Christmas in July!

For staff night last week we had a Christmas party!  On Friday (the 20th) all the staff drew names so we could help Santa get us some gifts, since this is his off-season.  The plan was that we'd have a Christmas party and gift exchange after dinner on the 25th.  But I have to admit that when I heard "Christmas" I went a little nuts.

First of all I got stuff and made the Bruce North family's traditional Christmas breakfast:  Breakfast Quiche and Blueberry-Stuffed French Toast.  Yum! 

Every morning at camp I put out some hot water and hot cocoa mix for my 50 or so kids to have before or with breakfast. But the commissary always sends sugar-free cocoa mix (which makes no sense because we also use it for kids who get hypothermic in the lake, and they need sugar as well as heat). So for Christmas I bought two big cans of Stephen's hot cocoa, one of regular milk chocolate and one of mint chocolate truffle.  One of my girls, Tiffany, acutally squealed when she saw the hot cocoa mix. She told me later that it is her family's tradition to have mint hot cocoa for Christmas. Yay! :-)

We had one of our usual camp lunches that day: hamburgers. But Bob (my female assistant) and I had made fudge that morning to have as our lunchtime dessert.  My "kids" were surprised and delighted to have that Christmasy treat in the afternoon.

On Tuesday, the 24th, I baked gingerbread cookies for the staff to decorate, but not just any gingerbread cookies.  No, I made Ninja-bread men!  I put them out on the table a couple hours before dinner, along with some frosting and sprinkles, so the staff could decorate their ninjas and then make them disappear.  My kids loved the ninja cookies!

Then, for dinner, I cooked two turkeys with all the fixin's.  This was a trick because the oven is temperamental—to say the least—and I really had no idea how many potatoes to cook for mashed potatoes; I finally decided on one per person, plus a few more for good measure.  Have you ever tried to mash 60 large potatoes at once?  It took some time.  But the dinner was delicious, and I had a happy group.  To top off the Christmas feast I made good use of some of our banana abundance and made something like banana cream pie.  We had some happy campers!

Then after the feasting Santa Claus came! Our program director happens to know Santa personally, and he made all the arrangements.

Santa knew that Bruce had gone shopping with his family and really wanted these safety glasses he saw, so Santa got them for him!

Santa did some magic, read us a story, and then had each of us sit on his lap to get a gift. 

Santa's laughing at Brandon.  So were we all.



Michael kind of looks like he doesn't trust Santa,
but he got a pretty neat gift!



I told Santa that I am a married woman, but he said it was OK to sit on his lap because he's married, too.  I'm not sure about that reasoning.

I got a very cute clock that says, "Good Food Served Here." :-)

We were all filled up in every way by bedtime.  It was a fun night!