Sub-4-Santa Part 1

it's that time again. time for Sub-4-Santa.

for anyone that doesn't know what that is, i will tell you. to shorten Mrs. Kelly's tear-jerker story about how Sub-4-Santa came to be, i'll just say that basically, our school librarian (Mrs. Kelly) realized like 25 years ago that not everyone in Kanab always gets to have such an awesome Christmas. so she started this program, which involves the entire school donating money to raise enough to buy things for families in town that can't really afford nice things for Christmas. this is my first year being on Student Council, so this is actually kind of a new experience for me.

Sub-4-Santa usually lasts about 2 or 3 weeks, and this past week was our first. we did three fundraisers this week, one of which was new to KHS. we put the four milk jugs in the offce (one for each grade. whichever one gets the most money in it by the end of Sub-4-Santa gets like $200 in their class account), the early-out lunch (any 4th hour class that can raise $25 can get out 15 minutes early for lunch), and the all-new Sub-4-Santa Winter Formal Dance.

our Student Body President, Rhees Jackson, always has these great ideas, but then forgets to tell the rest of the student council. he'd had the idea a while ago for a winter dance, and maybe having it for Sub-4-Santa... but we never discussed it in a meeting until last Saturday. the idea was that we would use the leftover decorations from the Christmas Festival (more on that later) to have the dance, but that meant we'd only have a week to advertise this dance. this is where i came in.

i spent about 10 minutes on this poster. yet somehow, it looks almost identical to the one i spent an hour and a half on. ugh.

by Thursday, i'd only heard of one guy that had asked a girl to the dance, and that was my friends Dustin and LaRisa. that's it. but then right before 6th period, i was telling my other friend Carley about something embarassing that had happened in 5th hour. then she said "well it's okay... your day is going to get a lot better... bye!" and then she left. i just stood there and was baffled. i caught on eventually though, and ran out to my car to see what she was talking about. sure enough, there was a metal popcorn tin by my driver's door with a big silver bow on it and a note.

since i was already late for 6th hour, my teacher made me wait until after class to even find out who asked me to the dance! it was awful! anyways after class, i had some friends help me. i opened the popcorn tin, took out the cardboard divider that kept the buttered, caramel, and cheese popcorn, and proceeded to methodically pour the popcorn into some plastic bags to find the name... i wasn't in the mood to dig through all of it. in the middle of the whole thing was simply a Reese's Chocolate Christmas Tree. har har har... it was Rhees. clever.

to answer him, i chose to use an old inside joke between me and Rhees. one time in Sociology last year, we spent the whole class playing with those pink and white Circus Animal cookies, so that's always been kind of a joke. so i went and bought some of those cookies, and made a punny poster that said "It would take a pack of WILD (circus) ANIMALS to keep me from going to Winter Formal With You! ♥-Jennifer". i then used the Animal Cookies and, with the help of Rhees's sister Calli, left a trail of them leading from the garage door to his room. then i left the poster and whatever cookies were left on his bed, and my job was done.

part of my trail of cookies going down the stairs... ha.

so that was all Thursday. Friday night was the Christmas dinner that X-Press always sings at with the Symphony of the Canyons. this year though, they decided that if people are paying $35 a plate to come eat dinner and see the concert, they don't want to have to go through a buffet line. so what does that mean? KHS music students got to serve. :/ it wasn't too bad though, in retrospect. but i did get butter on my new formal dress. haha

the concert itself went alright, nothing to go down in history. but at the end, when X-Press sang the classic Christmas song "Breath of Heaven", i was in tears and i couldn't sing a part of it. when it was all over, i turned in shock to my friends Chelsea, Chanelle, Carley, and Tyrell and said "We're done." never again will i sing at the Christmas dinner... it's weird. even freshman year when i wasn't in X-Press, i was in band and back in that day, all of the music groups played/sang at the dinner. so basically, i've been doing this for the past 4 years, and now it's like... over.

Saturday was the Christmas Festival, which is always in the same place as the dinner the night before. it's got booths for all kinds of things, including a lady from Cedar City that was selling her jewelry and the Arizona Girl Scouts. i helped sell raffle tickets and baked goods with Chelsea, because all of the music students are required to help for at least 11 hours for this whole thing. yikes.

the festival ended at 4 p.m., then i stayed unti like 6 helping to clean up. fortunately, we were having the dance in that same place that night, so we didn't have to take down all of the decorations (we got to leave a bunch of the Christmas trees and all of the hanging decorations), just the tables and the tarps that covered the floor. so then i came home, took a shower, and started getting ready for the dance.

i ended up driving to town to meet Rhees at his house, since he doesn't really know where i live, and i just didn't feel like it was necessary to make him an hour late for the dance just to pick me up. so i got to his house, then we went to the dance... where there were like 10 other people. sound familiar? an awful lot like Sadie's? haha there was really not a huge turnout like we'd hoped for (we tried to advertise it as a winter-version of Homecoming), but we ended up making about $300 towards Sub-4-Santa, so that's good. also, Rhees's mom Julie was the photographer, and she donated her services. whoo! i'll try to put those pictures up when i get them, because they're actually pretty funny.

all in all, that dance ended up being more fun than i'd anticipated. after the dance, Rhees took me and Dason back to his house (i had to get my car, after all), we we all hung out for a little bit with Calli. finally, i deemed myself too sleep-deprived to have any further human contact. i was saying the stupidest things, then finding them hysterical. how i considered myself okay enough to drive half an hour home, i'm not sure. good times, though... good times. Rhees and Dason never fail to make me laugh until i am crying.

Me and President Jackson at the dance. I'm not sure what he's looking at, but what a guy. (:

next, i get to be auctioned off as a slave for a week to who-knows-what kind of people. we'll see how this goes.