2013 Ward Mongolian Grill

On the Saturday of Labor Day weekend, we had the now annual ward Mongolian Grill at our house.  You'd think that with it being on a holiday weekend, the turnout would be small.  Not to worry!  We had a lot more people at the party on Saturday than who showed up at church the next morning.  We even had a family who left their camping trip, came to the party, and went back to camping.

Leading up to the party is a lot of work for Dode.  He spends hours trying to get our yard to look more park like and less overgrown jungle like.  Then, there's all the little repairs to our big outdoor toys.  Then, the set up and clean up of the party.  We rented a port-a-potty again to try to protect the septic drain field from 150+ people using the bathroom.

What is this you ask?  It's the beginning of the snow cone sauce we made.  To all this sugar, we added water, and boiled it into syrup.  Then, we stirred kool-aid mix into 2 cups at a time to make a tasty thick topping for the snow cones.  By the end of the party, most of it was gone.

Our snack station, popcorn and snow cones. 

Not shown was the kettle corn machine.

Our water slide/pool set up for the young crowd.

Everyone brought cut up veggies or sauces for the feast. 

The church provided the chicken and beef.

Cooking up two different plates of goodness.

Even with five grills running, the line took about 45 minutes to get through.

Our new bouncy house.

A friend also brought over her bouncy house.  We ended up having one on either side of the yard, one for big kids and one for little ones

We've always got to have the laundry baskets out for some fun!

The hot tub early in the party before it was really discovered.
By the end of the day, the water was brown, yuck!

Heading down the slip and slide

View of the crowd

Lots of children in the pool

The tallest man in the ward ended up sitting at our little kid picnic table.

I can't wait for next year and Dode is already dreading it.  He's wondering, "What will Stephanie think up next for me to do?"  "Will our yard hold them all?"

We did a time lapse video of our day.  We missed some of the action in the yard with the food line, but you get an idea of how our day started, from before dark with produce to after dark with clean up.