New Year's Eve, New Years Day

Yesterday we made it out to the Old School Center by 4:00pm where Susan, Karin and I worked on chopping vegetables to go into the soup for New Years Day. The huge prime rib roasts (over 32 pounds) were put in the convection ovens at 7:15pm. The guests started arriving by 8:00pm with most of them there by 10:00pm. The older folks (and I'm talking my age group) played games in the library while the teenagers played volley ball and basket ball in the gym. We had a group of younger children watching movies in the theater. The entire school was rented out and well used. The kitchen is so well stocked, it is a blessing. The Old School Center offers so much entertainment for big groups and this was a big group. Our dinner was served at 10:45pm and was absolutely delicious! Way too many good foods to mention. The guests were all invited into the auditorium where we were blessed to watch 2 skits, the first one was by Jeff Timm's girls and the the second was by the Meister cousins. Then came the beautiful singing, a prayer to pray in our new year of 2010 and then the countdown. The noise at midnight was ear ringing. We ended up in the Library with a cozy fire in the wood burner just visiting until close to 2:00am. Food was put away and off to bed knowing Jan 1st was going to start out very busy. Even though we went to bed after 2:00am I was up by 6:30am and wandered out to the kitchen to get some coffee brewing for either the early risers or late night partiers. I never did know if some had ever fallen asleep but we did find out that volleyball at 4:00am is not near as entertaining to watch OR play as the first games of the evening. While we were visiting over coffee the beef barley soup was put on to simmer for our lunch.
Our breakfast was served promptly at 9:30am, we were actually shocked to see how many young kids spent the night, they just kept coming out of the wood work. We started breakfast with 10 dozen eggs, 50 sausage patties, 50 biscuits and a big pan of gravy, started watching the line and scrambled up 4 more dozen eggs and another 18 sausage patties and 50 more biscuits. We also had to open the last can of sausage gravy. This was all served along with a beautiful fresh fruit arrangement with pineapple and oranges by Rachel Sauder, grapes, many different coffee cakes, cinnamon rolls, donuts, and fresh squeezed orange juice, chocolate milk, and of course delicious eggnog. After our huge breakfast, the teenagers went back into the gyms to keep playing while the adults when into the theater to watch the rose bowl parade. No one was hungry at 12:30pm so lunch was put off until after 1:00pm. By that time a whole new group of people arrived with more food so all was put together for a very nutritious lunch starring the very flavorful beef barley soup. After lunch we started the clean up and I was home by 4:00pm. Mark has a fire going in the living room and we were all snugged up with the dogs in front of the fire when Rhoda came home from Taylor, MO with a friend. They wanted the living room so off the floor and into the playroom we went.
Jamie and Ralph Stone checked on Clara for us after leaving the party around 1:30am and mom checked on her before coming back out at 7:30am. No baby, which is good, the temperature was reading ZERO this morning.