First Ever Nazarene Youth Lock-In
2009-Jun-28, Sunday 02:14 pmHoly Cow. So, we won't be doing another lock-in for a very... very.... VERY long time =..= If only to give ourselves time to forget how grueling it can be. Alicia and I were the only ones who didn't sleep at all. The others stayed up a lot, but each one of them did end up falling asleep, even if it was for a brief period of time. Billy swears he wasn't sleeping, he was on stand-by :) But I'm getting ahead of myself. OK! Let's see.
I got to the church around 4. Alicia had stressed about everything, and thus, showed up mega early to make sure everything was set up. So, I got there and unloaded all the snacks and drinks and such, and then Alicia wen to pick up Takara and Lamarr and their cousin. Well, not too long after she left, the Tyree brothers showed up with their friend Buddy. Billy, Jesse and Julian I knew, but I'd never met Buddy before. He's energetic, and rambunctious, and loud... and after a while, he's really annoying -..- But, they were hanging out and talking and then a few minutes later, Takara and Lamarr show up with their cousin. Their parents had dropped them off o..o' So I texted Alicia to let her know that they were here... and she came back. I should say, Takara's cousin was Timmy, which was confusing because Alicia told me it was a girl named Penny =..= So, essentially, the only girl was Takara.
The boys started playing PS3, and I mean really playing. They played Rock Band first (until the pizza arrived). My parents had shown up then, but I told them they didn't have to stay if they didn't want to, because Dad had only gotten home that morning at 9 and he had been driving for about 2 days =..= So, they left as soon as we were all fed. They reminded me that they were only a phone call away, so that was nice.
The boys hopped back onto the PS3, and Takara jumped on Alicia's computer and played games there. Alicia had brought a game called Dance Dance Dance... which is a Vegie Tales version of Dance Dance Revolution, but it didn't work. The game would run just fine, but the pads that you're supposed to dance on would not. So... that was shot. For a long time, the boys just took turns playing fighting games like Soul Caliber, Call of Duty and...other such games O..o' I lost count of all the games they were playing. At one point, the older boys (the Tyrees and Buddy) got really bored, and they noticed it was raining outside, so they tried to force random members of their own group outside in the rain. I would then stand by the door and say "Oh! He's running around to the other door!" and when they'd race over to the other door to intercept, I'd open the back door and let the guy in -..- guys. After that, they discovered a ping-pong set and used the entire fellowship hall to just smack the ping-pong balls back and forth to each other. Was amusing, if only because they kept trying to keep more than one ball in circulation. ... it wasn't so amusing when they just started throwing the balls at each other -..- again, guys. It's all funny now, but at the time it all just seemed kinda annoying.
Everyone was getting kinda bored with the games. I had forgotten my iPod at my house, so I said I was going to run over and get it. T (Takara) was bored and annoyed with the boys, so I asked her if she wanted to come along for the ride, and she jumped at the chance. She looked around the house, and I showed her the library... and she ended up borrowing Breaking Dawn from me o..o I suppose it's only fair, since I brought that Ultimate Guide to Transformers for Lamarr. So, she got that book and I got Calliope (my iPod) and then we headed back. During our absence, Alicia conducted a small devotional about acceptance (whatevs), and then it was decided that we'd stop playing the games and head upstairs to watch the movies.
We actually put the movies on around 9ish... we struggled with trying to get the sound to work. See, the movies were played in the Sanctuary. We have a projector hooked up to a laptop in there, and so we just put the movies on the laptop and projected them onto the screen.... but the laptop isn't hooked up to the sound booth, so we had to hook speakers onto the laptop and then put a mic between those speakers.... but we couldn't put the mic too close to the speakers, because it would feed back terribly -..- It really didn't help that Buddy would not shut up. He talked almost all the way through Prince Caspian. At one point I told Alicia to just put subtitles up because that would be the only way anyone would be able to know what was being said ... of course, then he started reading the subtitles outloud -..-
After that, there was a 30 minute break in which everyone went to the bathroom and got something to drink (energy drinks) and snacked a bit. We didn't allow them to bring food or drinks into the sanctuary, so of course they had to wait to snack (of course, they probably snuck stuff in >..>). After the break, we started Iron Man which was awesome, as always. I'm fairly certain that T fell asleep during that, and she had borrowed my iPod. She turned it off when she felt herself slipping and just passed out.
