Christmas Parties Galore

We have had a couple of very busy Christmas Party weeks. And it has been fun and has gotten me in the Christmas mood. Christmas activities are one of the things that signal Christmas for me.

The first week in December I enjoyed two book club parties. Bibliobabes had their annual Christmas party at the home of Petra Pinto on Tuesday, December 2nd. It is a nice group of women, and Petra originally has done the whole meal herself, but in the past couple of years she has been willing to let some of the other club members bring something, so this year I brought the appetizer, which was a Spinach and Krab Quiche. It looks very Christmasy because the green spinach and the decorative red food coloring on the Krab make it look rather “red and green” which is festive. It was interesting because it turned out to be a seafood evening. The other appetizer was chips with a seafood dip, and the main course was pasta and shrimp, so my contribution was a very good fit. We had a few activities after dinner. Petra had some word puzzles that we tried to solve, they were quite tricky, and the first one required that she give us a very big hint, but we did get into the spirit of it. Then we played a game of book title charades which I helped to lead, being a very big charade player myself. We decided that it was too easy however, because we used only titles of books that we have read in our bookclub and that was too small of a universe of books. It will be harder if we don’t keep so limited the next time we try it.

On Thursday, December 4th, Bookworms had their annual Christmas dinner and party. I ended up hosting it this year, kind of by default. Camille Mendel has been the hostess many times, but she had another party the next night and didn’t feel that she could handle the two back to back, and Jolene, who has also been hostess, was going to be late and couldn’t hostess, so I volunteered. Everyone was assigned to bring something so all I had to do was set up the party and make lasagna. This was also a very fun party and we laughed a lot. Paul went to bed before everyone left, and the last ones left after 11:00, so that was a late evening for Bookworms. We did a white elephant book exchange, and Shauna Syphus suggested a new way to pick the books. We had a very funny exchange about changing the tradition, in which everyone laughed until they cried, but we did end up doing it her way, which was new and fun. She had a story that included the words ‘right’ and ‘left’ many times and each time the word was said you shifted the book that was in front of you either to the right or to the left and at the end of the story you ended up with the book that was in front of you. There were some really interesting books exchanged this year. I got For Such a Time as This the women’s conference talks from 2007.

On the weekend, December 5,6, and 7th, we went up to the cabin and attended the Christmas concert that the BYU-Idaho choirs presented, which I have already reported about.

The following Tuesday, which was December 9, I once again hosted the Career Center Christmas party. This is a traditional event as well and we always have the same thing, and do it in the same way. We always have it on a Tuesday because I don’t have to work on Tuesday and can be home to set it up. We always have it at my house because I live the closest to the school and we always have Raclette because it is a fun and unique meal and also easy to prepare. The rest of the guests, which this year were Carolyn Chipman, Sandi Simmons, Linda Anderson and Nancy Reynolds brought other food items, the drinks, the salad, the appetizers and the dessert, so I provided the chopped up vegetables, the shrimp, ham and crab. It was a very fun luncheon and went on until well after 3:00 which was no problem this year because I didn’t have to go back to the school to pick up Erika, like I did last year and failed to do so because we were having such a good time. I was happy this year to host two parties early in the month because it gives me the incentive to get the house all decorated early and get the stuff that I am not going to be using sorted through and stored out on the back patio. I am using a lot of the same stuff I use year after year, but I am slowly getting rid of the stuff that I am not using anymore. I gave some stuff to the Deseret Industries last year and will probably give away some more this year.

Thusday, December 11, was the biggest and most time consuming party effort so far. It was the Back Country Horseman Annual Christmas party and Paul was the chairman this year. We put on a dinner and program and silent auction for about 80 people. Paul did the organizing and delegating and handled the program, the auction and the decorating, and I did the dinner. This included ordering a party favor for everyone in attendance, this year large forest green bandanas, and also setting the tables and decorating them. I bought pine garlands from Roberts’s crafts and then attached red bandanas to them bunched up and pulled through the greenery so that they had a kind of poinsettia look. I put disposable green tablecloths on the eight banquette tables that I was setting, and used bright red plastic plates with the green bandannas centered on each plate and tied with a length of red raffia. The tables looked very festive when they were set with the red and green table decorations and the red plates and green bandannas. The room looked very nice, one of the members brought a tree and decorated it and several women brought decorations which were spread throughout the room. The tables for the silent auction were covered with red disposable tablecloths as well and so they looked like a party as well. I worked for three days solid making the food, but the evening came off really well. The menu is pretty standard, year after year and I didn’t deviate. Bruce Kartchner brings his huge grill and serves as the grill master. I ordered 80 New York strips from the local Reams grocery store and they did a wonderful job on them. I also bought four packages of Tyson frozen chicken breasts that were also grilled and so there was plenty of meat. During the previous three days, I made four big trays of funeral potatoes, and three pans of green bean casseroles, and six batches of brownies. The last day I did final shopping that included soft drinks, ice cream and the makings for two huge Caesar Salads. As it turned out the meat was wonderful, tender and well trimmed and very delicious by many accounts. There was plenty of food, and the brownie sundaes were a big hit. Everyone was very pleased with the dinner. People were also very generous with donations for the silent auction and things sold well and a lot of money was raised, and the program was very entertaining. Paul had arranged for Gordon Thomas to come and “be Santa Claus” and he came and they did some poetry exchanges and then Gordon made himself available for pictures with Santa Claus in the red sleigh that Paul brought as part of the decorations. I got to know a few of the women in the club better as they came and helped to set up the room and do decorations. It was a long and exhausting day, but we felt that it went off very well and were glad to have participated in it.

Saturday was the annual Christmas Concert in the conference center with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and the Orchestra at Temple Square. The guest singer this year was Brian Stokes Mitchell and the orator was Edward Herman. It was a spectacular of grand dimension and we enjoyed it very much. We went with Grannie and Granddad and went to dinner at Sizzler first. This was in part a reward for all the effort that Paul and I had gone to for the Back Country Horseman Christmas party; we felt that we deserved a little pampering after all that hard work.

Sunday, December 14th we attended a neighborhood party hosted by Bob and Marilyn Heiner. It was a lot of fun and we had some nice visiting with old neighbors and ones that we didn’t know very well. This is the first year that we have been invited to this party which has been going on for several years. Everyone is invited to bring an appetizer (I bought the same Spinach and Krab Quiche that I had made last week for the book club party) and then there was a delicious frozen chocolate pie served after everyone had had a turn around the appetizer table. Apparrently this party has been going on at the end of the Oak Valley drive for some years, but this year the Frisks and the Shenks and the Secrists and Kerns were added to the guest list—so it was fun to be a part of this party. It was an enjoyable evening and a terrific end to two weeks of non-stop partying.