Just Say No!

You know in elementary school when they would have those assemblies and week-long efforts training kids how to "just say no" to drugs, etc.  Well, it turns out those worked for me and I have no problem saying no to drugs, but I do have issues saying "no" to being in charge of things.  For instance...

In December I was in charge of the church Women's group (Relief Society) Christmas dinner and program for 60 people and then 16 days later Jared and I were in charge of the entire congregation (ward) Christmas Party & Program (Christmas pageant).  A breakfast and program for about 200 people.  One girl my age asked me "do you volunteer for these things or something?"  Yeah, I like to bring chaos and spend my month of December planning crazy events instead of spending time with my family!!??

Really, in the end, it was fine and I am always glad to serve in my church.  My good friends really stepped up and helped a ton and one of the best parts about it was that Jared and I were able to work together on the Ward Christmas breakfast and program.  We are both always helping out at church in our individual responsibilities, but I really enjoyed working with him on this.  I told him it made me really glad to be on his team!  No wonder I picked him to be on my team for eternity.

These were some excerpts from my journal about both events...

The Relief Society Dinner:

Wednesday afternoon I cut 15 onions and 12 bell peppers preparing materials to distribute to my committee the next morning so I could delegate the cooking of the chicken and pilaf after setting up and  decorating for the event.  Even Jocelyn, who was doing an art project with her friend in the family room told me her eyes were hurting and they moved their art project outside in the freezing cold and braved the wind rather than the onion hanging heavy in the air.  The gift exchange was a creative “get to know you” activity and turned out better than I thought, the dinner was fine and we had 7 table hostesses decorate the tables which worked out brilliantly because they were all unique, and it got more people involved! (thanks to my good friend Breanne for this idea).  

The Ward Party:

After the 1^st week in to the month, Jared and I ended up in charge of the ward Christmas party.  Through a series of unfortunate events, it ended up in our laps, and it was somewhat of a drama and mess.  Long story short, the building hadn’t even been scheduled (and we share with two other congregations), there is tradition that we have to respect (and we hadn’t ever attended a party in this ward), we were given incorrect information, such as who we should ask to be Santa (apparently the guy had lost a lot of weight this year and was a little upset that we had asked him and didn’t really like doing it anyway).  And incorrect information about which supply closets were ours (we raided the other ward’s closet and used up several of their decorations and paper products).  And we have 3 small kids to try to juggle while pulling everything together.  I asked the children's group (primary) to do a nativity and short musical program but, of course, the president was on vacation in Hawaii and their chorister was out of town for a wedding.  Anyhow…In the end we were able, with a lot of help from other leaders and our good friends that stepped up, to pull it all off.  We were both extremely relieved when it was done and it seemed to be a success . You have to hand it to the kids for pulling off a Christmas pageant with only one practice.  Granted, it was much less than perfect, but it seemed to be Christ centered and let's face it, you put kids on a stage singing and performing and the crowd usually isn't disappointed.