{"id":75686,"date":"2017-12-08T17:01:21","date_gmt":"2017-12-09T00:01:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/montelores-early-childhood-council-hosts-christmas-giveaway\/"},"modified":"2017-12-09T00:01:21","modified_gmt":"2017-12-09T00:01:21","slug":"montelores-early-childhood-council-hosts-christmas-giveaway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/montelores-early-childhood-council-hosts-christmas-giveaway\/","title":{"rendered":"Montelores Early Childhood Council hosts Christmas giveaway"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Santa
Santa Claus made a special stop at the Cortez fire station on Christmas Eve 2016 to deliver presents for local residents, including Jaxon Swann. He will stop by the Montelores Early Childhood Center on Tuesday.<\/span>The Journal<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Santa Claus will visit the Montelores Early Childhood Council for its annual Christmas family night event on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

The nonprofit hosts a gift-giving night every December, but this year, Dollar Tree and the military family charity Operation Homefront have donated toys and books to the event for the first time. Organizer Katrina Lindus said Montelores plans to give away \u201chundreds of toys\u201d for children ages 1-12 this year, as well as Scholastic children\u2019s books donated by the Farmington-based Three Rivers Foundation. All families are welcome to attend, but Lindus is asking guests to RSVP ahead of time.<\/p>\n

The Santa\u2019s Visit Family Night is a special version of Montelores\u2019 monthly family nights, which are always open to Montezuma County families. Between 80 and 90 children usually receive gifts at the Christmas event, but Lindus said she would like to see at least 100 this year, since Montelores has more toys than usual to give away.<\/p>\n

She said most of the gifts would be \u201cpretty lame for older kids,\u201d but all family members are welcome to attend the party, which will feature food and festivities for all ages. Parents are asked to stay with their children instead of dropping them off.<\/p>\n

Lindus said her favorite part about the event is being able to make children happy who normally wouldn\u2019t receive anything for Christmas. At last year\u2019s Christmas family night, a homeless family brought their teenage daughter, who had developmental disabilities.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was no way this family could give her anything for Christmas,\u201d Lindus said. \u201cWe were able to make her holiday special.\u201d<\/p>\n

So far, 20 families have said they plan to attend the family night. Lindus said it\u2019s important for guests to RSVP so that the Montelores volunteers can make sure they have enough food and presents for everyone. The event begins at 5:30 p.m. in the Johnson Building on Broadway.<\/p>\n

\n

If you go<\/h4>\n

What:
\n Santa\u2019s Visit Family Night
\n When:<\/strong>
\n 5:30 to 7 p.m., Tuesday, Dec. 12
\n Where:<\/strong>
\n 925 S. Broadway, Cortez
\n Cost:<\/strong>
\n Free
\n RSVP:<\/strong>
\n Contact the Montelores Early Childhood Council at 970-564-3211 or mecc@monteloresecc.org<\/a>, or visit the organization\u2019s
\n Facebook page<\/a>
\n .<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Toys, books available during annual family night<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":75689,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[408,755,21,13],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-75686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-charity","tag-christmas","tag-cortez","tag-frontpage-lead"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75686\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75686"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=75686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}