Dubai 2nd Ward Christmas Party 2012

I wasn't too sure about the idea when ambitious Toria suggested it at ward counsel, and was even less sure while helping work on the logistics (another reason it's far superior to be a counselor than president), but it turned out FANTASTIC.

Last Saturday we had our ward Christmas party in the desert about 10km from our house.  4 long tables were brought from the church to handle the food. Everyone brought camp chairs, mats, or stools to sit on.  A large load of firewood was brought in--I think it was a whole tree cut into chunks and branches.  Add 2 camels and place the whole group in the middle of gorgeous dunes with perfect weather and voila!

I couldn't get a shot of the camels being unloaded from the truck. This is right after the truck drove off.  

I snapped these while people were still trickling in.  Isaac could not be persuaded for phone photos.  

Gwyneth is pulling Makenna down on our boggie board.

Jess and Makenna riding with Sister Schulz from Berlin, one of my counselors.

The party was slotted to start at 4.  For the first hour people took turns on the camels and kids (and adults) rolled, jumped and sledded on the dunes.  Most people gave up on shoes and just left them by their chairs/mats.  The sand is so fine that it's easier to go barefoot.  I think it was around 5 that the official opening prayer and blessing on the food was given.  This was the first time in my living memory that only adults lined up for food after the prayer.  It was difficult to tear the kids, and teenagers, away from the dunes.  And it was good food too.  They tried to keep it more simple with lots of a few things rather than traditional potluck.  BBQ chicken sandwiches, lots of good salads, fruit, and sheet cakes.  We had a great turn out, but still had extra food, though the pan we took home only had crumbs and icing left because of that irresistible homemade crazy cake frosting.

Anyway, after dinner had been going on for a bit, and as the sun was going down, we had a special visitor ride in on one of the camels.  I had envisioned the kids coming up to him one by one and getting their treat bags, but he was rather mobbed and was throwing out bags and extra glow sticks.  (Thank goodness I sent all the extras!)  I had made 36 bags with a candy cane, jingle bell bracelet, and 6 glow-sticks that can be made into bracelets or a necklace.  They were all quickly passed out and so were the few dozen extra glow-sticks and then Santa was on his merry way.   After it was fully dark, it was fun to see glowing colored circles moving around on the hill behind the bon fire.

Hey, is that a reindeer? 

 

Please note Santa's appropriate footwear.

Our Santa had a Swiss accent.  He is more accustomed to flying airliners when not making toys.  

After Santa left, we started the program, though several kids were still roasting marshmallows.  There were lots of musical numbers accompanied by guitar, violin or acapella, but I'm only going to mention a few.  The one most on my mind was Shedryk.  I went to Marina Marchenko's home 4 days before to practice a different song for church, and while I was there I learned that she REALLY wanted to sing a special song in Ukrainian at the party.  It turns out that "Carol of the Bells" is originally a Ukrainian song about a little bird and welcoming in the new year--springtime.  It is very famous there.  Luckily I knew the tune very well my Horizon Middle School days.  That was one of the songs we recorded in a cathedral in Denver (Is it still a cathedral if it's not a hundred years old?)  Unlucky for me the soprano part has SO MANY WORDS.  Lucky for me only one person there actually speaks Ukrainian and 3 others Russian (two of whom are under the age of 6) so my bad pronunciation wouldn't be readily obvious.  I worked hard, excited to tell Kim.

My eyes are glued to those "words".

A chunk of our primary.  Junior primary is 4x as big as senior.

One fun song was the 12 Days of Christmas.  The crowd was split into 12 groups to sing their respective parts, but lots of groups had fun changing up their number phrase, like "7 camels swimming" or "4 burj khalifas".  Group 1 was the most creative and changed almost every verse.  My two favorites were "and a falcon in a palm tree" and "an Arab in a fancy car".  

The night ended with Silent Night sung in 6 different languages.  We have more than double that number of nationalities, but I'm not sure that it has been translated into all of them or that we could get solos or duets to sing them.  I joined the German verse. 

Shirley and I planned synchronized blinking. 

This is the Spanish group joined by Bishop Anderson who served a mission in Sicily.  Sister Blanco is Australian, but their family attended a Spanish speaking ward in Orem for the last few years.  Her girls know the primary songs in Spanish better than English.  This picture also happens to show Jess playing in the sand and our family's pile of flip flops and Isaac's football on the ground next to me.  I grabbed this and most of the others off Facebook.