Hi! I'm just learning how to add pictures to this blog, so bear with me, it may not be pretty.
Well I survived yesterday. I may or may not have mentioned that I am the Activities Committee at church here. I can “ask people in the congregation” to do things, but I have no other people, officially, on the committee. We had our Christmas breakfast yesterday. (There is a lot of phone calls, shopping, organizing, and lack of sleep packed into those six words, by the way…) We had pancakes, eggs, sausage and fruit for breakfast, crafts for the kids, a pinata, music activities, and Santa came to hand out treats!
The best part was the decorating. We are a very small congregation, and we share our building with 2 other congregations, one of which is really big. THEY had THEIR Christmas dinner the night before. I told their activities chairman (by the way, they are so big they have TWENTY-FIVE PEOPLE on their activities Committee…) that we’d come in at 9:30 p.m. or so, after they were gone from the building, to decorate for ours. She said, “Well, I could just leave up our decorations, if you wanted.” In my scattered state, I said “OK that’s fine,” but in my mind I’m thinking hmmm, she’ll leave a few things on the stage, and plus we’d have tables and chairs already set up. That’s all.
Friday night, I walk into the church with Jolyn and Kathie to decorate, and I go straight to the kitchen. My friend Kathie goes to the cultural hall first. Then I hear this “Kari…..you need to come see this…”
They had rather elaborately decorated, to say the least—rolls of vinyl tablecloths were draped from the gym doors and walls up to the center pulley in the ceiling, making you think you were in a green big top. Huge shiny red ornaments hung from the ceiling center, a monster sign announced “Santa’s Workshop” into a room for crafts for the kids. 
The walls were draped with vinyl sheets (tablecloths, I think) with 20 or 30 lighted Christmas trees.
And the stage—please! It was covered with fake snow, and about 30 big, brightly wrapped boxes, and there was a big wooden sleigh in the middle, 5 feet tall, that the kids could step up into and talk to Santa.
Anyway. The other committee made it look pretty impressive. All we had to do to set up, was to take DOWN 10 tables and 100 chairs, (like I said they’re a big congregation) and put our own coverings on the tables. It was awesome. Our group was about 80 or 90 people, and I think a good time was had by all.
My stressors included running to stores and standing in lines that were way too long, and going to Costco at all. (What a mistake, in December!) I forgot to double-check with people on a few details I had asked them to do, about 2 weeks ago… Waking up at 2 a.m. thinking "Did the Santa suit make it over to the Haslam's house?" Nobody showed up with propane for the stove, so there was a 20 minute delay on breakfast while somebody went to get theirs. We ran out of sausage and eggs by the end, and then I didn’t get to eat any breakfast myself, so I was pretty crabby 4 hours later, wondering “why am I so weak?” Hopefully the only person who watched these things fall short was me…I think all the children had fun, so that’s the main point, right?
I currently find myself still recuperating after last week’s comedy of errors (prep for this party) that I did not find so funny. Now I am trying to focus on our own Christmas, which is creeping up on us ever so quickly!! So this week, when anybody asks me to do anything extra, I will simply smile and say “no."
Happy week-before-Christmas! Kari
Teresa got some airsoft pellet guns, so she and David (and their dad) have been practicing target shooting with those. 
They all got this bouncy thing, 
like a pogo stick but different, and they’ve bounced inside and out, forever, on that. 
And a ring toss/ball game we can play outside, since it’s cool temps, but not too bad outside right now.
Little did either of us know, it was a 5-hour project!!!!! Ugh! It turned out beautifully, and the kids had a good time making it with him, to be sure. What a good sport, huh?
