Fall Festival Pictures

Spin Art is always a Fall Festival hit! Thank you, Thank you to ALL the volunteers at Fall Festival! 2,400 hot dogs were cooked and given away!

Night falls on Fall Festival! Thank you Mr. Charlie for ALL the light towers you secured for us- 10 in all!

I love this picture! Balloons everywhere and families have fun with food and fellowship at the Festival!

Noah's Little Ark sets up a petting zoo and also has pony rides at the Fall Festival. This was also a big hit for our Preschoolers at the Fall Festival- it was new this year!

We decided to double our seating area in the Food Section- from 30 tables in 2007 to 60 tables in 2008! We would find that often during the night most of the chairs were full. I am so thankful the Maintenance & Facilities Director suggested we make this change. Great suggestion Wayner!

As kids come in their families are asked to fill out a registration card and each child is given a glow necklace. As they leave they are given a bag of candy. If they don't have a glow necklace they are asked to fill out a registration card. We do this for two reasons - to help us get a count for attendance and to determine if there is anyone who does not attend church. We give the candy as they leave so they do not have to keep up with the bag the whole night and it does not create a lot of extra trash from the candy. We are so thankful to Applebee's, Ci Ci's Pizza, Chick Fil A and Domino's for donating coupons to put in bags. Most gave a coupon for a free kid's meal and Domino's gave a coupon for a free appetizer or 2 liter with an order.

Here two of my favorite friends are thanking people for attending and handing out the bags!

Here two little friends play a little bowling carnival game.

Lots of water is needed for Fall Festival! A little friend likes the ice in the canoes. We have found this is a great way to distribute the water, coke, sprite and diet cokes. This is one of the new inflatable games we added to Fall Festival- 6 in 1 Sports Arena

A picture from the hill above the fields where we host Fall Festival.

Some little friends picking out which balloon they would like- thanks to my friend Teri who did a little more than 1,000 balloons- which were all handed out by 7 p.m. (yikes, we had 2 more hours to go- note to self....... have more balloon next year)!

I am watching people come down the hill and volunteers check in at the Volunteer Desk! What a fun night!

Fall Festival

Well in just a few minutes I am off to help set up for our Fall Festival tonight. Today and tonight is an amazing event in the life of our church. Tonight's festivities will bring in families from all over our community. We host this event FREE to all that come. Here are the activities we will have:
Preschool Area includes- duck pond, basketball, bean bag toss, treasure hunt, tattoo area, fish pond, ride area, play area, crayon playground inflatable, 3-n-1 Train Jump, Space Station jump.

Other area includes- Picture booth, Spider man giant slide, 33 obstacle course, Nemo 5-n-1 obstacle, petting zoo, pony rides, Noah's Ark 70' obstacle course, bungee run, bouncy boxing, basketball, soccer, baseball, gladiator joust, G-Roc Obstacle Slide Combo, 6 n 1 World Sports, Sports Jump, Roaring River Slide, Plain 5 n 1, T-Ball, Cars Jump, 18 ft Slide, Dart Game, Spin Art, Bean Bag Toss, Putt Putt, Spill the Milk, Ring Toss, Skee Ball, Tic Tac Toe, Pin the Tail, Balloons, Pokey Dot the Clowns.

We will serve hot dogs, all the fixings (including slaw and chili), chips, oreos, cotton candy, popcorn, nachos, hot chocolate, coffee, coke, diet coke, sprite and bottled water.

It is a lot of fun to watch all the families come in and enjoy such a fun and safe evening.
I almost forgot the candy bag- each child is given a "glo necklace" when they register as they enter the gates, so when they get ready to leave they are given a candy bag. Last year we gave out 1,200 candy bags so we have 1,500 this year. I am praying it is just the right number (not too many left and enough for everyone there).

Several people have made comments to me this week- I know your church spends lots of money on this event, why do you do this or there is so little return from an event like this, etc. My reply is we do this not expecting anything in return. It is simply a gift to our community, no strings attached. I realize that a lot of other churches can not do an event like this- but my church can. I also realize a lot of people who pass through our gates and fill out a registration card say they attend a church. They may just say that because here in the south you realize if you put you do not attend a church, you are going to get a visit or call. However, it is my intention if they just put a church and really do not attend that if they ever do have a need or do want to explore spiritual things........ they might remember our church.

