Tag: Santa

Guest Blogger: Mike P

Happy Holidays from the William Home!

Each year, we host an open house and invite our teachers, mentors and other staff that work with our kids to come over and have some Christmas goodies. This is a great chance for the girls to show off their home and use their social skills and manners in a larger setting.

Kira grabs a loose ball in her last basketball game!
Great hustle Kira!

We just completed our fourth and fifth grade basketball season and the girls went out with a victory in their last game at a tournament in town.  This was such a fun bunch to spend time with! It was great to be able to watch the different skills we try to coach begin to appear in the games.  At this age, we spend a majority of our time in practice working on basic skills and how to play the game properly from dribbling the basketball, to sportsmanship on and off the court.

The girls also had the opportunity today to go through the Christmas store and pick out gifts for their families.  After that, they went to see Santa, wrap their presents and enjoy some treats.

We have also continued our walking program with the girls. We are happy to announce that we are currently at a total of 10,789 laps in the gym, which is a little over 500 miles!

From the William Home, may you all have a very Merry Christmas and all your travels be safe!

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas

The youth at St. Joseph's Indian School had so much fun with Santa!
The youth at St. Joseph's Indian School had so much fun with Santa!

While we haven’t had much snow this December, it is definitely beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Today was the day for our Christmas store. Our staff pulls aside many new or like new items that are donated and our Native American youth get a chance to “shop” for presents for their family. Each child has a book of tickets, some good for baby clothes, others for jewelry, toiletries, books and games etc.

Staff and other volunteers help wrap a few of the gifts and Santa makes his appearance to find out who has been naughty and who has been nice.

The High School Native American club held an Indian taco sale outside of our downtown Thrift Store. They are raising money for their annual powwow and other activities. I went downtown for lunch, and the food was all mouth-watering. But while our young entrepreneurs were great cooks, they forgot some of the other essentials, like paper plates to put the tacos on, or even utensils to dish out the food. Luckily our Thrift Store was able to come to the rescue until reinforcements arrived.

Our 7th and 8th grade basketball teams traveled to South Dakota State University in Brookings, South Dakota. They attended a men’s and women’s college basketball double-header. Hopefully seeing life on a college campus gets a few of our students thinking along those lines.

Tomorrow is the Dancing Dolls and Dudes recital, so I had a special evening mass for the four younger girls homes so they could have extra time to get hair and makeup ready in the morning. The students seemed to enjoy the smaller, more intimate liturgy, and I had plenty of willing volunteers for the help I needed. Appropriately, our closing song was “Lord of the Dance.”