Dinner!
She's not short....she's fun size!
Sparklers
Amoeba
Karate Circle
Breaking the Mints for Peppermint Bark
Kirsten Taking Her Anger Out on the Bark
Gift Exchange
The Gag This Year? Big Boxes, Small Gifts!
With All Their Presents
Watching Farm Tales
Happy Birthday Cole & Michaela!
"Poor kitty!"
Musical Clothes...and some good sports!
Flavored Popcorn Contest
The Winner!
ZG Wall Decorations
4 a.m. - finally!
Sleeping Beauty?
"It's not really time to get up, is it?!"
Breakfast
While waiting for dinner, we played Amoeba and Karate Circle, two youth group favorites.
After a cookout of burgers on the grill and all the toppings, we followed the amazingly brave and pyro-talented Mr. Jason down to the dead end where he put on quite a display of fireworks genius for us. Of course we also had the usual sparklers and poppers for the kids to have fun with too.
Back inside, the girls had expressed an interest in baking and so we made chocolate chip cookies, sugar cookies, fudge, peppermint bark, Rolo pretzels, and Rice Krispy treats. We separated all of the goodies onto plates for everyone to have some to take home to their families the next day.
Some of the snacks I baked in advance for a little fun. I made blueberry, cherry, lime, taco, and pizza flavored popcorn (not all mixed together - yuck). We didn't tell the kids the flavors, but had a little contest to see who could guess the most correctly. And believe it or not, though some of the flavors sounded a little strange, they were all pretty good...maybe not the lime so much though!
We also played a game of musical clothes. This was way too much fun. We put some boy and girl clothes in a bag the kids could not see through. The bag got passed around the circle of kids like hot potato. When the music stopped, whoever was holding the bag had to reach in without looking, take out a garment, and then put it on! Hilarious!!
We had cake for dessert while the kids sang to Michaela and Cole for their birthdays and then we all exchanged our Christmas gifts. In addition to the kids exchanging their gifts, John got the boys dog tag necklaces with Zero Gravity's verse on them (Phil. 4:13) and I made each of the girls a scarf.
We played a game of "Poor Kitty" then. That's where the kids circle around one person blindfolded. We spin the blindfolded kid and then let them stop where they will. Whoever is in front of them disguises their voice the best they can while they say, "poor kitty" and the blindfolded person has to guess who it is. If they guess correctly, they try again. If they are fooled, the person who fooled them gets to go next.
You can't have a New Year's party without watching the ball drop either. So we watched last year's and counted down the last ten seconds and popped bottles of confetti open to ring in 2012. Hey, it was good practice for the real thing on the actual New Year's Eve.
During the night, we also worked on a ZG wall project. The kids decorated 3 yards of black material with their handprints and names using glow-in-the-dark paint and markers. Look for it on our wall soon!
It can't be all fun and games. We had to sneak a lesson in there somehow. We watched a World Vision video and then introduced the kids to Djibril from the country of Mauritania. He is six-years-old and his birthday is the day Zero Gravity held its very first meeting! Zero Gravity will be sponsoring Djibril as the kids bring $3 the fourth Wednesday of each month and we spend time those nights writing him letters and getting to know him and his family better. The kids were sent home with a flyer about Djibril and more information about the sponsorship for parents to look over.
We also watched a homemade video called Farm Tales made by the incredibly talented and imaginative team of Tessa and Simone. It was quite entertaining!
Any down time (very little) was spent with the girls dancing or playing Wii and the boys upstairs on the PlayStation or GameCube or playing Farkle. We also had some movie options for them once they were ready to just chill. Don't worry parents, one of the rules was no girls upstairs...period. It was the boys only zone since there were only four of them and we knew they'd need a place to escape the giggling girly girls every now and then. They even slept up there while the girls occupied the living room downstairs.
Breakfast the next morning was bacon and a full pancake bar with flavored syrups and different toppings to choose from, including whipped cream, chocolate chips, and sprinkles.
As always, we had a blast with your kids. Thank you for entrusting them to us. They are all amazing! We can't wait to get back to our regularly scheduled Wednesday night meetings next week!
