Thursday, August 25, 2011

Christmas In July

One of my FAVORITE things we did this Summer was having a Christmas is July party! But, this wasn't just any Christmas in July party, it was a party to benefit Operation Christmas Child! :^)  If you are not familiar with OCC what they do is collect shoe boxes filled with fun items for kids and then send them around the world, along with a comic book tells them in their own language about how to have a realtionship with Jesus Christ.

My family has made these shoe boxes and donated them every year at Christmas time for years and years.  But, this year we decided to make it a service project that our homeschool community could do together.  So we put out an invitations.  We asked for everyone to bring 20 of the same item to go in a box, and most of us brought 20 of 2 or 3 items.  (Crayons, paper, glue sticks, flip flops, wash clothes, etc.  You can learn all about packing boxes HERE.) We also asked each family to bring a Chirstmasy snack to share and for everyone to come dressed in red or green.  The night before the party we went in and decorated to make everything look festive.  My kids made a ton of decorations, which was a lot of fun on a HOT Summer day!

The day of the party we had each child write a letter to put in the boxes.  Then we sang Christmas carols, read the story of Jesus birth from the Bible, watched a couple videos about OCC, prayed for the kids who would get the boxes and then packed our boxes! I was VERY pleased that we put together 40 boxes!  When all the boxes were packed we ate our wonderful treats and just enjoyed a special time seeing each other over the Summer.  (Which we don't do enough of!)  It was a GREAT party and it was super easy to host.  The church is storing the filled boxes for us and the sweet lady that is in charge of OCC at our church even came out to help!

Here are a few pics from the day...

Kids writing their letters.
Praying for the children who will receive the boxes.
Watching the OCC video.
Singing Christmas carols.
Teens getting the boxes set up and ready to fill.
Listening to the story of Jesus birth.
Cookies!  I am SO impressed with the mom that went the extra mile and made these! (It wasn't me! My food contribution was pathetic.  I thought it would be "cute" to drizzle red icing on top of rice crispy treats and then sprinkle with green sugar.  Well, the icing looked like KETCHUP! Let's just say, they tasted fine if you closed your eyes! LOL  The kids ate them without complaining! :^)
 Filling boxes! (The boxes themselves were donated by OCC.)
My littles filling boxes.
The whole festive gang!
It was an awesome day!  We will be doing this party again next year for sure!  I can't wait!

Happy Homeschooling,

Jamin