Penguins, Pasta & Polka Dots: Pining For Summertime

Summertime is almost here! The summer months are definitely loved by this girl, and they bring so many happy things: swimming, watermelon, sunshine, tan skin, long days, exciting nights, a more relaxed feeling, beach days, river tubing, popsicles, and so much more. But another one of the reasons I love summer, is for all the fun activities that I get to do with my youth group!

We call the whole ordeal "Y.E.S.S." - which stands for Youth Extreme Summer Spectacular. And it is indeed spectacular. We do about five or six fun, crazy, sometimes messy events during the summer, and then our final event to culminate the summer is always Rock the Universe at Universal Studios Orlando. It rocks! .... I'm punny, huh? :) Anyways, if you want, you can check out an old post of RTU from 2010. Also, the summer events are when we invite the upcoming 6th-graders to start joining in on youth events, so we get to welcome some new members to our Rooftop group!

The YESS agenda for this summer includes the following:

1. Speed Switch Game Night - this is one I'm super excited for, based solely on my love of games. It's set up like speed dating, only when the bell rings, each person on your team rotates one spot to play a new game, rather than rotating to flirt with a potential date. If you win a game, your team gets a point. The team with the most points wins!
2. Bonfire & Luau - don't really need to explain this one, we understand what it means. There will be grass skirts, flowery lei's, smores, games and fun. Count me in.
3. Real Life Clue - I don't want to give too much away (for those few of my youth who read my blog) but this is going to be a fun night. It will be way more fun in fact than simply playing the board game.
4. Beach Weekend - um hello?! Who doesn't want to spend a couple of days at the beach? I plan on taking us to St. George Island, and spending some quality time not only in the glorious Gulf water and sunshine, but also some quality time with some great teenagers.
5. Extreme Paint Night, Part 4 - This one is always a big hit, and one of the only summer events we ever repeat, and definitely the only one we do year after year because of it's popularity. We play some "regular" games, but the twist is there's always paint involved somehow. For example - kickball where you have to slip-n-slide down a tarp full of paint to each base. Or Twister where each circle is a big blob of paint. So. Much. Fun. (See some of the 2010 action here...)
6. Rock the Universe - and last and most-certainly-not-least-but-in-fact-arguably-the-best we have Rock the Universe. We get admission into Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure (which now includes the Wizarding World of Harry Potter!) for two days, as well as awesome concerts from some of the biggest and most popular current Christian artists. It's extremely exhausting - but the fun quotient certainly outweighs the exhaustion quotient.

So many fun events, so much excitement, and I can't wait to get it all started. The first event is still right at a month away (June 3), but I'm ready to start the fun and games now! I love my youth group, and I love hanging out with them, and I super-duper love summer events with my youth group.

Parents & Youth - click HERE for a link to our church website to download the forms :)

Also, I had a hard time narrowing down all the amazing pictures from last summer's awesomeness (imagine that), so here's a giant pile of picture overload for your viewing pleasure! (Sorry they're not in any kind of order - that was too much work for me and I didn't feel like doing it...)