Youth Christmas Fest

After a long week in hospital with Noah it was nice to be able to get out for the night and spend some time with the youth from church. Last night we had our 'Christmas Fest' for the 12-17 year olds.

With Noah in hospital it looked like either Aaron or I would have to miss out on going, as one of us would be in hospital with him, but Alison kindly offered to sit with him for four hours so we could both go out. Thanks so much Alison! It was nice to know he was with someone who knew him, cared for him and knew how to deal with things happening.

Aaron was glad he got to go as he really enjoying being M.C. He lashed out at chickenfeed on a $7 santa suit and wore the pants and a Christmas t-shirt and hat. At least someone doesn't mind looking like an idiot! ;)

As the youth were arriving there were some lovely carolers singing to welcome them. The youth were all asked to donate a can of food which is then going to be donated to Deloraine House for families who are struggling, especially at Christmas time.

The first activity was apple bobbing. Not everyone had a turn, but those who did got VERY wet!


We then went inside to warm up and dry off with some inside games. Sarah, Toni and I had set up the hall the day before. We thought it looked pretty cool with baubles dangling down from fishing line and a Christmas tree lit up in the corner.

I had lots of fun trying to work out some games that had a Christmas theme. Thank goodness for the internet! Some games we play at dances all the time and we just adapted them to be 'Christmasy' and other games we found and adapted to suit. The first game was like the chocolate game where you have to roll a 6 to get a chance of cutting off some chocolate and eating it. Instead of chocolate though they had presents to unwrap using oven mitts. They also had to put on a Santa hat before they could unwrap a layer. If someone rolled a 6 on the dice they then got to take the present from you and could have a go at unwrapping. The person who got to unwrap the last layer won the present (a chocolate bar). Because there were so many people there we had 6 dice and 6 presents going at once.

It was funny watching people as they were just getting into the unwrapping as someone would come and steal it off them.

Other games we played were 'Knights, Horses and Lovers', Christmas version where they had to be either a Christmas tree, Santa or reindeers when the music stopped . Aaron would then call out on of the three things and if they were doing that, then they were out.

We also played '4 corners' where they had to dance and when the music stopped they chose a corner to stand in. Each corner had a Christmas picture. If that picture was chosen they were out. Jared tried to bribe Aaron not to choose his corner by giving him $5! Aaron told him he wasn't that cheap and he had better offer him more if he didn't want to be chosen.

We also played a Christmas carol game where they wrote down their favourite Christmas carol and 5 numbers between 1 and 20. It could be any song except for Jingle Bells. Aaron then called out numbers randomly and if one of their numbers was called they had to stand up and sing their favourite Christmas carol. It was very funny as there would be about 10 people standing at once singing different Christmas carols. The first person to have all 5 numbers called had to run to the middle of the circle and sing Jingle Bells to win.

It was then time for the 'Hoedown Throwdown' Showdown. At a previous dance the youth learnt how to do the Hoedown Throwdown. We thought it would be fun to have a showdown and have a Hoedown champion.

I got up to have a go and realised how bad I really am at it as I hadn't practiced it since the last dance and was very unco!

Ty (with a little help from me) put together a funny '12 Days of Christmas' youth version for us leaders to do as a skit. Ty had put together a powerpoint presentation to go with it, so each line we sang had a photo to go with it. Instead of repeating the same thing for each verse we changed it up so we could include as many things as possible. The only thing we kept the same was for 'on the 5th day of Christmas my true love gave to me' which was 'GET OFF FACEBOOK'. Nothing to do with 5 things, but funny anyway as everyone is always on facebook.

It was a bit of fun and we didn't mind making fools of ourselves for the sake of a few laughs.

For supper we made cute little snowball puddings and reindeer cupcakes. We were so excited about them (yes it's a girl thing!) and they looked so cute on the tables.

We also had red or green spiders to go with the Christmas theme.

The youth seemed to have lots of fun and it was nice to get out together for the night and have some fun with them.