Garden Valley Church welcomes new year with games, music

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Garden Valley Church welcomes new year with games, music

Published 1/3/2012 in Local News

By ANGIE HAFLICH

ahaflich@gctelegram.com

It was a family-friendly New Year's Eve celebration in the gym of Garden Valley Church Saturday night, filled with food, games, activities, crafts, balloons and live music.

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Brad Nading/Telegram Mallory Koehn, 9, bends under the bar for a successful turn in a limbo contest Saturday at Garden Valley Church's gym during its annual New Year's Eve party. This was the eighth year for the event.

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Brad Nading/Telegram Brooklyn Staats, 11, left, and Jasmine Paxson, 7, race to the finish line wearing oversized pants stuffed with balloons Saturday during one of the New Year's Eve party activities at Garden Valley Church.

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Brad Nading/Telegram One of the two teams in the finals of a gingerbread house decorating activity try to accomplish the task with everyone, except one member, blindfolded Saturday at Garden Valley Church's New Year's Eve party.

Hannah Proffitt coordinates the event every year, and she said that she tries to arrange something that caters to all ages. While the kids played pool, foosball, air hockey, pingpong or created their own arts and crafts, the adults played checkers, Scrabble or carried on conversations.

Others enjoyed finger food ? such as miniature pigs in a blanket, miniature hamburgers, chips and dip ? as they watched their kids participate in the group activities led by Proffitt.

"Our first game is balloon blow off. I sewed some bed sheets together, and then one person per team put them on, while the rest of their teammates attempt to blow up balloons to fill up the pants with," Proffitt said.

Fourteen-year-old Brandon Staats was having difficulty with the task of blowing up the balloons.

"This is hard. ... I'm just running out of air," Staats said as his 9-year-old cousin, Madilynne Pate, made the task look simple.

"She's a little girl, she's full of hot air," he said, laughing as she gave him a disapproving look. "She's my cousin ? I can say whatever I want."

Eight-month-old Will Paxson had some fun of his own with one of the inflated balloons, making every effort to crawl after the balloons, only to watch them bounce away from him as soon as he got near.

His parents, Matt and Jennifer Paxson, brought both of their children to the event. While Will chased the balloon, Matt assisted their 3-year-old Olivia with arts and crafts.

"This is the one night she gets to stay up a little later," Jennifer said. "We won't stay the whole time ? we came for a little bit so she can get some energy out."

Some other kids who enjoyed the arts and crafts section were 10-year-old Kyle Doll, who was constructing a paper airplane and 8-year-old Joel Bellows, who was decorating covers designed to fit light switches.

It was about that time when Proffitt brought the kids back out to play musical chairs.

"I made it a little different. We have three packages that are each wrapped 10 times, so each time the music stops, whoever is holding one of the packages unwraps one layer. Whoever unwraps the last layer of wrapping gets to keep the gift," she said.

Other activities included limbo and a contest to decorate gingerbread houses, which were pre-assembled in a storage room next to the gym.

"These are my headquarters," Proffitt said.

The gingerbread house decorating contest also had a twist. There were two teams and all but one team member of each had to wear blindfolds, and then each of them had to direct their sight-less counterparts on what to do. By the time it was over, there was more frosting on the kids than there was on the houses.

As for musical entertainment, the Christian band Taking Heart and Christian rapper Grim entertained the guests.

"Then if there is any time left, we'll pull out the jump ropes, do the hokey pokey ? just some things to fill the time until the ball drops at midnight," Proffitt said.

A ball that dropped at midnight was suspended above the gym and was filled with candy and toys for the kids.

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