Fall Festival

Last Saturday, October 17th, was the date of our church's first-ever Fall Festival. The Women's Ministry plans 4 big events a year and this year they chose to put together a Fall Festival as a means of reaching out to the community around the church. It took a lot of planning and teamwork. Pat and the ladies on her committee (Charlene and Bridget) did a great job of delegating so that almost everyone in the church had a job. It took EVERYONE to pull this off! I was completely impressed by how organized and willing to work everyone was. My job was to hand out food tickets and register people for the two Walmart gift card drawings. Kevin's job was just to walk around and make sure he met as many people as he could that didn't already go to church with us. He may have also eaten a few hotdogs and oatmeal cream pies but can you really blame him?....it was a Fall Festival after all.

The day of the festival turned out to be the coldest day of the fall season so far. It never got above about 48 degrees and it looked like it wanted to storm all day (the next day there wasn't a cloud in the sky and it was way warmer outside...go figure). If it had been 10 degrees warmer we feel like we would have had a much bigger crowd. The day started at 8:30am when the rental company arrived to set up all of our inflatables, teach us how to make cotton candy and popcorn, and set out all the other carnival games. From that point forward we worked to set everything up in the parking lot and our backyard until the festival started at 2pm. By then I couldn't feel my feet anymore but the show had to go on! We were worried it would get rained out at the last minute (after we had set it all up!) or that the cold would keep everyone away. We had about 175 people come and Kevin will be contacting all those that registered that have no home church affiliation. Since we were using this as a community outreach everything was FREE for kids and parents! The Women's Ministry had a great yardsale at the beginning of October that raised enough money to cover the cost of the entire festival.

Each person who came got 5 free food tickets to buy any five food items they wanted...hotdog with chili, chips & an oatmeal cream pie, soda, hot chocolate, coffee, popcorn, or cotton candy. If you were still hungry after that, each additional item was $1. We had all kinds of games for kids...a lollipop tree, duck pond, football throw, hayride, face painting, ring toss, basketball toss, cake walk, putting green, spin art, crazy hat, and ping pong toss. Each game had a prize bucket for the kids to pick from and we gave each child a goodie bag to put all their loot in. The bags also contained information about the church for the parents to read. The Jasper Fire Dept. stopped by with their shiny, red fire truck so all the kids could get a close-up look at all its bells and whistles. We also had a huge inflatable slide and bouncy house for the kiddos to wear themselves out in. I'm pretty sure each kid went down that slide at least 200 times...it was by far their favorite thing! The sumo wrestling ring was in our driveway and it was the funniest thing to watch people try to take each other down while wearing fat suits! Kevin and I didn't get to battle it out because I was at the registration table the whole time but I definately think we should buy one and keep it in the backyard for settling marital disputes. It comes with its own generator and blower and it only takes about 15 minutes to inflate....that's got to be cheaper than marriage counseling.

Kevin was ready to make sure the slide was safe for the children.

I married a 6 year old in a grown man's body, but we have to cut him some slack...it was a GIANT slide in our backyard. Who could resist? I went down a few times too. ;)

THE SUMO RING

Laura and John duking it out.

Tiffany getting ready to take on her husband Brandon...this is what we like to call "Marriage Enrichment"

Jennifer (amazing Fall Festival organizer!), Me, and Marsha...holding down the fort at the registration table. We literally had to hold it down due to crazy wind gusts until Sam and Tim brought us a tent.

The Cotton Candy line never went away! The kids were fascinated to see it made and loved the sugar rush afterwards.

Basketball Toss. One kid got 48 baskets in a row!

It was fun but we shut everything down at 4pm instead of 5pm because it was just too cold outside. Everything was cleaned up by 5:45pm and Kev and I headed to the Mexican restaurant (Los Margaritas IX) with Tiffany and Brandon to recover. We hope that some in our community will consider coming to worship with us after meeting some of our people in a relaxed (okay maybe it was a little chaotic) environment that welcomed the whole family. Maybe next year it will be warmer!

Mandy

Corn Hole: Fun Outdoor Game or Tennessee Backwoods Town?

Tough call but Corn Hole is actually a game! To some of you this may be old news but it was brand new to me! Its sort of a bean bag toss/horse shoe combo. Its great for me because I have a much lower risk of hurting myself or someone else while playing. You can buy the game or make it yourself. If the Knights ever own it, it will mean my father in law Doyle made me one with his Bob Vila-worthy carpentry skills or we bought it off Ebay. I don't remember the exact dimensions of all this but here's the gist. The game contains two boards (pictured below) placed a certain number of feet apart (like horse shoe pits) and each board is tilted at a particular angle. The boards also contain a hole near the top. The goal is to throw as many of your bags on the board or through the hole. You get 4 bags to throw each turn. If the bag lands on the board its one point and if it goes in the hole its 3 points. If the opposing team also lands on the board or in the hole you cancel one another out. First team to 21 wins.

