The second annual MAPS Holiday Party held in the Arbor Room at Thornhill Education Center on December 10, 2012 was filled to just capacity with members and their guests. The Social Committee put together a night of games, prizes and serious raffles. The room was decorated in red and green, red damask table runners, centerpieces for each table, tea lights for added ambiance and specially designed programs placed at each setting. As members and guests entered the room, they were delighted to see the decorated room, wonderful background music and a wonderful welcome from the Board.
The food was in abundance from salads, appetizers, entrees, to the array of sumptuous sweets. Steven Mayer remarked “we could feed an entire school system.” Well, maybe not an entire school system but certainly a hungry camera club.
There was mingling and hellos to old friends—some new—enjoying their first MAPS Holiday Party. Everyone was smiling. One of our guests said “this is the only club where it’s evident that there is a sense of community and feelings of genuine warmth.” We are 160 members and we are all about sharing—our images, our food, and our knowledge.
There were many highlights of the evening like the “birding blitz” and “frosty frenzy” games. Members took delight in finding birds and snowman ornaments in order to receive our most famous dressed water bottles with goodies. The centerpieces on each of the tables were raffled to members that were present for the evening. Thank you Diana, Cora and Mary for planning the events of the evening!
Perhaps the major highlight and delight of the evening was the “Caption It” slide show. Mary Mehl put together a well-thought out presentation with instrumental music playing in the background for all images submitted by members. It was fantastic with beautiful landscapes, amazing wildlife, and precious floral macro. The captions were so right on—and we smiled and laughed heartily. Thank you Mary for all of the time and work involved you put in to create an astounding presentation!
The Social Committee would like to thank members Mark Bates and Steve Stephens who generously helped the Social Committee with food clean-up. A big thank you to Dick Chrisman who untiringly assisted in the unloading of gifts, raffles, centerpieces, punch bowls, decorations (including a valued hacksaw) to table placement, table coverings including the well-ironed runners, and finally to the arduous task of clearing, cleaning and washing. He was the heart of the Social Committee.
A thank you to The Morton Arboretum for hosting the location, Gary our regular security monitor for his generous help to the Social Committee, to John for setting up the tables for our event, and to Suzanne Wegener for supporting MAPS.
And thank you to the Board for giving the Social Committee as much freedom to work their magic in order to make the evening an extraordinary night for all! Happy Holidays!
Please enjoy the following gallery of images from our evening ~ compliments of Andy Dichter…
