Back in September, Jon and I were asked by our Bishop to be in charge of our ward Christmas party. He told us they would call several new couples to be on our committee and that he wanted it to be fun and really for the kids.
We were happy to do it (we had nothing else going on :)) and we LOVED getting to know 4 new couples in our ward. It seems like yesterday that we were newly married with one little baby. Now, we're the "old" family in the ward.
After asking many friends and spending time on Pinterest and the internet, I decided I wanted to do a Polar Express theme party. I didn't want to go overboard and wanted to keep it as simple as possible, with the goal of keeping the kids in the gym and not running crazy through the halls.
We presented the ideas to our committee and they were so great about it and started taking on the assignments that needed to be filled. I will not lie - this took hours and hours of prep and planning and preparing, but it turned out GREAT!
We had our party on the first Friday in December - just a week after Thanksgiving, but I knew that I wouldn't be able to get anything else ready for Christmas until this was over. Lindsey offered to make 3D snowflakes for me. I let her do it as one of her YW Value Projects because it took her about 10 hours. Jon hung them from fishing string for me and we used paper snowflakes that the YW in our ward had already made to put on the walls.
We had a table for the treats!
This was the foyer that Jon and I put together. He built the ticket booth for us and we had a cute woman on our committee paint "Tickets" for us. We used brown butcher paper for railroad ties and duct tape to make the track. We roped off an area where we had some other ward members set up their amazing trains. Each child was given a ticket at Church on the Sunday before, so as they entered, they could get it punched by our awesome conductor.
One of the cute couples put together this "Santa scene" for us on the stage. We had a big screen set up to project a big picture of a train as people came, to watch the book be read and then to watch a couple of Christmas messages from lds.org.
I made the handout that Santa gave each child with a bell. He also gave them a candy cane.
As our guests arrived, they could get a piping hot cup of hot cocoa.
The train builders!
This is our wonderful conductor. We ordered the hat from online and then he fixed up a vest and jacket with gold buttons and even wore a mustache. Men don't come any nicer than Verl!
I didn't get many pictures during the party because of running the whole thing. Jon was the MC and we served delicious ham, cheesy potatoes, rolls, fruit and green bean casseroles. We set up 4 round tables, each with all the food, so the serving lines went so quick! Shortly after people got their food, we had a shortened version of "The Polar Express" projected on the screen so they could listen to the story, 4 of our Young Women did a dance to the Polar Express song, we had a craft for families to do together to send to a missionary/widow/someone in the service/etc., we watched 2 short Christmas messages and then the Bishop concluded with remarks. After a closing song, we sang a Christmas song and waited for the sound of jingle bells and Santa.
We were planning on having about 180 there and we ended up with about 200!
We had the best Santa too! He was the father of one of the guys on our committee and he couldn't have been any cuter. His beard is real and he really took the time to talk with each child. We had asked a great photographer, Jessica, in our ward to take pictures and she did amazing!
Look at these darling Santa pictures!
Hannah's holding our invitation, which was a golden ticket!
Jon and I were so happy with how it turned out! Each assignment that our committee took on, they did an absolutely amazing job at. We got lots and lots of compliments and all the kids were so good about staying in the cultural hall.
There is always something that is overlooked. I tried to think and think about every detail, but there was something that we forgot! About 5 minutes into serving dinner, the High Priest Group Leader came and said to us "The widows are asking about the butter. Where's the butter?" Oops! We had not even once thought about getting butter. Good times!
