, and that has pros and cons, but overall, I think it will be alright. We’ve lived a half a mile down the street from them since 2004, and we’ve always known that this was a possibility. We know their ward quite well and have attended some of their ward events, and I’ve served in a couple of stake* callings (church jobs) that have required me to attend that ward, so it’s familiar, and we’re comfortable there. 

The downside to this change is that our new ward has very few children and youth. Our kids are struggling with the change, and I’m worried about that. I hope they have some special opportunities as a small youth group to help make up for the lack of peers. I hope they don’t get burned out as my kids have already been overworked in their church responsibilities. 

Things I’m happy about:

• I love the people in our new ward. 
• I’m excited for the chance to start fresh in a new environment (after 20 years, I feel like I’ve expired in my ward. I feel like I can’t grow there anymore).
• A lot of great friends and neighbors are joining us in the new ward (we get to start a new journey but we aren’t doing it alone!)
• We don’t have to cross the “busy road” to get to church anymore. 
• Scotty and I were released from our callings (Elders’ Quorum President and Young Women Secretary) which we are both burned out from. 
• There will be more people sharing the “load.”

Things I’m sad about:

• The lack of youth in the new ward.
• The lights in the chapel of our new building are off-center, and it drives me nuts (sorry to those of you who will now notice this and be bothered).
• I will miss worshipping with my friends from “the other side.”
• I’m suddenly a “free agent” and don’t like being up for grabs for new callings. 

A few people from the new ward have already stopped by our house to welcome us. Even though change is hard, I think we are in good hands. There are a lot of mixed feelings about the change, as expected. Some people are excited, some are sad, and some are even angry. 

This Sunday will be rather different from the last thousand Sundays of my life. We’ll turn the opposite way to head up the road, we’ll walk into a different building, and we’ll sit who knows where! We’ll worship with new people intermixed with some of our old ward while missing some of our best friends in the whole world, and we’ll face the change. 

*A stake is a group of 6+ wards. Our stake boundary was expanded this weekend to include a larger geographical area, and an adjacent stake was dissolved. 

A Moment Like This

September Writing Challenge - Prompt #33:

Old School

When I was a kid, there was a local radio station called Hot 94.9 (which we called “Hot Ninety-Four-Nine). The frequency was hard to pick up in some parts of the valley, so I remember being able to listen to it at my mom’s house but not my dad’s house.* Every now and then, if we had the radio in the perfect spot with the antenna pointing just so and the dial tweaked to the precise place, my sister and I could get a fuzzy signal for 94.9, but a lot of the time we couldn’t get it to work. Eventually they adopted the 97.1 frequency as well, and that allowed us to listen to 94.9 from Magna. 

When my grandma passed away at the beginning of this year, my mom found a Hot 94.9 fanny pack in her house. She thought Zoe might like it, so she brought it over for her. When I saw it, I wanted it for myself. It was a relic; a nostalgic treasure from my younger years, and it was beautiful! I knew people would love my fanny pack. 

It didn’t make sense for my grandma to have a Hot 94.9 fanny pack. The music of 94.9 was not “elderly friendly” by any means, but my grandma always loved SWAG, so that must be why she had it. She was a collector of free stuff whether it suited her or not, and then she would very selectively choose who to give it to. We had a family rule - if Grandma offers you stuff, you take it whether you want it or not because it needs to be removed from her house! I guess none of us ever deserved the fanny pack while she was living.

The first time I wore it was at an 80’s themed dance I went to with my friend Christie. I wouldn’t consider 94.9 to be a “true” representation of 80’s culture (its more 90’s), but since the station started in 1989, it wasn’t a complete farce, so I donned the bag (as well an an authentic 80’s jumpsuit with shoulder pads that I found at DI a few months earlier and bought because I knew I would need it someday). As I was getting ready for the dance, I kept thinking, “Everyone is going to love my fanny pack!” I knew people were going to comment on it all night - things along the lines of, “OMG! I used to love that radio station!” and “No way! I remember Hot 94.9! Where did you get that fanny pack?” As an introvert, I had to prepare mentally for the fast fame that would be coming my way.

In the end, not a single person at the dance mentioned my fanny pack, and I roamed the venue thinking Does no one remember 94.9? 

Months later, I started using the bag for Lagoon trips. I thought surely people at Lagoon would remember Hot 94.9, but no one at Lagoon ever said anything either. The fanny pack wasn’t the conversation piece I thought it would be!

The last weekend of summer break, I took my girls on an overnight trip to Logan. Someone complimented my fanny pack. It was the hostess at Angie’s Restaurant in Logan (where Hot 94.9 didn’t reach). She was a Utah State student - far too young to know anything about old school radio, and let’s be honest, she probably didn’t know what radio even is since she has probably streamed for all her life. She liked my fanny pack… because it was pink. 

A couple of days later, I finally got some legit recognition. August 16th, 2023… yes, I recall the date… around 7:30 pm… yes, I recall the time… in the parking lot of the police station… long story… a guy named Rob said, “Hey, I remember those fanny packs!”

And that was it. The fanny pack survived 30 years in my grandma’s drawer for that moment. 

*At my dad’s house I usually listened to Oldies 94.1. As a teenager. I loved oldies just as much as I loved anything modern. I jammed to No Doubt, Will Smith, and TLC on the weekdays and The Beatles, ABBA, and The Supremes on the weekends. 

How do you like them apples?

September Writing Challenge - Prompt #35:

Snacks

When I chose the prompt “snacks,” this is not what I had in mind. Today I’m going to write about… apples. Yes, apples. Apples make a fine snack. They’re great plain, and they’re even better dipped in cookie butter (Biscoff crunchy is my personal choice). 

You know what makes apples even more awesome? When they’re free! So I’m grateful to my apple-growing friend who shared her spoils with me this week, prompting me to write about… apples.

I thought I’d share with you how I treat apples to slow the browning. I’ve tried a few different ways, and this is the method I think works the best: slice ‘em, soak ‘em in salt water for 10 minutes, and rinse ‘em. 

I just fill up a bowl with enough water to cover the apple slices and put some salt in it. I don’t measure, but as a guide, about 1/4 tsp of salt per cup of water - give or take a bit. I’ve used kosher and table salt, and both have worked well.

Here’s one of my apple slices from yesterday - I packed them in my kids’ lunches, and I treated them with salt water around 7:00 a.m. I bagged some for myself and drove around with them in the van all day. Then I ate them at 2:45 p.m. while was waiting for Daisy to come out of school. 

As you can see, after almost eight hours, the apple had hardly browned. I’ve been doing this for years, and it’s been a great little snack hack.

Chomp!

Here are some apple slices that I treated in the evening and sent in my kids’ lunches the next day. Just a touch browner than the eight hour batch but still pretty darn good!