The Last Ward Activity

Unfortunately my time serving as the Ward Activity "specialist" (weird title, I know) has come to an end. My last activity to put together was a...

This was held in the church parking lot on a hot day. Perfect.

(It was a private activity, allowing families of the congregation to serve one another. Though if someone drove in whom we didn't know we would have gladly washed their car of course!)

I blocked off one of the two entrances so cars would come in from one direction (and NOT run over the hoses that several families had lent us for the morning.) After the washing, the cars were moved to a "drying zone" to be dried while other cars pulled in for their washing turn. 

 We bought a four way splitter so we could have four hoses hooked to water, and borrowed four spray nozzles for the ends. It couldn't have worked better. I was so pleased.

 ....But the fighting over the hoses! My goodness. Children who even weren't mine were tattling to me about who was hogging the hose! My solution? Anna gets the hose for a turn. You can wash for a while. Ha.

 Even the littles got into it. So cute!

As a reward at the end, I'd promised a water balloon fight. So, a week or so before the event I divvied out 1,500 balloons between about 9 people to bring the morning of the car wash.

Kind Marla came over to help me do my double batch on a hot day and had the brilliant idea to pull the hoses into the blob and fill them up there!

 "This must be what swimming with jellyfish feels like."

After the cars were done we moved them out of the way and lined up all the buckets and coolers full of water balloons and blew the whistle to begin a most epic fight.

After, out came the ice cream and we sat in the sun to dry off while eating our treat.

Not a lot of people came to this (it was a Saturday, I get it), and some left early, but MANY who were not in the photo DID help with preparation, and lent things for the activity. I think it was a great success and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves.

Clean up was a bit tricky. We tried spraying the ballon pieces into a pile, but they were too sticky. So we left for a couple of hours to let the parking lot dry. Adam and a couple other guys went back with blowers and said clean up was a breeze. (See what I did there?)

And now I'm off to other things. I'm sad. I liked this particular responsibility. It was simple. I didn't necessarily have to work with a group, I could just plan and make happen and ask for help when I needed it. It's so convenient not having a committee sometimes.

My new responsibility is back in the Relief Society—that's what we call the women's organization in the church—this time I'm the second counselor, and as part of my responsibilities I will help a committee plan and carry out a monthly weeknight activity for the women. LOL. This responsibility is a completely different beast, and I have a lot of learning ahead of me. Wish me luck!