so friday evening, we had our kick-off sleepover for the girls' ministry at church...
we began the night with some "recycled" halloween costume contests, where the girls created a costume out of junk materials they were provided. we had a bride...
and a car!
then it was time for some pumpkin painting...
and a couple of hours talking and answering questions from my "ungame" cards. as a therapist, i have lots of great talking tools, including great conversation starters. we used my ungame cards earlier in the year for our retreat, and they were a hit! i also included my "would you rather?" cards this time that are a great icebreaker for groups. we ended the evening by getting comfy and watching a movie.
love these girls :)the next morning, my engagement session came to me! joe is an intern that has been working with our youth ministry this school year, and kristi is his lovely fiancee that we get to see on the weekends helping out. i'm photographing their wedding next july, and since the house where we were staying is in a fabulous neighborhood that i've used for photo shoots before, i just had them meet me there. this is only a small tease, but i had to include a few of them :)
i've told joe numerous times that i think he has an early john mayer look. he doesn't listen to john mayer nor does he know what he looks like, but i'm standing by it.
their idea--so cute!
then it was back across town to meet my mom and grandma, have lunch and head over to the rose band competition. my brother's band was coming in town to compete, and we were over to the school early to see the first performances.(my brother the band director. and his buddy keith, also helping out with other bands.)
my brother's band taking the field... they're small, but alan's hoping to grow the program over the next couple of years!
we stayed through the entire competition, which ended up being from 3ish until almost 10 pm. i'm definitely out of practice for my band competition preparation. for example, i didn't bring hand warmers and definitely didn't layer well. it was very chilly for this early in october and we were frozen by the end of the night. but we did get to see some great bands!east carteret, where my brother has helped out for the past few years...
this was white oak out of jacksonville--one of the largest bands there, complete with sails and a ship on the field that moved around during the show...
and the big finale--west carteret, with their two story pit cart that was towed out on the field. they did the music of journey...
and had their colorguard in zebra stripes and lime green belts and headbands, using guitars as props!
i was surprised by how many bands use amplification now. it was just starting to become an option for bands when i graduated, but now everyone has a keyboard, guitar or microphone hooked up for the performances. the journey show had several electric guitar solos, and many bands fill in their sounds with keyboards and other synthesized sounds.alan's band ended up getting 3 1st place trophies, a couple of 2nd places and 2nd place overall in their class. we won't be able to make it to any other competitions this year, but we were glad to be able to see this one. and it was a great introduction for justin to band competitions in general. quite a learning curve for him :)
we had a praise band rehearsal scheduled for 7:30 this morning, so i was planning to get home and pretty much go straight to bed. well, then we got a call from alan that he hadn't left town yet because one of his students had to go to the hospital. he might need a ride to his school because the bus had already left, and he was in the ER with the student. so then we were figuring out if someone would drive him the 30-45 minutes to his school and then drive back, or if he would spend the night at our house. i went to bed but had a tough time falling asleep with all of the visitors and not knowing what was going on. so i think i finally fell asleep close to 1 am, and then was up way early for the rehearsal. alan was on the couch and his wife came to pick him up and eat breakfast with everyone while i was at first service. then justin, mom and grandma came to the 2nd service and we all went out for lunch afterwards. needless to say, it made for a long morning and i was glad to have this afternoon's photo session rescheduled and a wide-open evening become available :)
off to enjoy the rest of it. hope everyone else had a great weekend!
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