It was a bit of a scramble this morning because some of the ladies who are have been part of the wrapping crew since the beginning had golf dates today and couldn’t make it and we had three out sick. It didn’t take long to get volunteers to help fill in, thankfully.
In case of some you are new readers and don’t know the story behind this Christmas Party I’ll give you the condensed version here. Shortly after Val and Lou moved here they were at the golf course one day. After golfing they gathered with their new friends and the subject of a Children’s Christmas Party came up. It was explained to Val that the local Moose lodge put the party on and Val thought that was wonderful that the Moose would do this for the community. Val was quickly set straight that it was only for “Moose children”. That is fine in itself, however, the surrounding area is a somewhat poor area in some sections. Unemployment is high, the Mexican population has grown considerably and Val knew that those children needed Christmas too and that very likely Santa may not be stopping at a lot of the homes. She couldn’t sleep that night. The next morning she told Lou, her husband. that they had to do something for those children. And the Arizona City Children’s Christmas Party idea was born. They ran with it. They had just two hundred kids the first year and Val and Lou bought all the gifts. Yes, you read that right, all the gifts. The next year, when we all got involved the number had jumped to a little over 400 kids attending. The third year we wrapped over 600 gifts. Well, it was getting so big after the first year that Val turned to the community for donations. It was growing so big so fast that there are now two golf tournaments, a bike run, monetary donations from area businesses and individuals and good discounts from some retailers. Val and her husband do the shopping for all the gifts. The first year we were involved she accepted gifts that our park and others bought but that ran into problems. Some people bought things like bikes, those big battery operated remote control cars and others bought very acceptable Candyand or Parcheesi games, baby dolls and Tinker Toys. While all gifts were certainly appreciated it was too much of a swing between the value of the gifts. How does it get explained that Santa gave Johnny a bike and he gave a Jimmy a box of Tinker Toys and Johnny and Jimmy are brothers a year apart in age. I can see where that could cause a problem. Instead, Val and Lou do the shopping. She leans towards educational type toys or ones that introduce music, art or language.
Now how’s that for the condensed version?
So once again we make our way to Val’s to finish up what we couldn’t get done yesterday and the extra hundred gifts they shopped for until 11 pm last night.
Some of the gifts were almost as tall as the ones wrapping them.
Nancy and Diane have certainly been busy!
I hate wrapping balls! Basketballs, Footballs, Soccer balls, it doesn’t matter, give me a square box any day! Kathy steps up to the challenge!
Do you think the kid who gets this will guess what it is????
The wrapping is never ending! The piles never go down!
Finally at the end of the day, we had this.
Can you guess how many gifts we wrapped this year? Drum roll please…… EIGHT HUNDRED AND THIRTY ONE! And next year will even be bigger.
Its already been decided that from now on we’ll need two days to wrap.
We’re tired. Our backs hurt from standing all day. But it is so worth it! Val starts working on the party in JULY,,,,we can certainly give this small amount of time for such a worthy cause.
Val, we tip our Santa caps to you. You are an amazing, kind woman!
And you make great fudge!
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