Further Set-up for Festival of Lights

Mr. Jones and I arrived at church at 8:30 this morning to resume working on the set-up for Festival of Lights. Lots of folk showed up today and everyone worked really hard. It's a huge endeavor! For those of you unfamiliar with this whole thing, I apologize for taking two days posting pictures of it -- if you haven't been involved in Festival of Lights, this probably is not very interesting. But bear with me please. This is what Mr. Jones and I did for 10 hours today, and so we wanted to share it with you. I was assigned the job of assembling and lighting one of the two really large trees that stand beside the two pillars immediately inside the narthex of the church. Here is what it looked like in its box. This tree is 14'. We first separated all branches by color code and put them in piles.This is Ellen. She and I worked together until noon, when she had to go to work. She is an occupational therapist. We had never met before today. She is a very organized thinker, and we enjoyed working together.
Ellen isn't real fond of heights, and I love them; so when the tree got too high to reach from the floor, I climbed the ladder ...

The other tree, the 16' one, was being assembled by a group of guys a few feet from us. This is Joe. I worked closely with him yesterday. He is a very funny gentleman, and we enjoyed bantering each other in the race to complete our tree first!
Every now and again we would run into problems with a string of lights and would have to seek out professional help ... so while the problem was being worked on, I ran around snapping pictures of everyone. Here is Mr. Jones and Gordy working at the front of the auditorium again.
At 11:30, all of the regular staff at Calvary came to the auditorium to be "tree fluffers." There are about 40-50 smaller lighted trees that had been storage, all squished together -- so they looked pretty fragile. The staff cracked up when they saw how pathetic they were! But they "fluffed" all the same -- and it was surprising what a little loving could do to a sick-looking tree!
This is a nice shot of the "rain" that Mr. Jones and Gordy worked so hard to put up. Later, they also put up scalloped lighting over the top of the rain so that the lighting people could light one or the other at the front. It looks really nice lit up.
There was quite a race going on with the men's team (4 of them) and Ellen and I, assembling the huge trees. You have to understand, though, that our tree was significantly smaller than theirs and in better shape. They had a bunch of fussing around they had to do with theirs ...

During another "down" time, I wandered up front again and got invited to try the man-lift! They said I could take it as high as I wanted, so I did!

You just stand inside this little area, and there is a push button control that goes up or down ... and away you go!
Here's me taking a picture of Mr. Jones and Gordy, all the way down -- I am practically to the top of the ceiling. You can't really get all the way up in this thing -- it's not going to get you as high as the cat walk. I really really wanted to go on the cat walk, but I didn't want to be a pain in the neck and ask -- there was really no good reason for me to be up there -- but I would LOVE to take some pictures from up there!
This is about as high as I could get. It's a pretty good view of the place. I love heights. About 35 years ago, I went to Buffalo, New York to see a really good friend of mine. I stayed for a couple of days with her. While she was at work one day, I visited six different cathedrals. My goal was to get to the highest point inside -- just for the view!
It felt like I was pretty high up -- I guess I'll have to save the cat walk for next year! There is more to do tomorrow, but my exercise class meets from 9:30 to 11:00. Immediately after that, I have to meet my mom and Roy downtown at Spectrum. He's having some tests done on his heart tomorrow and possibly a stint placement as well. If they do put the stint in, Roy will have to spend the night there at the hospital. Mom just wants me with them in case they need anything, so that's my mission tomorrow.
It was fun working for two days on Festival of Lights. It got me all in the "mood" for the holidays. I love Christmas. I'm going to have so much fun this year getting the house ready for any and all of you who make it home ...