The weekend of March 12-15 was a busy one for us. It was youth conference for our stake. Tyaan is on SYC (Stake Youth Council) and was one of the few that were overseeing the committee that planned it. I was asked a while ago to be in charge of the food for the weekend. I was given $1500, asked to submit 3 or 4 names of people to help, and told to plan for 160 people.
The youth on the committee had already picked out the menu so I priced everything and figured out everything we'd need. It started with an opening activity Thursday evening where we served root beer floats.
Friday I went up to Camp Hinckley in Running Springs (about an hour drive from home) with my Suburban loaded with supplies. I was followed by a friend who also had her Suburban loaded with supplies. We unloaded everything, including our personal stuff since we'd be spending the night there with the youth, and familiarized ourselves with the kitchen which neither of us had worked in before. After a little while our 3rd kitchen helper arrived followed shortly by our final helper who transported all of the pizza we bought from Costco. (40 pizzas to be exact!) The kids arrived a while later and we started baking pizzas as fast as we could. We got pizza and salad served for dinner. We put out hot chocolate that evening while they had a dance and took the few hours before we served dessert to cut up the fresh fruit I brought up for breakfast the next morning, and then served brownies and ice cream for dessert at 11:30 when the dance finished. By the time we got the kitchen cleaned up and everything put away it was 12:30 and we headed to bed.
We started at 6 am the next morning. We baked sausage links, finished getting all of the cut fruit (watermelon, cantaloupe, strawberries) mixed along with some pineapple chunks and grapes. And then we started making pancakes. There was a lot of clean up after that meal! While some of us were cleaning others started the meat heating up for lunch. We kept hot chocolate out all morning while the kids were in their workshops. It was cold outside, snow on the ground, so the hot chocolate was going quickly! We ended up with just about an hour before lunch needed to be worked on so all but 1 of us just stayed in the kitchen. I was exhausted but I knew if I laid down I'd just feel worse when I had to get back up so soon. We washed over a hundred apples and sliced some of them. We also quartered a bunch of oranges to put out with lunch. We served BBQ beef sandwiches and had all of the fruit out with carrots, chocolate milk, milk, and chips. When we finished serving lunch we put out cookies and milk and the leftover brownies from the night before. The kids ate and ate but we never ran out of food.
Finally we were done, but there was so much cleaning and loading to do that we didn't get out for a couple more hours. Tyaan stayed and rode home with me. When we got home I got the few things out of the suburban that needed to go in the fridge, left everything else in the car and we both went to bed.
That day, since Kathy and I were both up at youth conference our husbands went riding. Jon got a couple pictures with his Blackberry and they came out really good. This was my favorite of Jon and Mike up on a hill. They didn't get home until after dark and rode for hours.
On Sunday we had the Withers over for dinner (leftover BBQ beef sandwiches!) and we were all tired. Tyaan and Russell both fell asleep and they were so cute I had to get a picture. It's fun to see these two. We like to say we're going to marry them off some day, but we know it's not very likely because they're too much like brother and sister. I'm glad that they've become such good friends though, they are both great kids. I always threaten Kathy that I'm going to steal him but she won't give him up. He calls me his real mom when we're all together, but that's mostly to drive his mom crazy. =) He's on SYC with Tyaan and it's fun to see them each conduct stake meetings. Russell actually conducted the special youth meeting we had during stake conference recently where Elder Tenney came to speak just to the youth of our stake. After that meeting it was the general Sunday morning stake conference meeting and Tyaan spoke. She was followed by a boy youth speaker, then by the mission president, then by our stake president, then by Elder Tenney. She did a great job and Elder Tenney made her stand up (they actually came and got her from the congregation where she'd come to sit by me after her talk) and said what a beautiful girl she was and mentioned that he couldn't imagine there being an inactive priest with a laurel like Tyaan. It was really cute. I was very proud of her and got to hear so many people compliment her. Anyway, my point is that these two are great teenagers and I love them a lot.
Sunday evening youth conference ended with a testimony meeting and all I had to do was hand out ice cream sandwiches when it was over. I stayed under budget and never ran out of anything. I didn't forget anything and everything, for the most part, ran smoothly. I was amazed since this was my first time being in the kitchen at all up at Camp Hinckley, let alone in charge of all of the food. (Head cook is what they called me for) I was relieved that everything turned out okay, and exhausted when it was all done.
It was an exhausting, but very rewarding weekend. Tyaan really enjoyed the workshops, and it was good for her to get away for a little while because she had had a really rough week. I'm very grateful for the youth program in the church. It's made such a difference in my life and it's great that Tyaan is getting to participate in it as well and I can see how much strength she gets from it.
