Christmas Dinner

     Hey y'all. I know I just did a Christmas post the other day, but I felt the need to do another one. I've been getting into the Christmas spirit lately haha. So this post today will be about another one of my Christmas traditions: The women's Christmas dinner at church.
     Every year on the Saturday after the church season Advent begins, my church holds a dinner for the ladies of the church, in which we ladies get to chill and the men serve us. It's so much fun, I enjoy the heck out of it every year. It's always held from 6-9 p.m. every time. The ladies are asked to bring a $5 gift to exchange, and also a can of food to go to our local homeless shelter. I usually take a bag of canned food, I don't feel right taking only one can when there's so many hungry people out there & I have plenty of food in my kitchen. I feel the need to share with those less fortunate than myself & my family.
     When we walk into the front door of the church for dinner there's a check-in table, where the men check our names off the list & take our coats, exchange gifts & cans of food. When they take our gifts to be put with the others, they tape a little ticket on them & give us a ticket of our own at the end of dinner. After the check-in process, the men escort us into the Fellowship Hall where the dinner will be held. For the beginning of the dinner we start off with a salad that is waiting on the tables & some appetizers that we get ourselves. They have a table set up at the front of the Fellowship Hall where there's fruits & veggies, and also egg nog & apple cider. Then, for the main course, we have chicken cordon bleu, which is chicken stuffed with ham and cheese. It's soooooo good! And with it we have this really yummy rice thing & green beans (<--- my favorite veggie). And for dessert they bring around trays of different cakes & other yummy stuffs. I always get a piece of cake & a chocolate eclair. I can't quite remember the specifics of the desserts, just that it's cake and yummy stuffs haha.
     Every year Nana and I sit with our friend Melody & her mom Anita. Melody is blind & her mom can hardly see at all, and at first glance you wouldn't be able to tell Melody is blind! She does very well on her own, but her husband still helps her out a lot. And I remember every year she always gets a slice of cheesecake for dessert, haha. Weird, that just randomly popped into my head lol. The Fellowship Hall always looks so beautiful, because there's a lady at church, named Kay, that decorates it so beautifully every year. She hangs these giant lighted Christmas balls from the ceiling & also decorates the tables with a gift in the middle & some poinsettia themed... other stuffs. Haha. At the end of the dinner, everyone at each table chooses a number between 1-10, then after everyone has a number, Kay calls out a random number & whoever has that same number gets to keep the gift in the center of the table. I got it one year :) It was just some hand soap in the box, but it was still cool.
    Then, I believe at the end of dinner, or near the end, we have a quartet come in and sing. They sing traditional Christmas carols so wonderfully. Last year they gave out lyrics sheets so we could sing along to a few of the songs. It was awesome because my friend Meg and I sang the first verse of "Silent Night" in German. We had to sing it in German on Christmas Eve, so we figured we'd get in some more practice haha. After the quartet finishes up, we have the gift raffle. The men come around to all the tables & give each lady a ticket. Then, they start picking up gifts from the gift table and calling off the numbers from the tickets that are taped on them. I'm always sitting on the edge of my seat while waiting for my number to be called haha. The anticipation is so much fun lol. Some of the ladies get really into it, they start hootin' and hollerin' when their number is called. And Melody always yells "BINGO!" when they call her number :)
     After all is said and done, we gather up our things and head home. It's always such a wonderful and very fun evening. I look forward to it every year. I love it :) It just wouldn't be the same without it...