ROCHESTER — A traditional Breakfast with Santa at the Senior Center on Dec. 8 expanded to include other community groups beyond the Lions Club that hosts it, and a variety of kids activities.

The breakfast has been going on for about twenty years. One mom commented that she could remember coming as a child to visit Santa, and now she was bringing her own children.

This year, the Lions added the Junior Friends of the Library, librarian Lisa Fuller and Library Trustee Kim Burt for the first time. The Junior friends helped to serve coffee and food, and to run various activities for the kids. 

Library Trustee Kim Burt manned the cookie booth, helping kids by putting frosting on cookies for them to decorate. She estimates she started with about 75 cookies, and was close to running out an hour before the event finished. 

One young cookie decorator was later seen licking the frosting off his cookie with gusto. 

Lion Liz Gallagher said that the activities helped make the breakfast “more kid-friendly.”

She added that the turnout was amazing. 

“We haven’t had an empty seat since 9:30,” Gallagher said. 

Lions volunteers started preparations around 6 a.m. to be able to start the event at 8 a.m. 

In a show of how the Rochester network works, the library also invited Kelly Gagliardi and her new company Creative Little Leaders to put on an activity at the fair. 

Gagliardi started the company this fall. Her first goal is to distribute 5,000 kindness bags, which give small gifts, candies, and most importantly challenge kids and community members to do kind acts for others through a “kindness challenge.”  

The Rochester mother says that she has started distributing the bags through Rochester Memorial School, Old Rochester Regional Junior High School, Plumb Library, kids programs and afterschool programs, Brownies, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, and the Middleboro YMCA. 

Her list of places to distribute the bags in 2020 continues to expand the movement outside of the tri-town, by bringing it to New Bedford Public Schools, and Freetown elementary schools. She will also work on developing a leadership, kindness and gratitude curriculum in 2020. 

Gagliardi says that with the 500 bags she has given out so far, she has seen that “people love the concept of the bags, but we need them to participate in the challenge as well. We want this to keep growing.”