Festival of Trees

Who doesn't love fudge? I think the answer is no one. Yesterday proved to me that EVERYONE loves fudge (myself included). Salt Lake has a long tradition of holding a Festival of Trees every year to benefit Primary Children's Hospital. People spend months making quilts, wreaths, crafts, tree decorations, etc. Hundreds of trees are decorated and auctioned off to the highest bidder as are wreaths, gingerbread houses, etc. It is huge! There is a gift boutique and a sweet shoppe and concessions and it all goes to Primary Children's. For the last couple of years I have volunteered at the Festival itself. I've served in the Sweet Shoppe (courtesy of knowing an executive board member of the festival). Yesterday they assigned me to the fudge booth. I was assigned to be a cutter meaning I take people's orders and cut the fudge to their desired size and weigh it and tell them how much it will be. Others did the same job. Others packaged the fudge after it was weighed and handed it to the customers. Still others took the money (so the fudge cutters didn't contaminate their gloved hands with dirty money). They even assigned one person to be the fudge stocker (get more from the back when we ran out). When I heard this job I laughed and thought they had too many volunteers and were making up jobs. Not true. I also thought that since I was starting my shift at 9:30 am there wouldn't be a heavy demand for fudge and I'd be bored. Not true. For 4 1/2 hours I ran like crazy. I cut and weighed and smiled and even wrapped when others were too busy. People were always lined up. The fudge stocker turned out to be a full-time job as we were always running out of this flavor or that. I personally sold hundreds of pounds of fudge. You'd think that after all that fudge that I'd be sick of it but, alas, that wasn't the case. As soon as my shift was over, I was in line to buy some for me. Yum! I was so worn out that I was glad our family is going back to the Festival tonight so that I can actually see the trees.