Here within our LCC Community, Christmas began on November 29th...immediatley following our staff/faculty Thanksgiving Potluck when we decorated our campus for Christmas! This was the 2nd of the holiday events that I (Kim) was coordinating, and by the end of the day, I was exhausted! We had a good number of people stay after the dinner to help deck the halls & now the main lobbys of our primary campus buildings look beautiful & festive.
Andrew & Ieva decorating at home (I don't have any photos of the LCC decorations yet!)
The Christmas culmination at LCC is always the annual Christmas program. In past years (since 2002), we've had the muti-talented Dave Rhodes here to put on an enormously-complex and amazing Christmas program. He would start planning before September was over and spent over two months training students to sing or play the bells & conducting a 60+ person choir & multiple bell choirs on top of recruiting dancers and actors from our student body. Since Dave left last spring & we haven't been able to find a replacement Performing Arts Coordinator (if you know anyone, please let me know!!), the Student Life staff was left to our own devices to figure out what Christmas should look like this year.
We decided we'd still have a program, but at a much smaller scale than in past years, and we'd follow it with a home-made dessert reception: asking students, staff & faculty to make their families' holiday desserts to share. In a moment of weakness, I agreed to coordinate the program element & another colleague coordinated the reception.
So, enter Kim's 3rd holiday event to coordinate for the LCC Community. Thankfully I have learned a lot from Dave after working so closely with him over the past few years and that experience helped things run more smoothly. I adapted a narrated script that we had used at our church last year and planned to do nothing more than have the narrator tell the story of the birth of Christ, interspersed with a small choir leading congregational Christmas songs & costumed characters come stand on stage at the appropriate times. However, a number of students approached me asking if they could coordinate special dances or songs into the program. Since everything fit within the script, I let them run with it, doing nothing more than finding music that fit the script & telling them when to go on stage.
And I am please to announce that everything turned out beautifully! Our students have SO much talent and they really made the show what it was. We also incorporated a staff/faculty kid's choir this year to sing 'Away in the Manager' (North American kids sang it in English & LT kids sang it in Lithuanian) and it was ADORABLE!! We had candles across the front of the stage & a couple boys were much more interested in blowing them out than singing! We were a little nervous that Ieva would whimp out at the last minute (like she has for her 2 flower-girl debuts and at the Christmas dress rehearsal on Thursday evening), but she did great! She confidently walked on stage holding the hand of her adpoted big brother, Josiah, and sang like a champ with the rest of the kids.
The LCC Kid's Choir (with Josiah behind Ieva)
In past Christmas programs, Mary always came out to the stage riding on a huge straw horse, led by Joseph. After many years of use, our straw horse has gotten pretty beat up & since his tail was literally hanging by a string, I didn't plan to use him during the program. The biggest surprise for me was to see our horse (with tail repaired) rolled out during the final narration! Instead of Mary on it's back, Steve (an RD on my staff) dressed as Santa was riding on it! A few staff members had planned this at the last minute & hadn't told me about it, which made it REALLY funny. They rolled Steve out into the lobby where the reception was starting & he became the most popular guy of the night with students posing for pictures & parents putting their kids on the horse with him to do the same!
Kim & Ieva with Santa Steve & his Straw Horse
Christmas isn't even here yet and I'm already exhausted, but being LCC's holiday events coordinator this year has been very fun & rewarding, nonetheless! And everything that's left will be a piece of cake...literally! Now I get to start baking for all the Christmas parties we're hosting (3 next week alone) -- one of my favorite parts of the holiday!
'Tis the Season!
The Christmas Girls always match!
