I had an awesome day!
This is Youth Week at church. To kick things off properly, the youth got together this afternoon for its annual Scavenger Hunt.
I offered my services as a parent driver.
Naturally, my own children did not accompany me. Oh no. That would have been way un-cool.
So, I walked around the youth room for a few minutes, feeling a little like the last kid picked on a team.
Then, four younger girls approached me. Would I be willing to drive them?
Of course I would!!!
Chicky looked over at them and apologized in advance for me.
I almost apologized, in advance, for beating her in this game.
You see, I like to do things hard-core…be it couponing, exercising, or knitting.
Ready, set, go!
We were off…all 20 groups of us…armed with our lists and cameras. We had three and a half hours. Plenty of time.
It felt a little like The Amazing Race. I was psyched as the adrenaline began to flow.
The rules:
- The driver had to take all of the pictures. All pictures had to include every youth member in the vehicle.
- Showing up late would result in a loss of points.
Not a lot of rules, you see.
As we started driving, we quickly found a church. We scored 50 points for each church, and additional points per denomination.
Folks, I live in the South…i.e. The Bible Belt. You can’t go very far in this town without stumbling upon a church.
We found two before heading to my house, where I’d left my cell phone. We were able to take several of the required pictures at my house.
One of my favorite photos is this one (which I can share because it doesn’t show their faces)…

Yeah, they had to stick their faces in the pool at once. The sunbathers sitting nearby had a good laugh. So did the girls. It was actually a relief because it was so hot this afternoon!
Our tasks included the following:
- Spelling out a word in front of a local restaurant. My girls spelled LOVE.
- Forming a bulls-eye in front of Target. The customers coming out had a good laugh at us.
- Finding an out-of-state license plate. We scored this at Target.
- Posing as animals in front of a pet store.
- Eating ice cream from one cup in front of a local ice cream shop. The girls LOVED this one!
- Fishing with separate poles. Extra points were scored for being in a boat, away from the shore or the dock. We made a new friend (a stranger) who kindly took the girls out. They were a little weirded out by this.
- Posing in a VW (old model). I don’t know if we got away with this one. The girls got in a newer one…a neighbor’s. Again, we made a new friend when we knocked on his door.
- Finding a 60+ male member of the church and pose while he read his favorite Bible verse. One of my girl’s fathers fit the description, and we scored 100 points.
There were a few more things on the list, but I can’t remember them all.
I have no idea if we won. I left the church after dropping the girls off and getting my pictures transferred to a church computer.
As one of the girls said in the car, “It’s not about winning but about having fun.”
I would say she got it right. We laughed so much. I got a good amount of exercise by jumping in and out of the car and running to catch up with kids over 20 years younger than me.
I came home on a high. What a wonderful day!
Filed under: children | Tagged: scavenger hunt, teenagers | 4 Comments »