We were all pretty tired after that... so, once again, there was about a 30 minute break. Alicia asked me to play some loud music that would wake us all up, and she'd turn the speakers on in the fellowship hall where the food was so that everyone would hear it. So, I played a lot of Thousand Foot Krutch (one of my favorite bands), and that was really energizing. Then Alicia came up and asked if it'd be a good idea to play Mortal Kombat as opposed to The Dark Knight or Hellboy 2, because both of those movies are really long (meaning we'd all probably have a better chance of falling asleep in there) as opposed to MK and MK:A which is maybe an hour and a half at best each. So, we decided on Mortal Kombat, and as a way to signal that we'd soon me starting that movie, I put the Mortal Kombat: Annihilation soundtrack on :D
Jesse and Buddy came running up the stairs and started dancing around, and they were very closely followed by Billy and Julian. It was hilarious to watch them dancing around, because they weren't really trying to dance .... it was more of a ' jump forward while punching straight up in the air' dance.... so it covered a lot of ground and looked very funny.
Anyway, we started the first movie and continued with our '30 minute break in between' routine before starting Mortal Kombat Annihilation. During the break there, I was just sitting in the sanctuary reading... and I hear the floor start to squeak (which means someone has entered the sanctuary) and I look behind me and Jesse and Julian are sneaking around, ducking behind furniture and making their own dramatic spy theme music. There was a part where Julian ran by on all fours and then ducked and rolled behind a pue... I thought I'd die laughing. But the point was that at some point, Jesse had brought up a can of Mountain Dew, and they were trying to sneak it back out... I was so amused by their antics I couldn't be angry at them for breaking the no food/drink rule =..= I'm a bad disciplinarian. But, after that we put the MK:A movie on....I think Alicia had tried to sleep a little, because she had intended to start cooking breakfast around 8, but wanted to sleep some first. She didn't really manage it, so she just decided to go downstairs and cook breakfast right then so that it'd be done whenever the movie was over.
She and I were the only ones that didn't sleep at all.... the older boys were all awake by the end, but they had napped a bit during the movie. And Takara and Lamarr were OUT. Dead to the world and all. So, while I was hooking up my iPod to the sound system to play some stirring music, Buddy ran downstairs, got some of my fingernail polish (I'd brought it for Takara, in case she wanted a manicure or something) ran back upstairs and painted some of Lamarr's toes =..= Was funny when Lamarr woke up, but at the time I just kept wondering why Buddy was running around laughing like a maniac >..>
Alicia cooked breakfast and we all headed down to eat. She had made boy-scout breakfast, which is a pound of potatoes, a dozen eggs, a pound of bacon and a pound of cheese all stirred together in one skillet. She also made biscuits, which I thought were awesome :) The kids settled in the youth's Sunday School room to talk and eat together... but afterwards, when we asked them whether they wanted to watch Hellboy 2 or The Dark Knight, they couldn't make up their minds. So, Alicia and I decided to start the clean up process and we made them stay there and play the quiet game.
I put Harvey on in the Sanctuary upstairs after I made sure that everything was picked up off the floor and then went downstairs to see what needed to be done. I have to say...The kids did stay there and they were fairly quiet (the game was that if anyone made a noise, the entire room could smack them on the rear... that was Alicia's idea =..=), and I washed all the dishes (by hand, because a lot of them really needed it and Alicia still hadn't unloaded the dishwasher) and Alicia swept. She got the kids to help her arrange the tables in the middle of the fellowship hall, and then they all went up to the sanctuary to get their stuff... somewhere along the way, Alicia told them that Harvey was up there cleaning and not to get in his way... so they all got their stuff, but then they just sat there and watched Harvey bump into things o..o it was really funny to see them so enthralled by my vacuum :D I realized that everyone yells at the roomba too, because they kept yelling, "Harvey! Come back here! You missed a spot!"
Anyway, I finished up the dishes and cleared off all the counters, putting trash in the trash can and putting food where it was supposed to go. Then I wiped off the counter tops. After that, I got the old vacuum out off the cabinet and vacuumed the youth room. I went up stairs to watch Harvey, and Alicia made the kids find all the ping-pong balls and put the set back in the youth room where it belonged. After we checked everything, we turned off the lights and air and then locked up and it was all over.
I know I headed home and showered... I do not remember much of it. But I wasn't feeling good at all... so I took my pills along with half of a muscle relaxer and slept for quite a while. Mom called me for supper, but after I'd eaten and talked with them a bit, I ambled back over to my place. I didn't want to sleep because I was afraid it'd mess up my sleep schedule, but I really wasn't awake enough to do much.
Today I am almost just as exhausted as I was yesterday =..= So, like I said, we're gonna be waiting a long long time before we do this again... if only so we can remember why we shouldn't. I do intend to have another movie night some time in August before school starts... but other than that, we really don't have any definitive plans for the youth at this point. We're just happy to have survived this event :)
I guess that's all... My account for the days of the lock-in are finished and I've nothing more to add :) Later, Sunshines.
( Lock-In Tweets ^..^ )
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