Boxes, bingo, and buddies

Jim and I got back from the retreat yesterday. I slept some of the way home and most of the afternoon and am still exhausted. I know I will get a lot of comments if I say I am getting old, but frankly people, I didn’t used to get this tired!!

As promised, I will share some details on this thing called “Mega Box Wars.” Alright… all of the leaders are split into 6 teams consisting of boys and girls. Your team gets two cardboard boxes, the kind you use for moving, like wardrobe or refrigerator size. One box for the boys and one for the girls. So you get three rolls of duct tape and several cans of spray paint. You have to seal up your box with the duct tape to make sure it can take a good beating and not fall a part if by chance it gets a little damp. 🙂 Then you decorate the box with the spray paint. The girl side of my team sprayed our box to look like camo (because we were sneaky.) The boys were the evil trees. Jim’s team were the evil and/or demon possessed penguins. I also saw the killer bees, the golden flamingos, the cuckaws (a bird), and the black widows. So, here’s how the game is played. The site of this monstrosity is a huge tarp. You may say, “Eh… a tarp. That doesn’t sound cool.” Oh, but wait my friends. It gets better. This tarp is then sprayed with water and layered with soap, baby oil, and a fair amount of “Soil Moist.” This thing gets very slippery. The girls compete against girls and boys against boys. So, the girls go first and half go on one side of the tarp and the rest on the other side. You take your box and the first victim, er I mean… the first player, places the box over their head and heads across the tarp to the rest of their team (not necessarily straight across.) Then the next player puts the box on their head and it’s a sort of relay race. Except for the fact that every other team is also going at the same time and can’t see where they are going and run into other box-wearing contestants while running on a slippery tarp. It’s a great time. Now, when the guys go, it is a completely different story. At one point in the game, every box was in the middle in a huge pile. One lady mentioned that she was glad she had just had bladder surgery because she was sure she would have peed her pants because she was laughing so hard. I wish I would have had bladder surgery… would have saved me some embarrassment… just kidding!! Anyway, I did manage to stay on my feet the whole time even though Joe, the Students pastor, attempted to spin me around into oblivion. I tried to run into people, but didn’t pull it off. It’s hard to find people, when the only thing you can see is cardboard. Jim, however, did go down. He missed a huge pile in the middle, but got tripped up by some feet. He’s OK though 🙂 Another thing to add: It was in the high 50’s at this time, not exactly warm weather.

Later that night, we played “Extreme Bingo.” Chet VanWonderJim was our host. AKA Steve Carter, the director of the.element (7th and 8th grade.) He is a cross between Bob Barker from “Price is Right” and Ron Burghundy from “Anchorman”, except a lot cleaner 🙂 He is hillarious!! And guess what?!?! I actually won! I won $20 to Applebee’s and two movie tickets to Cinemark. That’s a free date night. Woo-hoo! The grand prize was a iPod Nano. There was a also a gift certificate to a salon and a one-night stay at the Amway. Good stuff!
I don’t want you to think this whole weekend was all goofing off. We had a lot of good teachings and quality relationship building times with other leaders. We have some really godly people in leadership, so it was good to just listen to them.

We did manage to go to the 6 o’clock service last night, which was good as usual. Rob finished up a series called “Directions.” This series sort of explains to reason for Mars Hill’s existence. Last night was about “Celebration” and being content with everything we have been given and that we don’t need anything else to be happy. He told a story of a boy in Africa whose prize possession were his plastic caps from pop bottles. He didn’t need anything else, those were all he needed to be happy. Wow… all I want is a new car… how selfish.

Now for the pictures of the house. We only have outdoor ones right now because I want to wait until the inside is more completed.

The front yard (notice our huuuge living room window!):
The front yard:
The backyard:
Back of house (we need to cut down those pines because they are messy and too close to the house!)A friend that hangs out in the back near our patio, but don’t worry… he is a garden orb weaver and completely harmless. I did my reasearch because he is huge and scary!
Crazy squirrel. We have like a million squirrels in our back yard.
Enjoy these picture for now. Try to embrace the colder weather… I won’t, but you can try 🙂