The ward party which had better never happen again

There might be a lot of griping in this post. 

So, I'm the Relief Society Secretary in my ward, and although it sounds like a fluffy job ("cake" being the descriptive term my bishop used to describe my calling....he later died from the laser beams of death I can shoot from my eyes) it is a giant amount of never-ending work. Seriously a ton to do and keep track of, constantly. The RS presidency was put in charge of the ward Christmas party this year, and we'd been talking about it in our meetings for upwards of 6-9 months. We all had a lot to do, but I was put in charge of table decorations, sign up sheets and posters.

Actually, no one was in charge of posters, but I noticed that the other wards who meet in the building had some for their ward parties, so I spent a couple days trying to make some. I have no Photoshop/graphic design skills, but the posters didn't need to be elaborate, so this is what I came up with. (It still took me all day though, since Microsoft Word isn't really meant to do the things I wanted it to do...) I finally put the file on a flash drive and took it to Image Pro. It took them like, 20 minutes to make a couple enlargements and copies because apparently I am an idiot and expected them to just be able to print from a Word document. They were very exasperated with me. Apparently I should have converted it to a pdf form, but since I'm just a common peasant, I didn't know that. Ugh. Anyway, I stood there the whole time, holding 30 lb. Luke as he slept. Eventually we got the prints and got home and then I mounted them all (there were 5) onto festive paper and poster board and stuff. Then I took them to the 1st counselor's house so that she could take them to the church that Sunday to put up where other people could see them. (We had 9:00am church and I knew there was no chance I'd get there early enough to do it...)

That Sunday night we had a RS meeting, and finalized all our plans. Since Mark and I got married in December, our reception had a winter theme and we decorated with a lot of red berries, mini pine trees and stuff like that. Our president had wanted me to bring all those decorations, but it was only going to be enough for about 8 tables. The 1st counselor had a dozen more centerpieces that she said we could use.

We had originally asked the high priests to set up long tables, but they insisted on round tables because they didn't think we had any long ones at the church (??). So we said FINE, set up 15 round tables. At their last meeting though, it was decided on long tables again, and the 1st counselor was going to pick up some plastic tablecloths at the dollar store. We'd originally wanted brown paper on the tables, and I researched buying some, but it never happened.

Come Friday night (the party was to be a breakfast on Saturday morning), I was supposed to head over to the church to set up the table decor. The high priests were supposed to have set up 10-12 long tables. I was planning on having the RS 1st counselor there, bringing the plastic tablecloths and 12 centerpieces with her.

Here's what I found when I got to the church:

Holy &^%^@#! 20 ROUND TABLES?!?! (Plus 3 long ones...)

And we (Madelyn and I) were the only ones to show up. I tried calling the other lady multiple times, but she never answered her phone. There was a definite sense of panic and wanting to just turn around and leave the church and never come back again.

Uuuughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Thankfully, I had the key to the RS closets, which have all sorts of cloth tablecloths in them (we were just going to use plastic or paper ones so we wouldn't have to wash them all afterwards) and Madelyn and I rummaged through until we found round ones that fit. We decided to use white, gold and red because there weren't enough white ones in the size we needed. She was a big help.

 

Eventually, some people from the Young Women's organization showed up to decorate the stage. Logan (their kid who tagged along) and Madelyn decided to shoot hoops (Madelyn made 6 baskets! Full sized ball and with the hoop at full height) but managed to lose control of the ball and they shattered a couple of glass ornaments I had on the front table. Yay. This night is going so well.

I was glad I at least didn't have to do the stage decorations!

 

By some miracle, after 2 1/2 hours, I managed to make my two bins of decorations (which were only supposed to decorate 8 tables) stretch to 23. It was a loaves and fishes situation.

Some of the tables looked okay, and others were downright pathetic. But by that point, I didn't care anymore! They at least all had something on them!

We were supposed to all have gone to a wedding reception that night (Mark's boss' daughter's) but it was already over by the time I finished. Mark and Luke went without us and it was 9:00 pm when we got home. THEN I got phone calls from the president and 1st counselor, who had both had to go to a high priest group dinner and that's why they couldn't come to help me. The 2nd counselor was at a [funeral] viewing.

 

I guess it's good that there were all those tables, because they seemed to fill right up the next morning. Mark had to work so I had to go by myself with the kids. It started at 9:00 am but we didn't get there till 9:30. I was pretty grouchy about the whole thing. The other ladies helped with the food, so at least I didn't have to do that.

 

The party was a success and we had a big turnout. Cleanup happened super fast because there were so many people there to help.

But I was SOOO glad it was over. Can I get an amen????