Y'all Hush: Merry Mayhem

Hey y'all -

Your school's Holiday party was held last Thursday night, and I think I finished recovering from the event sometime last night. The plan was to have the kids sing a few songs, have Santa make a surprise appearance to give out some toys (that the parents had dropped off earlier in the week), and then eat a little macaroni and cheese.

I was in charge of macaroni and cheese. Last year, 50 people attended this event. Fortunately, I grew up a southern Methodist, so my catering math when determining how much food to prepare for a get-together goes something like this: How many people are expected to come, minus all the folks they might not be speaking to, plus all those tacky folks who are going to invite themselves, plus a 20% divorce rate which tends to add whole new branches to the family tree...and then multiply the whole mess by four, just in case. Using this system, I arrived at the number "200."

I made six varieties of mac n' cheese, and you know what I thought was the best? Buffalo Chicken. Take a tray of regular mac n' cheese and stir in a bottle of buffalo wing sauce, some diced celery and a chopped-up rotisserie chicken. You know which one went first? Chicken and Bacon Alfredo (jarred Alfredo sauce, handful of bacon crumbles, chopped rotisserie chicken). Your school is known for its locally-sourced, organic food program. When you had Curry Eggplant Quinoa on last month's lunch menu, I accused your principal of just randomly stringing nouns together. So sometimes I giggle to myself as I'm preparing mass quantities of Velveeta-based entrees for your school.

My crazy catering math worked to my benefit, because 200 is exactly the number of people who came and packed themselves into that school. Y'all, it was madness.

That many people packed together made the temperature in the room go up about 30 degrees, and your dad was sweating. I took a few pictures of Santa's arrival, and then your dad found me and said, "Hagen's acting up - he just hit a kid downstairs - so I'm going to take him home." Of course, I agreed, and then only five minutes later did I realize that football was on TV and beer was in our fridge and Hagen probably didn't hit anybody; your dad had just found a way to escape the madness under the guise of good parenting. Well played, Thor.

Hagen did not get his picture taken with Santa at the party, because by the time Mr. Claus started handing out presents, he was probably already home on the couch, high-fiving your dad about how smart they are. But Laney got to pick up her present: