Happy Presidents Day!

I hope you are all enjoying the day off if you were lucky to have it off. I also hope you will join in praying for our presidential candidates, regardless of what you feel about them, they need to be covered in prayer as well as our country. I loved this quote from Jimmy Carter, so I made a graphic for it, feel free to share it. :)

Youth Group Super Smash Bros. Tournament

Ugh. I don't think I'll ever blog on time. Haha. The week is just so busy and a baby makes it hard to blog. Hopefully you don't mind this post being a bit late.  ;)

Our youth group loves playing old video games. We every so often hold retro video game nights where we bring in Super Nintendos and other older systems. Two Saturdays ago, we had a very successful Super Smash Bros. 64 Tournament. Our students love the retro feel of the older Nintendo 64 system and it's especially fun when they can play together competitively.
It was the perfect rainy, icky day to have an indoor event. We started it at noon and it went til the tournament was over. We pulled out all the typical teen consumption favorites, pizza and pop for lunch to keep it nice and simple. We didn't do sign-ups ahead of time for the tournament because we don't have a particularly large group, but if you chose to do this same thing with a larger group, I think it'd be wise to get as many of the teams done in advance as possible. We did both a singles tournament where everyone played for themselves and a doubles tournament where two people came up with a team name and played. I think half the fun was reading the silly team names. Haha. :)

[Here are two websites that can help you prepare tournament brackets: Here and Here]

For prizes, we had these Mario, Luigi, and Yoshi figurines to give away; one each for the single and doubles winners. We also plan on doing this tournament annually, so we had a plaque made up to get the winners' names and team names engraved onto every year. We also do a plaque for our church's fantasy football league every year with the adults, and they look forward to getting their name added, too.

We had three TV's set up. Or rather, two TV's and a projector screen. We did all the little matches against each other on all three and then for the big important matches we all watched on the big projector screen.

Some future event, I'd like to do some themed decorations and snacks. I think these wall decals would make it super fun for photo opportunities and atmosphere. These snacks are also really cute. Other tournament or video game night ideas could use Mario Party games or Mario Kart. Another theme could be Star Wars games such as Battlefront for Xbox or Star Wars Episode I Racer for N64. We like to keep other competitive games like Halo or Call of Duty for smaller groups of older teens (usually guys) because they can get intense and the subject matter is more violent. Anyway, there are tons of fun themes or just go retro, video games are a fun way to gather together for fun competition. 

Have you held a video gamer tournament?  Retro video game night? What other tournaments hander you done?  Comment below! 

Yay! Back to youth group!

Woo hoo! Tonight is youth group for us and I haven't been in about a month because Alumni band practice was on Wednesdays.  But now that is over and I get to go back. I've missed my teens, I haven't even really seen them on Sundays because I've been in the nursery. This week will be a two-fer though because of youth group tonight and our Super Smash Bros tournament on Saturday! Stay tuned to see how we host this youth group event. See you later!  ^_^

Monday's Are Our Saturdays

People who aren't hired in ministry tend to not realize how pastors and other ministry positions don't actually have weekends off like most 9-5 type jobs. In addition to the office hours, visiting hours,  and programs during the week, Sunday is usually considered a work day. It is not at all a day of rest. Many churches don't do anything on Sunday nights,  but our church and many other Baptist churches like us do a Sunday night service and small groups.

2 Months A Mother, Reflecting

WOW. I've been a mommy for over 2months now. I can't get over it! It's already gone so fast! My little Lincoln has grown so much. I've loved every cuddle and snuggle and smile I get out of him. I could live without some of the memories of crying, diapers, and getting all kinds of bodily fluids leaked upon me, but motherhood has been great so far. ;)

For those who did know, Lincoln was born on his due date; MY birthday! What a blessing to share a birthday with my son! And a such a rare thing to be born on the predicted due date.

Giving birth was quite the experience, to say the least. Haha. It didn't go the way I wanted it to, but that's okay because I didn't expect everything to go perfectly. I wanted to do water labor and wanted to be more up on my feet, but I felt so sick and tired that day I spent a limited amount of time walking around and on a yoga ball; before it all started, I was just laying down to sleep at 6:15 a.m. and my water broke at 6:30, so I'd been up for nearly a whole day already before I even started laboring. I was exhausted before I even started.

Nautical Baby Shower Printable Roundup

With my baby shower fresh on my mind and all the cute nautical baby things going into the nursery, I wanted to do a roundup post of all the cute free printable resources I found that we didn't get to use in my shower. I hope you find these useful and fun for a nautical party of your own some day! :)

My Nautical Boy Baby Shower

Last Saturday, my aunt Mary Lou (she's basically my mom, too), mom, and mother-in-law, Eva, threw me the cutest nautical-themed shower! My aunt, when coming up with inspiration for the shower, looked through my Pinterest boards and asked about how I wanted the nursery to look and because navy is going to be a big color, she thought the nautical theme was perfect for the occasion. She had used Pinterest prior to this endeavor, but she definitely went "overboard" (pun intended) looking at all the adorable nautical ideas with my mom. They said it was hard to narrow down all the cute things they saw. Here are the adorable things they put together for me.

