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