A weekend of welcomes

Friday night was the LightHouse 6th grade welcome party. Abraham and Clara were there. ABRAHAM AND CLARA ARE GOING TO BE IN LH NEXT YEAR!! I think I'm dreaming. No, I don't. I know they're growing up, but it's still crazy!! The party was really fun. Here's the list of activities:
1) Meet and greet/hangout time in the LH room- I once again failed to fill out the get-to-know-you sheet but still learned names and talked to the 6th graders, which is an accomplishment considering there was a good 15-20 6th graders there!!
2) Fit your whole team into a hoola hoop- this was relatively easy since Sydney and I were the biggest people on our team of about 9, so it wasn't that bad. Just a little cramped and awkward!!
3) Human Pyramid contest-I'm not sure why Josh had to start with the 29-person pyramid, but he did. At least I wasn't on the bottom for this one, but I was on the middle row. Then I was on top of Jenny and Laurel for the three-person, and after that I was on the bottom and people put their palms in my muscles and it hurt... COLE!!
4) Soggy waffle throwing contest- and yes, this was as gross as it sounds. You had to dip an Eggo waffle in a bucket of water and throw it into a bowl that one of your teammates was holding on their head. I threw 4 waffles and 3 of them went in!!! Kyle was very proud of me!! Unfortunately, the waffles didn't stay in the bowls after this because Dave put one down Josh's shirt and Kyle called a waffle fight. MY YOUNGER BROTHER HIT ME 3 TIMES UNPROVOKED!! AND COLE, (who was supposedly on my team), PUT SOGGY WAFFLE IN MY HAIR. NOT COOL, KIDDOS.
5) Whipped cream and M&Ms relay- so there's a bowl across from your team that has M&Ms and whipped cream in it. You have to get as many M&Ms out of the bowl with your mouth and into another container as you can. The team with the most M&Ms wins. That whipped cream smelled like rice crispy treats and Cole spit it at me.
6) Team talk time- I was the only 8th grader in my group and Cole was setting a very bad example for the 6th graders. Not that they didn't know how to act up before, but you know!! Kyle got us talking about cars, but the other kids were not big fans of that topic, so that didn't last to long, to my chagrin.
7) Team photo shoot contest- each team was given a bag of props and we had to go take a bunch of crazy pictures. We'll find out who wins on Wednesday, when the pictures will also all be shown.
8) Bring it to me first- I'll never understand why Josh enjoys being chased by teens carrying items that usually smell weird or look weird or feel weird, but apparently he does.
9) Bonfire!!- This is just fun chill time, (that's not really that chilly!!), and we get our LH shirts and stuff and just have a good time before we go home. Oh, but those mosquitos were nasty. The LH shirts this year are blue with "Lighthouse" written on them in white and there are gray circles around it. They're pretty sweet.

So all in all, it was an AWESOME night. But it also made me sad that I'm leaving next year. Josh and the LH staff are going to have a blast next year, I can tell!!

Yesterday, it was the 8th graders' turn to be welcomed into Turning Point, which is the high school group. The welcome party was in the afternoon instead of the evening because of its nature. Jay said that going into TP would mean that things were no longer organized. But that's not entirely true because the LH welcome party was just a bunch of random, crazy games that Josh made up. The TP welcome party had a theme and a purpose. The theme: Chicken Run The purpose: get the new TP shirts back from the evil chicken that stole them from Josh and Meredith. So maybe it's not realistic, but it's fun!! To get the shirts, we had to go on a scavenger hunt all over town. At each destination there were TP staff who had us complete a task before we could get the next clue. All the clues and tasks were the same, but in different orders for each team. Oh, just FYI, there were 6 teams. My team was Adam S (a senior), Kim K (a junior), Rachel L (a sophomore?), Patrick, Olivia C, Rachel R, and Kendall C (all freshmen this year), and Kaitlyn P, Nate T and me, (incoming freshmen, aka 8th graders). Doug R was our driver. This was our itinerary:
1) Start at the church
2) Go to KFC where we had to do the chicken dance for Jung-Ho and Bryan
3) Go to the new Borders where we had to read a children's book with a chicken in it to Liv's mom and dad, Lewis and Betty
4) Go to Godiva Chocolate in the mall, (I so called that!!), where we had to buy a chocolate bar and give the receipt to Madeline and Stephanie
5) Go to the Rock where someone had to spray paint a chicken on the Rock and take a picture as proof, (thanks to Kendall for letting the little incoming freshman do it!! Now I can say that I have!!)
6) Go to Allmendinger Park where we had to chase down the chicken, (who was really one of Meredith's friends that none of us knew dressed up in a chicken costume), so he could tell us where the TP shirts were. One of the best parts of my day was watching Adam tackle a 6 foot chicken, only to find out that the man in the costume was someone he'd never met before!!
7) End in the Knox Sanctuary

We were the 2nd team to finish so we waited in the TP room for the other 4 teams to finish. Then we hung out and talked and each team introduced their 8th graders to everyone else and we ate pizza and it was fun.

Kisses,
Abbsters