YG Christmas Party

Well, it was delayed by a week due to December tornadoes, but these kids love getting together! I still wasn't feeling great, but there are limited leaders and LOADS of kids, so I got myself together (it was pajama night, so it wasn't that much of a stretch, lol), and away to the church we drove! Things got off to kind of a slow start, as they only ordered eight pizzas (with no sides) and more than 50 kids showed up. We had about 10 just wait until more pizza arrived, which took until halfway through our normal time together. But once everyone got a little more food in their tummies, the games began.

The entire night was set up as a competition to earn items to build the best gingerbread house as the evening's finale. I lead the upperclassmen ladies, and we only had a team of five (a few of our teammates left at halftime after the pizza was eaten). Their major rivalry was the boys' high school group, but we were pretty even at winning and losing. I got wrapped as a Christmas gift, we won that one (but I don't have a picture, because I was wrapped between two chairs that looked like they formed a Christmas box :) There was a Cindy Lou Who rock-paper-scissors game, an eat all the things in the Christmas stocking relay, a cheese ball tossing/mouth catching competition, cereal sorting using only straws, a Christmas trivia challenge; I can't remember them all! But the winner could give a disadvantage, and while we ended up with the best building kit, we could only use one hand each to build it. High school girls are smart and work well together, so we got the task accomplished. I'll let the photos tell the tale . . .

The high school boys had to use Golden Grahams as their disadvantage; the back of their house collapsed pretty quickly, but they had fun building it with Nutella :)

One of the oldest girls in my group had never built a gingerbread house before! She did a great job with the treehouse trunk design.

The evening concluded with a sock exchange and a LOT of clean-up! Before they left, the PaTch group, plus one, minus one took some pictures which were photobombed by the Grinch! (our youth leader's wife :) They surrounded her for a selfie, as they should.

Super fun and LATE night--a whole extra hour late. Buck had my spot on the couch all ready for me to sink into at home . . . batteries charged in social settings, drained the second I leave. Very fun Christmas party with the youth group kids!