Oh, Junior High Days

Don't you remember those days? You stayed up late, ate a lot of pizza, drank too much caffeine, talked to friends all night, and never slept.

This sums up my Friday night/Saturday morning. It was Hoop Dee Doo here in Waco. It is an excuse for parents to leave their children with college students and youth ministers for an evening/morning to get away. It is also an excuse for kids to eat way to much pizza, drink coke all night, and hang out with their friends under the supervision of "cool people" instead of their parents (that's right, I'm a bonafide "cool person"). It was an adventure. It all began at 10 p.m. We met at Woodway Baptist, the church my church partnered with, and registrered, got t-shirts, waited on people...ya know, the norm. We had a worship time, and the jr. high youth minister for Woodway led an invitation time. It was pretty awesome to see all the jr. high kids worshipping (Love it!). We then headed to the buses. All of us filled up 6 school buses! (Last year was 10!?! Good grief, that's a lot of jr. high kids!) We made our way to Poppa Rollo's Pizza(yummmm...). It has the BEST pizza in Waco. The kids filled up with pizza and coke aka they were bouncing off the walls. The college leaders on the other hand had to go about staying up late in a different way.

Josh brought us Monsters... Never again will I drink a Monster. Gross. It did, however, keep me awake.

It was about 1:30 a.m., when we left Rollo's and headed to the movie theatre. The kids had a choice of seeing The Express or Beverly Hills Chihuahua. I refrained from the movie and stayed int he hall with Ronny, our fearless leader (ha!), and some of the other college students. We had some funny conversations due to delirium. The movies ended around 4 a.m. and we were off to the skating rink!

We laced up and hit the floor! (Oh, dear, I haven't recovered from delirium yet...) It was fun. I definitely felt like I was in jr. high again. So, we skated from 4 until around 5:30 a.m. And, then we were off again. This time to the bowling alley. By this time, the inner grandma was screaming "SLEEP, GIVE ME SLEEP". The awful Monster drink had worn off, skating had plum-tuckered me out (inner grandma speaking...), and it was 5:30 a.m. and I had been up almost 24 hours. I wasn't the only one, though. When we got the bowling alley, Lara, Hanna, Josh, and I found the nearest table to sit at.

And, here is the result: One of our lovely jr. high girls took this. We weren't truly asleep just resting our eyes... We were tired, but sleep was soon to be had. At 6:45, we loaded the buses for the final time. We returned to Woodway. The parents were meeting us back at 7 a.m. The jr. high kids could have gone for a few more hours, but the college kids and youth ministers were ready to fall over. Hanna, Lara, and I drove back to Baylor. I was asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow, and I didn't emerge from my coma until 1:30 that afternoon. I ate lunch, and fell asleep again (I blame the inner grandma).

It was a lot of fun, though. However, I am not a jr. high-er anymore, and the inner grandma calls for sleep.



Hmm... nap time, anyone?


Happy sleeping :)