Any idea why its called Corn Hole yet? Well...the bags are filled with CORN instead of beans and the object is to get it in the HOLE so its really a no brainer, right?! People may accuse Tennesseeans of being the dull crayons in the box, but its so simple its genius!

We got together with some families from church 2 weekends ago to play and I think this may be the sport for me. I knew there was a reason basketball and softball and volleyball just weren't my thing! But, if you can point a remote and press the power button, I'm pretty sure you could play this game...no off-season conditioning required. I was terrible at first but once I got my arch down (Kevin says "its like poetry" ha!) and held the corn bag right I was able to give Kevin a run for his money. Its all in where you put your hand on the corn bag for ultimate control. Check it out.

Kevin and Michael playing Lola and Tim. Michael is the grown up version of you Wes. I should have known God wouldn't let us go to a place without providing a stand in for you and Nick.

Hannah Shea and Haley playing on a travel version (yes its portable for family fun on the go!)

We had a great time with our friends and I'm looking forward to a rematch.

Mandy

I Survived

Yes, the slumber party was a phenomenal success! I had 16 girls (I know that's A LOT!) over on Friday the 9th. That evening things were supposed to get started at about 6:30pm. Wouldn't you know that the strom of the century decided to blow in right about then. So for a while before they got here I ran around collecting batteries, flashlights, and candles just in case. Michael (Taylor's dad) brought me some more just in case. I knew I could handle 16 Excited-To-Stay-Up-All-Night-With-My-Friends girls but I wasn't so sure about 16 Scared-Of-The-Dark-So-Lets-All-Scream-At-The-Same-Time girls. God was gracious and the storm only lasted a short time and the lights stayed on the whole time. I can handle noise but I do value my eardrums.

Once everyone arrived and claimed their spots there wasn't an inch of carpet to be seen in the living room or dining room. That was okay because girls really don't mind being that close to one another. After everyone had staked their claim and put on jammies we had pizza and any other junk food you could imagine for dinner. Sly, child-less, pastor's wife, Mandy made sure that all their drink options were sugar and caffeine free and only one of our snacks contained copious amounts of chocolate. It would have been cruel to completely eliminate chocolate from the festivities but I'm not stupid remember? Next they had a dance party in the living room to a CD made especially for our Girls Only evening. After that they played hide and seek in the house. This was definately the loudest part of the evening because it involved the most screaming. Our only injury befell 6 year old Mia when she was caught standing on the wrong side of a door. She ended up with a goose egg and bruise on her forehead.

Next the Wii bowling and Wii Sing it came out....which included every Disney pop song ever made. Once the singing competition was done we did makeovers. Eleven year old Brooke wanted her long brown hair cut short so with her mother's permission and blessing we gave Brooke a whole new look. I snipped away while 15 wide-eyed girls watched from the bathroom doorway. It turned out great and Brooke loves it...all the girls told her she looked beautiful and that will do any girl's heart good. After the makeovers were complete they had a fashion show for which I was their photographer. They've definately got their runway struts down!

Later in the evening the older girls made "prank" phone calls to boys they liked (even though they'd die before admitting it to anyone). Don't worry I cut it off before it got too late and kept an ear open. I reminded them to keep it all above board and not to harrass anyone too much. Now that most kids have cell phones I think the parents were spared the ringing phone. At this point it was about 11pm and the little ones were starting to wilt so I put them all in my bed and turned on Narnia for them. Mia and Zaalee wanted to call their mom's to say goodnight so we did that and then settled in. No one went home or got scared all night long. Eight year old Emily was having growing pains so I rubbed her legs until she fell asleep watching the movie. It didn't take long for the other little girls to crash and I got them back in their sleeping bags (I'm stronger than I look!). However, Emily told me she was perfectly comfy in my bed and didn't want to move so she was my bed buddy for the night.

At about 12:45am the ones who were still awake decided to watch the Hannah Montana movie and by the time it ended at 2:30am they were pretty much out. I was exhausted so I crawled in bed with Em and dozed with one eye and ear open for the girls. At about 3:30am a little girl named Leah was coughing loud enough to wake the neighbors so I walked her to the spare room and put her to bed in there so the others could sleep. So for the rest of the night I kept getting up to make sure she was breathing okay (It really did sound that bad!...and I'm paranoid when they're not my kiddos!).

