vt conference

my visiting teaching conference was thursday and i'm so glad it went well (at least i think/hope it did!). i had this idea last year as i was planning last years conference, so i'd kinda been thinking about it for a year. alecia and colleen had suggested team building games, which i love, and an olympic theme was born. when i started planning it last year it didn't even occur to me that this is an olympic year and that lots of things have had olympic themes lately, but that's okay, it's all fun. :)

so last week christian reminded/told me that his chorus concert was on thursday, may 10.

what?????

yup, the night of my conference. after i'd already sent invitations and been announcing it for weeks. 

i felt sick about the whole thing. this is the one meeting a year that i'm in charge of and i couldn't (and didn't want to!) miss it. but this was also christian's last chorus concert and matt had to present his final project for his class, so he most likely couldn't be there either. and then to make matters worse, chris told me he needed a picture of he and i together. tug at my heart strings much?!

after a night of worrying i called colleen and we decided to move the conference up an hour earlier and then i would leave after my part. still sad for me, but ya gotta do what ya gotta do. and i will never again plan my conference for may, it's too busy!

 i was so busy all day that i didn't take many pictures. i made cute cupcakes in olympic colors and arranged them like the rings - 8 cupcakes in each color. teresa made cute torches for each table and had 2 huge olympic ring posters. and then we played olympic music as people came in. i had an icebreaker game based on a book called zoom, a sequence story within a story within a story. they figured it our pretty easily and that went well.

then we played helium stick which was so fun. everyone puts their fingers out, you lay a rod over them and they try to lower it to the ground. but the stick rises because the weight of everyones finger is greater than the weight of the rod. it's really crazy and fun. two of the groups were able to lower theirs, but this group just couldn't get it. they were laughing hysterically and it was so cute.

after, i talked about how the weight of any of our problems is also less than the weight of all of us when we are unified.

then we did a big group juggle.

after each game we talked about how it related to visiting teaching.

after i finished i had to leave. i didn't want to, i was really having fun! i'm so grateful that things went well, that so many people helped, and mostly that it's over!