Christmas Party

This last weekend, we had our ward Christmas party. I thought it was really fun and loved the theme and all that went along with it. The theme was "A Storybook Christmas."  It all revolved around classic Christmas stories. Everyone was invited to wear their pajamas and to bring new or gently used books to donate to the Ronald McDonald house.  I'll start with what we had for dinner. For dinner they had roast beast (beef), who hash (potatoes au gratin), green salad, jello salad, and rolls.  After dinner was done and before the program, the music changed from Christmas music to the sng "Hot Chocolate" from the Polar Express.  The committee came out wearing chef hats rolling out carts with dessert (cookies) and cups of hot chocolate.  For the program, they had a ward member up on the side of the stage on a chair with a few children gather around.  All of the kids were invited to come sit on the floor just in front of the stage. The program consisted of home telling about a few Christmas story classics, the first being The Polar Express.  For this story the children who are in our elementary school's choir sang "When Christmas  Comes to Town," which K was a part of.  The next story was Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol," this one starred our three bishopric members as the ghosts and had a religious spin on the story.  I can't remember the exact order of all them, but I think the next one was "'Twas the Night Before Christmas." Another member walked out on stage to recite the story.  Just after he began, he was interrupted by a quartet who came on singing.  As the story went along, the quartet would echo/sing a part of the story, of course the narrator pretended to be annoyed but the quartet.  "Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer" was another story.  For this story, three deacons dressed with elf ears/hat sang Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer with their voices changed to sound like elves.  The last but not least was "How the Grinch Stole Christmas." This was a small vignette when the grinch meets Cindy Lou Who and realizes Christmas is much more than presents.  To end the program, they showed a video clip from the First Presidency's 2010 Christmas devotional where Dieter F. Uchtdorf spoke about the grinch and how he saw Christmas through new eyes and we must too.  It was a great way to end the evening.    As soon as the closing prayer was done and the lights back on, the entire room erupted into mass chaos of cleaning up.  Ladies were clearing tables, men were stacking chairs - as they say, many hands make light work, and it was just that. The committee did a wonderful job putting everything together and was so much fun.