By about 8am the little ones were waking up and ready to go which meant the older ones didn't get much more sleep. I tried to keep them in my room watching cartoons but they were too noisy. Gracie Mae (8 yrs old) asked when she had to go home and when I told her 10am she told me she just didn't want to go.....I think I definately made some friends for life. After I heard the older ones moving around, I got up and broke out the chocolate milk, chocolate chip muffins, and blueberry muffins. They ate over 37 muffins that morning! I didn't think they would possibly be hungry after putting away half the junk food in Marion County! If girls eat like this I'd hate to have to feed a bunch of boys. By 9:30am the parents were showing up to get them and by 10:15am everyone had gone home. Needless to say, I took a nap that day and several of the girls did too! Some of you might read this and think I'm crazy for doing it but it really was fun and it meant something to them. All of those girls are such good kids I didn't have to argue with or yell at anyone. Sure it was chaotic...but it was fun, girly, giggly chaotic and I can deal with that. I am just so proud to have such wonderful girls as part of our church family. I look forward to what God may do in their lives and I hope somehow I'll get to play an encouraging, guiding role in that. I also hope we can do many more fun activities. They asked me when we could do it again and I said....How about next year? Maybe we'll make it an annual event. We'll just have to look back at our pictures until then.

The snack table before they devoured EVERYTHING. I had some Ritz crackers, 1 honey bun, and some goldfish left. They're bottomless pits!

Opening dance party moves

Zalee and Mia...best buddies!

Taylor and Haley going head to head in Wii Sports.

Beautiful Brooke before....

Beautiful Brooke after...if this whole unemployment thing gets too bad at least I have a side job!

Wii Sing It...they weren't too bad actually. They can put on a concert in my living room anytime.

I love the ingenuity of girls...

Miss Mia chilling in my bed after she got knocked in the head. Yes, I made sure she didn't go to sleep for 2 hours afterwards just in case but her eyes weren't dialated so I wasn't too worried.

Brooke, Abby Lynn (who used her inside voice ALL NIGHT without me reminding her, Aly, and Haley posing for the fashion show camera

My good, mature influences - Christy, Hannah, and Hannah Shea.

Emily and Gracie Mae posing for the camera. With those smiles they could be on a Colgate commercial.

Well, that's all the evidence I've got for you this year. Check back later for a post about Corn Hole and the Fall Festival. Yes, I really meant to type Corn Hole.

Love to the girls,

Mandy

Are You Crazy????

I've been getting this question rather often lately. In about a week the votes will be in and I'll let you know the verdict. Next Friday night (Oct 9th) is Girls Night In @ the Parsonage, which means I'll have 10-15 girls from the church here at the house from 6:30pm thru 10am the next morning. The girls are 1st grade on up through high school and there are 12 of them signed up so far. My game plan is to have the older ones help me with the younger ones since I'll be the only adult present (this may be where the "ARE YOU CRAZY???" looks keep coming from). I have no dining room furniture so its just a big empty space - perfect for piles of pillows and sleeping bags (that they probably won't use). Kevin will be out of the house since its "girls only" and we have all kinds of girly things planned.....facials, makeovers, Wii tournament, movies, junk food, etc. They wanted a water balloon fight in the back yard but lucky for me its too cold for that now. Chances are I'll look like an Extreme Makeover, (sleep deprived) version of Rainbow Bright by the time they leave on Saturday but I'm okay with that.

So, why are you having a sleepover with all these kids? Well, why not? Don't you remember sleepovers when you were a kid? I loved sleeping over at friends houses when I was a kid! I looked forward to it all week long. It got me through Math and Science at school because I knew the torture of fractions and long division couldn't possibly last forever. Secondly, its a good chance for me to get to know them better and let them get to know me better. Let's face it.....its just easier to tell your troubles to someone you've already seen in their pajamas with bed head hair. Finally, this slumber party is a great way for me to let them know that we think they're important and that they're worth spending time with....just doing things they like to do. I guess its a small way that we can say, "We'll meet you where you are." It also provides me with a way to work in some positive messages to combat some of the junk media throws at our kids.....you know things like..."Don't ever let a boy be mean to you"...."You're beautiful just as you are whether you're a size 0 or not"....All it requires of me is my time, some junk food expertise, and a little less sleep for one night. I think I can handle that. And just in case...I've got some of those earplugs that block out some of the noise but you can still hear everything....just quieter (Hey, I may be crazy but I'm not stupid).

I've got a week to get ready. Maybe I should start sleeping extra so I'll have it stored up for when I need it. I'm terrible at staying awake. I can usually only make it to about 10:30....Kevin just laughs at me and stays up watching Sportscenter.

Don't worry...I'll post pictures of all the chaos. That way you can see it but not have to experience the ear splitting noise level. On a side note - I did have one of our church ladies ask when the adult ladies were going to get to have a sleepover. Another lady reminded her that once they got down they'd never be able to get back up! hahaha!

Can't wait to see you girls on the 9th!

Abby Lynn, Haley, and Gracie Mae

Hannah Shea, Taylor, and Abby Lynn

Mandy - Slumber Party Planner Extraordinaire

P.S. What are you going to do with the boys? No idea?! Maybe Kevin will take them to hunt something...or hike something...or some other manly-ness.