Our church wants our community to know we love families. We want to meet families needs. We want to minister to them where they are. One need is a safe alternative to trick or treating or from our community sponsored Halloween Party. We are trying to be that place. We welcome all!

One thing we are trying to do for the second year is asking people to donate cans for the Manna Ministry. Hopefully people have seen this request on our advertisement and will donate food. Our Manna Ministry is our church's food pantry who provides grocery assistance for people in our community.

I will try and post pictures tomorrow. However you decide to celebrate tonight remember we serve a Living Savior who has overcome the evil one! Satan has been defeated. I pray you help our children focus on positive characters for tonight and your family celebrates together!

Meal Planning Monday October 27 - November 1

I am trying to get back on track with Meal Planning. It is amazing how the week we were in Nicaragua got me off track. What makes it hard is the different things in our schedule that throws things off....... here goes for October 27 - November 1.

Monday - Hot dogs, Chili and nachos / cheese dip

Tuesday - Chicken w/ "salsa" marinade, corn casserole, green beans & rolls

Wednesday - Lasagna, salad, and garlic bread

Thursday - Grilled Cheese & Soup

Friday - FALL FESTIVAL & I HOP

Saturday - Steak, baked potatoes, mac & cheese, green beans and rolls

Sunday - Leftovers

The chicken w/ "salsa" marinade is a type of chicken we had while in Nicaragua. I purchased the "salsa" while in Nicaragua. It is more like a BBQ sauce. I am going to give it a try- so we will see. Also let me explain I HOP. Since I am a the Minister of Childhood Education and often do not eat at the festivals or fellowships I am in charge of planning, I have a tradition of going to I HOP once the clean up is over. I just go chill out and eat with hubby. We are getting geared up for a big evening for Fall Festival. I am so thankful for all the help from my staff. Not to mention the hundreds of volunteers it takes to run the Fall Festival.

Have a great week! You can check out more recipes at http://www.orgjunkie.com !

Friendship Bread!

What is the world coming to? Okay so Meal Planning is a stretch for me. I am happy to report that so far for the last 9 days- I have only changed my plan one time. So I finally get the nerve to tell the crew at work that I am doing this and yes they did laugh. They said they were proud of me and then before the Parent's Day Out staff left you will never guess what happened!
The Director calls me into the kitchen and says there is a Ziploc bag of friendship bread starter left...... do I want it. I am like what is it? What do I have to do? She told me it has instructions, so I am like sure I will try it.
THEN I read the instructions................
Squeeze it? What is that about?
Well we will see if I can keep up with the task of making Friendship Bread. I mean come on I am not eating out every night but I am not sure I am up to this great task.

I also want to share if you are a CVS shopper- all their candy is on sale. If you purchase $15 worth of certain brands (which is easy to do with the big bags being $4.99 a bag) you get $7 in the extra care bucks. SO............ for those of you who go to churches who ask for candy for the Fall Festival they will host later in the month- stop by before Friday (Cleveland, TN is on the new schedule for CVS sales- here a new one begins every Friday). So if you spend $15 in candy- which you need for Fall Festival, yourself (I got peanut mnm's), children's parties, or trick or treater's- you will get $7 to spend later. I also bought Dum Dums so all my little friends can continue to stop by and see Dynamic and me. How is that for plugging candy donations for Fall Festival's!!!! :)

Speaking of saving money- Dynamic (Childhood Ministries assistant) and Resourceful (Resource Coordinator for Childhood Ministries) saved our church LOTS of money today. Well over $1,000 dollars. We did this two ways- one cutting out unused literature from our quarterly order and two- realizing we have most of our craft stuff for our Christmas Party because we bought last year during the "clearance" season from a crafting company! Way to go!

Also I personally racked up on skinless, boneless chicken breasts today. I visited for the first time Cook's - a local grocery store in Cleveland, TN. I noticed in the grocery story ads that they had the chicken for $1.99 per lb. I was headed to Bi-Lo where it was $3.69 per lb. when I remembered seeing this special. Well - now my freezer is stocked with this chicken for a while.

So, share with me how you have saved money recently...............
And stay tuned to see how I do with my friendship bread, can someone tell me why you squeeze this mixture?