[FaithS]

My husband and I plan a Super Bowl party every year. It's kind of ironic, because I don't watch football. My husband is the technology guru in our group of friends, so that's how we got started being the planners, many years ago.

We hold it in the youth room at church. They have about 10 couches in there, I think, and we brought in a few chairs, so there was room for lots of people. We didn't think about counting, but, we estimated about 45 -50 people. I think that some years, when most of us had kids that were still at home, we may have had more in attendance. But, we're mostly empty-nesters now. And, for the size of the room, this was a good number.

My husband sets up one of the large church screens and uses the church projector. He has to put up an antenna outside to get TV reception down to the church basement. And, he uses his laptop to access the TV channel. Years ago, before laptops were common, and before the church had all their A/V equipment, he used to set up 3 TV's in a circle, in the middle of the room, with the couches surrounding them.

We had a somewhat eclectic group of people this year:
- Most were from our Sunday School class.
- The pastor and youth pastor and their spouses were there.
- There was a family from the local homeless shelter (with 4 kids: ages infant to 7).
- A few middle school kids. A few high school kids. A couple of college students. And, a few other local people who came with friends.

I didn't watch hardly any of the game (lol -- I usually don't!). Did some visiting with a few other women, and watched a video in another room for awhile. For part of the evening, I took the "mom" with 3 of her kids, to the preschool Sunday School room where they played with toys. There's very little space at the homeless shelter for them to do that, and they often spend most of their time in one small room.

I missed most of the commercials this evening, but, I watched a bunch online after I got home.

The food was awesome, as it usually is. But, of course, I had to use some wisdom in choosing what to eat. I managed to stay under 1400 calories for the day, even though my Super Bowl meal was over 600. Because I'd eaten carefully earlier in the day.

~ Faith