At the beginning of November there was a church wide leadership training broadcast. I didn't have to go, but heard about the training as soon as it was over. One member of the bishopric called my right after the meeting ended to let me know that I might start hearing that my calling as ward activity chair has been dissolved. Sure enough people kept coming up to me letting me know my calling no longer existed. The bishopric also let me know that I wasn't going to be officially released until after the Christmas party was over.
I don't know what I was thinking when I planned our Williamsburg trip, but it was the week leading up to the party. It is VERY hard to do all the last minute things for a ward party when you are out of town. Thankfully I had a wonderful committee to help out. Our theme this year was Christmas Around the World. We selected 5 countries/area in the world to focus on. My dad being the wonderful father and wood worker that he is made wood frames for each country to use to decorate. The evening began with Santa in the primary room. We did this last year too and it went over really well. That way he is not at all the focus of the evening and those parents who don't want to do the whole Santa thing can easily avoid it. Having it at the beginning also gets everyone there on time.
My brother-in-law was kind (or crazy) enough to be our Santa. Here is his with his son Asher.
Tade figured out who this Santa was, but Seth had no clue it was Uncle Sean.
After Santa the main events began with dinner. The ward was in charge of bringing international or local sides or desserts and we provided the meat and some other things. The evening went almost perfectly except for the sides. Our ward usually brings too much food to activities, but this time they didn't bring enough. Part of this was due to the overwhelming number of people we had show up. I had three more table set up than last year and we still had to pull an additional thee out once everyone was there. After dinner everyone moved in families around to the different countries. Each area had food to sample, decorations to look at and some sort of craft or activity to do. We had the Philippines, England, Sweden/Norway/Germany, Japan, and Peru/Ecuador/Chile. We had activities that went along with traditions that came from each country.
The Philippines taught a song and had several treats from the Philippines to try.
England had old England Charles Dickens themed decor. There was a station for writing Christmas cards and fruitcake tasting. Fruitcake is definitely not to most popular thing, but I did want people to taste something that England introduced to us.
Sweden/Norway had a woven heart paper craft. Norway also had yummy food which I don't remember the name.
Germany is where I think most of our traditions come from especially the ones that involve pine like trees and wreaths. Germany is also the country who did gingerbread so we had gingerbread houses to decorate. We are fortunate enough to have a good friend in the ward whose business at Christmas time is making gingerbread house kits. Allison has at least 7 different sizes of houses that she makes. She was so nice and made 100 mini gingerbread houses for the ward party. It was the most popular activity of the night.
In Japan people could fold paper crane origami or fans if the crane was too hard. They were also able to practice with chopsticks. We have several people in our ward with Japan connections, but they weren't able to help. So one of my committee members and I pulled off Japan. Thankfully Kristen, committee member, has two siblings who server missions there and could advise us. We also have a lady in our ward from Japan and she said we did just fine. Since Christmas isn't the biggest there we focused more on New Years and the signs for each month.
In Latin America Peru had Panettone (cake) tasting and Ecuador taught a game and rhyme/song to the kids. It was hard to narrow down which Latin American countries to use. We have so many represented in our ward. We ended up using ones located near each other since they might have overlapping traditions and decor.
It turned out to be a wonderful evening. The activities committee went out with a bang. The next day at church we were all released. Now I am back to just one calling. I really enjoyed doing the ward activities. Even though they were only once a month or so they wore me out, but also challenged me.
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