Way back when I was a bagger at Macy’s a customer came through the line and immediately said to me, “You look like a Woolf!” Because Woolf is my mom’s maiden name this didn’t sound strange to me till I noticed the confused looks on the surrounding employees, the same time the customer noticed. We started laughing before going into the genealogy tree. I was proud then to say I’m a Woolf, and I’m proud today to say I’m a Woolf.
I took it upon myself to spear head this years Christmas party. (Maybe as long as I’m the Ward Activities Leader I’ll always feel the need to be in charge if there’s a party!) But in reality ever since I did the progressive dinner in the gym for our ward adult dinner/social last spring I’ve been anxious to try it at a family gathering. I got there early enough to order a couple of the guys around to get the tables and chairs set up in a half-moon shape like before and they helped put the numbers for the rotations under the chairs. As the family arrived they were told to find their name on a cup and sit there. When I did this for my ward I felt the need to keep couples sitting by each other but this was more fun since I could mix everybody up. From there the evening followed the format of rotating for each course to sit with different people and play a game. During Cade and Ashley’s Balderdash round one table came up with a definition from the movie New Moon that was funny but obviously made up. When it came time to vote, the table full of Edward swooning aunts and Tween-agers all raised their hands, “That’s it!” This confirmed our suspicions that it had been their definition to begin with!
Later during the add-up-your-ages round, it was no surprise that the table housing Great Granny won.
I loved that people really loosened up and enjoyed visiting with people they might not otherwise sit with. Some of the combinations of people got quite funny to me.
So the adults didn’t have to keep tending to the kids, Ava and Alivia led the kids’ table as waitresses. Ava had colored a placemat that I had laminated for each child with a picture that pertained to them. She was very thoughtful about this.
When it was time to exchange the white elephant gifts we were all more than willing to do it to the game ‘Do You Love Your Neighbor’ that Brent led us in. I’ve never played this before but it’s defiantly one for the party-planning book. When Brent said, “Okay, last round” everyone shouted, “No!”
Great Granny Woolf had a little treat bag for each of the kids to open instead of the white elephant, which has been a tradition. It’s always fun to see who will open the actual “white elephant” mask that they MUST wrap and return the following year.
I was glad I had put some leggings under my skirt when the round of war-ball started, not to mention the flats instead of heels I wore. War-ball is tough, I’m getting old, I’m out of shape, (or all three), cause man I worked up a sweat!
It was really an entertaining night and I left so grateful to have relatives in my family. Good thing because six days later it was time to do it all over again with my dad’s side of the family at the…
