Amy Scott's Thoughts

It’s that time of year! It’s time for my class sleepover! Every year I do a sleepover at my house for my Wednesday night class of girls. This year I have 10 girls coming as well as some amazing leaders to help me keep things from getting too crazy! This sleepover is one of my favorites because it’s so low-key compared to the big sleepover I do in February at the church. So what does a sleepover at my house look like? We’ll start off with a pizza dinner together – yum! Once we’re done eating, we’ll head outside to play a few yard games. We usually have a croquet tournament if the weather permits. It’s cloudy right now, but it’s supposed to burn off for this evening. I’m really hoping for some croquet tonight!

After the yard games, we’ll head inside for a combo of video games and board games. The Wii is always popular as we play Mario Kart or Wii Party. This year we’ll have the addition of Kinect Sports on the Xbox. These activities are good because they allow the girls to work in teams and continue to build relationships. I have a huge stack of board games that we can play as well. Some favorites from years past would be Disney Scene-It, Apples to Apples Jr. and Last Word. My class this year is really hoping we would play the animal kingdom game. This game is a modified version of Mafia. Jeremy didn’t like the idea of people killing each other but it’s okay for animals, I guess. We make sure the deaths are non-violent and have little or no description. Most of the girls have played Mafia, but to keep things as friendly and G-rated as possible we’ve turned it into an animal game.

As we move inside from the outdoor games, we’ll pause to have dessert. This year we have cake and ice cream to celebrate the many June birthday we have coming up in the next week! Three to be exact! I purchased a cake that has all kinds of fun colors on the inside. We’ll see how it turns out. It looked intriguing. I also have toppings for the ice cream so they can make mini-sundaes to go with their cake! Oh yeah! Nothing like sugaring them up before the next round of games!

Around 10:00pm, we switch modes. I have the girls set-up their sleeping bags and get in their pajamas (if their not already). We’ll start a movie and usually it’s lights out and quiet after 12:30am or so. Most girls make it a challenge to see how late they can stay up, but the majority of them fall asleep during the movie. That is intentional planning on my part! I tell the ones that do make it through the movie to not disturb their sleeping neighbors or me. If they can be quiet enough that the rest of us can sleep then by all means stay up as late you like! Tomorrow I have another big day once the sleepover is over, so I’ll keep on top of the sleeping situation this year. I’ll need some rest before Saturday!

Saturday morning, we have a big waffle breakfast together! I provide strawberries and whip cream to make the waffles extra special! We’ll clean up and pack up after breakfast and head back to the church to meet up with their parents. Once all the girls are off, I usually head home and try to reclaim my house. This year I might just take a quick nap before I have to get ready to head up north for a graduation of one of my mentor girls. We’ll see how that all pans out! If the house has to wait until Sunday, it should be fine since I won’t be home most of Saturday afternoon/evening!

That’s my plan for tonight! I’m super excited and can’t wait to have a blast with my girls! Of course like most things these days, I’m wondering how this sleepover will look next year when I have a kid… It might be harder to turn my house upside for a pack of pre-teen girls. Jeremy and I have talked a little about it. We might do a game night or late night hang out, but minus the sleepover part next year. I don’t know. Just some thoughts and ideas. Since this could be the last sleepover at my house for a few years, I’m planning on making the most of every moment!

This weekend we celebrated with doughnuts! The kids had been doing an offering challenge through the month of March. The first challenge was to raise 30lbs of change and they blew through that in 3 weeks which lead them to having ice cream sundaes. Because there was still time in the month, we told them if they could reach 50lbs of change then we would give them doughnuts at the beginning of April. Last week they weighed in at 51lbs and so doughnuts were on the docket for this weekend! The kids had a blast and enjoyed their special treat while watching a movie. Normally we don’t watch too many movies in Children’s Church, so it was a double whammy of goodies. I’m really proud of their giving hearts. It was fun to not have this be about a dollar amount. I think that made the challenge even better because they gave over $300 without even being aware of it. We gave them dollar totals every week and every week they were floored by the numbers. It’s surprising how much a “buddy barrel” can hold and it’s amazing how the pennies add up! One week we had over $19 in pennies given. That’s a whole lots of pennies and I counted them all. I will admit that I’m ready for a break when it comes to counting large sums of change. It was a good month and I’m so happy we got to celebrate in such a fun and tasty way. Even better than our goodies is the good that this money will do in the hands of missionaries! It’s exciting all around!

