Now that's what I'm talking about

Another day, another team, another outcome.

Tonight was the marching band banquet. I'll post pictures at a later date. It was an amazing banquet to top off an amazing year. But I want to talk about the team I had to help me with the banquet.

First is the band director. We sat down with the budget in hand and decided what we could afford to do food wise. Decoration was totally up to me. Once upon a time, I did party decorating. At that time I told him that as long as I had a student in the band, I would decorate for free, but when I didn't have a student in the band- he had to pay me. So the decoration budget is only limited by my time and money. Which this year were both at a premium.

Anyway, food was planned and part of it was ordered to be picked up today. I met with my committee and we kicked around ideas for themes and decorations and discussed how much time we all had to devote to each item. We came to an agreement on decor and who would do what. I told them that I probably would not send out reminder e-mails, so unless they told me otherwise, I was just going to assume they would follow through.

And they did.

I went to the cafeteria as soon as the bell rang this afternoon. Parents were there waiting for me. So were band members. They came and went in shifts. They covered the tables with paper. They set silverware and napkins on the tables. They put food in the warmers and set up the serving area. More food was delivered.

Dessert was donated by Kneaders.

Because the show the band did was music from Cirque de Soliel, we went with a circus theme and the colors were taken from the color guards flags- black and yellow. All I did was blow up balloons and put them together as bouquets.

At one point I said, "We should have done popcorn and peanuts. That would have been fun." One of my committee members was headed to the store to grab something for her. We had 90 minutes and everything was done. When she got back she had 1 lb of peanuts, which we scattered on the tables. She also had a couple bags of pre-popped popcorn and Jiffy Lube of Linden had donated popcorn bags. Then she dished the popcorn into the bags and we had them during the video recap of the season. It was a big hit.

After the banquet? I gathered the flowers off of the table and went to put them in my bag. I turned around and the tables were almost all cleared off. So I went into the serving area, picked up the 4 dessert boxes, took them to the garbage can, turned around and the rest of the serving area was almost cleaned up. I put the left over ham onto plates for the committee to take home and they had finished clearing everything else. So I headed back into the eating area. All that was left was to sweep. The band director walked in with three brooms and they were claimed by parents before I could even move.

The entire banquet area was cleared and cleaned in less than 20 minutes! The only thing I had to do the entire evening was blow up those balloons and then return the paper roll and cart to my office.

How do you thank a committee like that? They were amazing and I am thankful for their help.

Oh, and if you live close to Utah County, get a copy of this week's Timpanogos Times. Read page 5.

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Indeed.