Blueberry Greek Yogurt Fast Snack

Healthy late night #snack. Vanilla Greek yogurt and #blueberries! What do you like to eat late at night? #prego #cravings #pregoproblems #pregnantlife

A photo posted by SisFor (@sisfor.smp) on Jun 11, 2015 at 11:07pm PDT

Had a late night craving for something sweet, but I was really bad today about eating healthy, so I decided to find something else fast, healthy, and sweet. I used up the little vanilla Greek yogurt I had and stirred in a small handful of plump blueberries and YUMMO! Hit the spot, plus I got some protein and antioxidants into my day. What do you like to eat for late night snacks? Leave a comment below!

Food Fight Fun

Woo hoo! It's been three days since our food fight and we had a blast! Because I'm prego, I sat this one out and played photographer, but nonetheless, it is so fun watching the kids have a good time. I wanted to post sooner, but I had SO many photos to go through, it took two days and a lot of cropping to get the pics I wanted to share. It's hard to get shots of food in action flying through the air! So without further ado, I present our youth group's second annual food fight. Enjoy! :)

4 weeks and counting!

I haven't been doing a lot of blogging, but if you know me personally, I'm now 36 weeks and have just a month to go til I meet my little guy!

How To Throw The Best Food Fight Ever

Last year our youth group decided to end our summer with a food fight. My youth pastor said he had a tremendous success doing a food fight with his youth group that it became an annual event, so we decided to try it for ourselves, too! We also had a great turnout from our regular students and we also had a bunch of kids come to youth group for the first time. Last year was such a success, we decided to do it again, but instead of ending our summer with a food fight, we're ending the school year with a food fight when all the kids are dealing with end-of-the-school-year stress. Nothing like throwing a handful of spaghetti in someone's face to help you forget those finals, am I right? ;)

*Our next food fight will be June 3rd, so I hope to get some new awesome pics up! Stay tuned!*

**Update: Catch the results HERE!**

So you must be wondering, "Sam, how on earth did you control the chaos? I mean, it's a food fight amongst a bunch of teens, didn't it get out of hand?" Those are good questions. Keep reading to see how we organized our food fight for all the hints and tips you'll need for your own!

Gardening

I totally have a "black" thumb. I have never really gardened because I haven't had experience with gardening and potted plants have never lasted with me... Oops. ;)

But today, hubby and I went out and bought us some perennials! I'm excited to see how everything will look when it all blooms. The pictures aren't that great since we're waiting on bulbs to come up, but we're proud of all our work today; we haven't ever put this much effort into the garden before.

Three Super Cute Baby Shower Ideas - Free Printable Game!

Since I had a church baby shower in April and now I have a family baby shower coming up at the beginning of June, I keep thinking about all the cute shower ideas I've seen and pinned on Pinterest. Here are three of my favorite ideas that I've personally used when throwing showers that got very positive reactions. 

Start Selling on eBay - Decluttering and Making Money!

In trying to prepare for a baby coming here in a little over 3 months, I decided I am going to try to get rid of a ton of clothes and extra things around my house to make some extra cash. I had toyed with eBay when I was younger, making listings for my not-so-tech-savvy aunt to sell her ski gear and some designer purses, so I am not necessarily discovering eBay for the first time, but for the first time I am taking it seriously.

For the first time in for-E-ver... I'm posting.

So life is crazy. It always has been and always will be. I really REALLY wanted to get more into blogging before and I REALLY REALLY wanted to share the whole VBS with the internet here (which I will do, I took so many dang pics, I won't let them go to waste! I think I'll add an edit/update to the last VBS post and put everything on there), but this summer was busy and then fall semester hit and casual blogging was not even on my radar.

This past summer was three weeks straight of VBS prepping and then the actual VBS. My hubby was the only pastor at our church because our pastor was on sabbatical, so on top of his VBS duties, he also had his own weekly duties PLUS pastor Mike's to do. Cory and I both have a lot of experience doing VBS as volunteers, but coordinating everything is still very new to us. Needless to say, we were stressed. Lol. Because ministry isn't stressful at all, right? *sarcasm*

After VBS, August came, bringing our pastor back and us the time to go on a much-needed vacation! We went and stayed with our friends in San Francisco, CA that we hadn't been able to see for two years since they moved out there from Chicago. We drove down the coast from SF all the way to Los Angeles in a day. We then spent the next day in LA sightseeing and then driving back up to Monterey, to see my friend graduate from Presidio's language program. The rest of our week was spend back in the bay area of SF with our friends. Our last day there, right as we were about to walk out the door and leave for the airport, we FELT THE EARTHQUAKE that had hit Napa. We were in Concord, so not super close, but I think I remember it was about a 2.4 or something. It was a whirlwind of a trip, not super restful, yet it was just what we needed.

Fall semester then came. I had all kinds of school work to do. I had complications with finishing on time, but I somehow managed to squeeze extra coursework into the semester and graduated in December.

Which leads me to some bigger news (which most of my "readers" at this point already know because they know me personally)... I'm PREGNANT! I found out in October and we told everyone in November. Here's the real kicker... my little guy is due on MY BIRTHDAY! :D

The last half year or so has been a whirlwind of busy-ness. I want to start blogging casually since I'm currently unemployed and not in school. It's a wonderful way to get my thoughts out into the world. Hopefully, you'll be hearing from me soon! ;)