A nice selection!

Enjoying doughnuts and a video!

I figured I better write about the big weekend before I completely forget the details. Even now in the tired aftermath, the weekend is starting to blur. First off, let me start by saying it was a BEAUTIFUL day! We couldn’t have asked for better weather considering it was the end of March. I got slightly sunburned, so you know the sun was out and glorious! The weather is a big factor in our attendance and just like years past this day was epic. We added extra parking in our fields so we’re fairly positive we beat last year’s numbers. The guesstimate was that 8,000 people visited the church between both hunts. The number of kids would be around 3,000. It’s not an exact science though… just like we don’t really know that there were 70,000 eggs – could have been plus or minus a couple thousand. No biggie.

The day starts off early for Jeremy and I. We’re the first ones to the church after a stop at McDonald’s. This is the one day a year that I get breakfast there and let me tell you, I love McGriddles. I know that in concept they are gross and terrible for you, but that usually means it’s a food I’ll adore. I enjoyed my special breakfast treat and surprisingly it all settled well on my stomach. I had packed a lunch that ate about 11:30am, but the McGriddle kept me good until then. I guess I could consider that another miracle of the day. It’s nice to be the church before all the crowds and craziness starts. The calm before the storm. I put up a few last minute signs and made sure lights were on and doors unlocked. At 8:00am, we start hiding eggs and by 9:00am we had people arriving. It always amazes me how early people show up for these events. Now that our Easter Eggstravaganza has grown so big, people feel the need to arrive early to get in the lines first and to  get the better parking spots.

The first hunt was the busiest this year. I’m sure it has to do with the weather. Even though last year was nice, the fog was still starting to wear off at our first hunt which made the second one better attended. This year it was the opposite. The day was clear and the sun was out and the people showed up for the first hunt. The second one was the smaller hunt. It’s funny to me how unpredictable things like that can be. I would have sworn the pattern would hold true and we’d have a small first and a big second. Now I’ll be curious to see what happens next year. Is there any pattern? We’ll find out.

As always the petting zoo was a hit! We had a two week old piglet there that was very vocal and very loved. We had calves that were literally days old. We had chicks and ducks and turkeys. We had goats and lambs. It was a good a showing of cute and cuddly barnyard animals. The pony rides as always had a major line. The poor ponies can’t give rides fast enough. If I was one of those ponies, I would twitch if I saw another kids for a while. They were troopers! Applebees had a table where they did face-painting and they gave away free meal coupons to kids. They also brought the Applebee’s Bee and the Easter Bunny (full size costumes). The bee was especially popular. Oh and we can’t forget the four inflatables! We had a giant slide, two obstacle course and a jungle tunnel. Our coffee cart did great in sales and we sold a ton of cotton candy! We have some cotton candy pros now at our church after doing this for two years. They know their stuff! Walking past that booth always smells so good!

It was a big weekend. I was at the church for about 14 hours that day. We ran home for less than 25 minutes to change and show back up for our evening service. We had a ton of kids at both our children’s church hours. It was great to see many visitors and people who came back because of the egg hunts. After two egg hunts, three weekend services and two family dinners, I will admit that Easter weekend almost did me in! I’m still not really recovered. I took a nice long nap yesterday and today was a quiet day in the office to reclaim our space and clear out the remnants of the weekend. It feels good to have the details in place and behind us. This is a great event and truly a fun weekend. I’m not sure I have the energy to keep up with it, but somehow it works out every year – God’s grace!  Below are a few photos from the big day!

Petting Zoo

A beautiful day in the neighborhood!

Going for it!

The hunt!