By Micah Choquette
For the second year in a row, Burst Ranch, just off Highway 33 between Sapulpa and Kellyville, welcomed a group of foster families to come experience a “Winter Wonderland” of more than 60,000 lights at their ranch, along with food, hot chocolate, carriage rides, free presents and stockings, a photo with Santa—even a petting zoo.
“It’s been an amazing turnout,” said Cassie Malone, the owner and operator of Sugar Momma Cakery, who has made a tradition of baking free birthday cakes for foster children. Malone and her family worked through the night and on little sleep to shape and bake enough cookies to feed the 731 people who were expected to attend the event, including 439 foster children from around the state.
Malone, who has two children of her own who are adopted, understands the struggle these families have, especially during the holidays. “Any chance we get to make a difference in the lives of these kids, we do it,” she says.
Chase Hurst, the pastor at Coalition Church in Kellyville, helped coordinate the event, but he didn’t do it alone.
“More than 150 volunteers came to help make this thing happen,” Hurst said. “It’s a statewide event, so we had kids from multiple communities.”
The Sapulpa Herald didn’t arrive to cover the event until after 7:00 pm when it was winding down, but there were still plenty of families there, walking the tunnel of lights and getting photos with Santa, despite the chilly temps.
Hurst says that the event itself is the brainchild of Cassie Malone.
“She saw a huge need in the local foster care community around Christmas time when she moved to Oklahoma from Wyoming in 2021,” Hurst said. “This year and last, she collaborated with her Christian family from Coalition Church, and with the devotion of her amazing family, husband Doug, and daughters Naomi, Klohee, and Madison, dug in for the 2022 event.”
Hurst says that though it was only the second year, that Malone felt God telling them to “go bigger and better,” and they did just that, by changing location and opening it up to serve a statewide foster community also starving for a specialized event just for them.
Families arrived to Coalition Church and were welcomed with a fantastically-decorated entryway, crammed with ornaments and lights, the same format the popular Route 66 Christmas Chute and Tulsa-based Restaurant “Roosevelt’s” were known for during the holidays.
There they enjoyed family photos, a hot cocoa bar, and Polar Express playing on a big screen in the church’s auditorium. Later that night they were bussed over to Burst Ranch, and over the next four hours, 439 children descended on the ranch and were greeted with happy joyful faces. The children received free books, decorated cookies, had appetizers and hot dogs, hot cocoa, got to write a letter to and take a photo with Santa, who gave each child a gift and stocking. In another area Mrs. Claus was reading stories to children huddled under blankets and on rocking chairs.
“It was a truly magical night for the children, their families and the volunteers,” Hurst said later, promising that it wouldn’t be the last year this event happened. “This will be an ever-growing experience for the foster community,” he said. “It’s truly amazing what God can do when an individual decides to preform an act of obedience.”
