Youth Group Christmas Party

Guest Blogger Gabby at the keys! :)

I love Christmas time; the surprises, the food, the gifts, and...the Christmas parties!

Our first party of the year was at Youth Group. The group has expanded since we started going, so we had to move out of the smaller “youth room” into the sanctuary. More kids=more fun! And more people to hear about Jesus! Win-win!

The party started with the usual conversational time over a provided meal. I always enjoy catching up on friends' lives before learning with them.

Then! We broke up into four groups based on our age: high school boys, high school girls, middle school girls, and middle school boys. Of course that meant we had sibling minds on two of the teams which could be an advantage. Why were we in teams? We were going to make gingerbread houses (using graham crackers).

Each team sent up their best rock-paper-scissors player, and they battled it out. Middle school girls lost first, so they had to build their gingerbread house with one hand covered in a sock. High school boys lost, so they had to give up their graham crackers and use...Honey Grahams, the cereal! Sadly, high school girls (Caelan and my team) lost next, so we had to give up our frosting and use---ew---spray cheese to hold our house together.

We had fifteen minutes to build a super cool gingerbread house, and C jumped into “master builder” mode. She was particular about where the graham crackers needed to be for a good foundation. Once we figured that out, a few of the girls had good ideas for walls. The roof was a difficulty, but we got creative; if the roof caves in, just cover it in the colorful wrappings from the decorative candy!

We had some designers on our team, so they worked on the outside while a few of us tried to salvage the roof. It...didn’t go as planned. The spray cheese wouldn’t harden or dry out like the frosting did. So, we decided to call ours “The rundown stable where Mary had Jesus." It’s a church event, so maybe we’ll get more points from the judges?”

Eh. The middle school girls had a very nice structure with a few outdoor figures. Same with the middle school boys. The high school boys...covered a foam cup with frosting, stuck the Honey Grahams on, and threw some candy over it. 

Middle school boys won best overall, but best in view of handicap was a bit more difficult. High school boys won, though. (Ours was definitely the prettiest and most colorful.) 

We moved on to our next game. All the kids got in a big circle, and one of the leaders handed out two dodgeballs, and chose three kids to be in the center. One wore a Santa hat. The goal of the game was to hit “Santa” with one of the two dodgeballs. The two kids in the center were trying to protect “Santa” from getting hit. I was never “Santa” nor an elf, but B and C were both elves. C even got to be Santa [but knowing her mom's preferences, didn't put the community Santa hat on her head, nice work, star child of the day award!]! There was one point when the “elves” in the center could catch the balls thrown and throw them back. If the ball hit you, you were out for the rest of the round. Annoyingly, the only “elf” who caught the ball was one of my friends, so I was the only person who got out. ;)

The best part of the games, however, was when Pastor Doug was dubbed “Santa” and Dad and another leader were the “elves.” It was so funny watching Pastor Doug trying to avoid the balls, and Dad trying to black them. Then Dad was “Santa” and they gave us another ball and said, “You have to hit Santa ten times in the next minute or Santa gets to choose an exercise for you to do.” We took it seriously and hit “Santa” 13 times in 45 seconds. It was so fun! ["Santa" might have had another adjective for this round, which was set up by his fellow middle school youth leader, ha!]

Then, we were told to grab a chair and were split into two teams. I was team one and for once I didn’t have any siblings on my team. The game we were about to play is called “Chair Basketball.” Basically, there are two empty trash bins on opposite sides of the room and each team is trying to get the ball into the opposite trash bin. One catch though; you have to stay seated in your chair and your chair can’t move. So, your team has to have strong people in the back and front, and good catchers in the middle. There was a lot of swinging around and falling out of chairs in layout catches. It was so fun.

I played one period as offense, then hurried my chair to the opposite goal to play defense. I wasn’t in a good position, so I switched to the opposite side and did much better. My team was down the first two periods, but the leaders added two balls, so we had three balls to make baskets with. My team came back and we won, so I think it was a pretty good day. Also, the other team had to do 10 jumping-jacks because they lost, so that was even better :)

One of the leaders said we had one more game to play, and everyone cheered. “It’s called, let’s clean up the sanctuary!” I laughed really hard, and then started moving chairs with my chair moving buddies. (We do a lot of chair moving, which is kind of fun.) Then, we just hung out for the rest of the evening.

It was super fun; I really love this youth group, and how crazy it gets sometimes. There are some competitive folks out there (I’m one of them ;))

Merry Christmas!