Community Group Game Night

This past Friday, our Community Group hosted a church-wide family game night. Well, really, it was open to anyone to come have a good time.  We did a good bit of planning a couple of weeks ahead of time, coming up with decoration ideas, snacks, and the layout for the night. Now, many of us in our group love to play board and card games. It's quite the regular occurrence after we wind up Bible study... or randomly during the week. Our group leaders, Mike & Kelsey, have even made several games and are in the process of having them printed onto real boards and cards, and they will soon pursue support and funding for publishing them! (Keep up with their progress on their facebook page, Two Penney Games, and expect BIG things from them - they are amazingly awesome!)

So, with all that being said, we had some great expectations for this game night we were throwing. It was announced at church the Sunday before, we arrived at the conference room and got it all ready and pretty, and then we waited. Some of us were nervous that no one would show... or 'too many' people would come. We didn't know what to expect.

We built a mountain of games for people to choose from then take to a table to play together.

We combined efforts to create a yummy spread of snacks, including game-themed food such as a checkerboard of sandwich squares topped with tomatoes and olives as playing pieces, and some Scrabble cookies (made my yours truly).  The foods had cute game-related labels such as "Battleships and Dip" for chips and dip, and "Apples to Apples" on the fruit tray.

And then people came! And we were very excited! It was a great environment to mix and mingle with other people and get to know others in our church that we might not have met yet. It was truly a fun night for everyone of all ages!

There was a photobooth, which the kids LOVED.

(the testing photo)

Every 30 minutes Kelsey led a "Minute-to-Win-It" style game where several people would compete, in sometimes slightly embarrassing situations, for prizes. Activities included moving an Oreo from your forehead to your mouth using only your face muscles, stacking 6 dice on a popsicle stick held in your mouth, shaking ping-pong balls out of an empty Kleenex box above your rear tied around your waist. 

Watch Jesse win the "Nose Dive" game:

It was a fun-filled night, and a great way to connect with people and the community. Hopefully we will do it again soon!