Post Game Party 2024
It was a chilly night in Pleasantville for our 2024 Post Game Party! Luckily our volunteers were ready with music, snacks, and several photo opportunities for teens to enjoy together! We love providing a fun and safe space for teens to spend time with each other.
Over 100 teens grades 7-12 attended this year’s event!
Homecoming 2024
One of our favorite weeks of the year: HOMECOMING! We were so excited to participate again in our small town parade and cheer on the Trojans throughout the week!
Middle School Dance Night 2024
We had a BLAST at our Middle School Dance Night 2024!
Over 100 students attended the dance!
Prom Prep morning 2024
We had a fantastic morning spoiling Pleasantville’s prom attendee girls! All young women attending prom were invited to stop by the Memorial Hall to grab an iced coffee or juice, some delicious carbohydrates from Panera Bread, and a goody bag from us! Bags were filled with prom day essentials like lip gloss, gum, bandaids, tissues, hair clips, and more.
Girls were also invited to reserve an appointment to have their hair or makeup done for free by talented volunteers! The spots filled up fast, but we also had volunteers on hand for walk-ins.
We had a great morning encouraging these young women with some pampering and fun!
FCA Worship Night
We were so excited to help at the FCA (Fellowship of Christian Athletes) worship night at Pleasantville Christian Church. We were able to bring cookies donated by Subway as well as drinks to offer as refreshments following the service.
Originally the event was intended to be an outdoor service behind the library. When heavy rain threatened to cancel the event, Pleasantville Christian Church stepped up to open their doors to the teens who had organized the event.
It was a beautiful night of worship!
Rec Center Night
We had a great night at the Knoxville Rec Center! Teens were able to play basketball and swim. They had a great time! We provided snacks, of course!
Christmas Party 2019
Hot Chocolate, popcorn, music, and gifts? What more could a kid ask for! On December 14th, 2019 we hosted our first ever Christmas party for 7th-12th graders. It was a blast!
This event was different than events we have done in the past. Rather than just being a hang out night, this event brought the kids center-stage for a series of fun activities including a Christmas Tree making contest, a lip sync battle, and a Christmas Q&A.
The highlight of the night for PvilleYI volunteers was handing out a gift to every kid. Everyone got the same thing: a brown box containing gummy bears, takis (chips), a PvilleYI bracelet, a PvilleYI decal sticker that says “Every Person Matters”, a few pieces of candy, a candy cane, a pack of gum, and a really cozy pair of LazyOne Christmas Socks! Every gift was wrapped and a bow was placed on top. Why go to all the trouble to wrap all these presents? Because unwrapping gifts is SO much fun!
Ultimately our goal behind giving each kid a gift is simple: They matter to us. And when people matter to you, you go the extra mile and show them that you care in tangible ways. God gives to us in such a lavish way. We didn’t really need the color purple, but He gave it to us anyway. We didn’t really need a singing bird outside our window, but He gave it to us anyway. These kids might not need these gifts in the same way that they need their survival needs met. But we gave them to them anyway. Because good gifts make life special, worth enjoying, just like a C chord or a chocolate chip cookie. It’s a small way to bring joy. And small things add up.
The youth surprised us all by counting to three and in a unified voice expressing thanks.
On Christmas God gave us the most beautiful gift of all: His Son, Jesus, the Prince of Peace. And we want to love the way He does!
Merry Christmas!
CFKWLG 2019 Was a Blast!
On November 23rd we hosted our second “Competition for Kids Who Like Games (and also for kids who do not like games)", or CFKWLG.
Competing can be a lot of fun. Some kids are naturally tuned to enjoy athletics, while others are not. And that is OK! Take our co-founders for example. Emily loves an intense game of dodgeball or basketball. Jennie, however, prefers trivia and creative challenges. Both enjoy competing, but not in the same way.
We created this event to appeal to both of these personality types. Learning to enjoy winning and losing, understanding that playing by the rules makes a victory sweeter, and working together with others toward a common goal are all important skills kids will need as adults. At this age, kids still learn a lot through play.
We wanted kids to understand that in life they won’t be on a team full of people who are exactly like them. At work, and even in their families, they’ll have to learn how to let someone else on their team shine so they can all find success. One minute a team is cheering their teammate who won them the dodgeball game, and the next they’re cheering the teammate who earned them 3 points in trivia. Everyone contributes.
As youth arrived and signed in they were divided into four different teams at random, each team assigned a different color: Red, Green, Yellow, and Blue.
Teams each had two volunteers as coaches. Together they came up with their team names and their team battlecries. We encouraged them to be as creative and silly as they wanted to be!
The teams chose the following names:
Yellow Team: The Millertary (named after Colton Miller)
Red Team: The Rojo Toros
Blue Team: The Blue Ice Giraffes
Green Team: The Turtle Strips
The teams competed in a series of games. We choose games that athletes and non-athletes alike can find a way to enjoy including some trivia, a dance-off, and dodgeball. By including games that appeal to different types of personalities, we were able to give each kid on the team a chance to contribute to the points their team earned.
Note: We used “regulation” dodgeballs (because apparently that’s a thing). They are supposed to sting less when a player is hit with them and be more fun to use.
The winner of the CFKWLG traveling trophy this year was the Blue Ice Giraffes!
Kids ended the evening with some candy bars and time to hang out together.
Events like this encourage teamwork and friendship. Competition can be a lot of fun when you play fair and laugh with your opponents. We hope the kids learned a little bit about teamwork, too.
We had a great time! A huge thank you to all of our volunteers: Stacy Rowson, Kirsten Furnal, Greg Eichenburg, Clinton Wallace, Eric Goodale, Mike & Emily Caulkins, and Jennie & Michael Koenig. You can watch the highlight video below:
Post Game Party 2019
What an awesome night with a bunch of great kids! We invited 7th-12th graders to a post game party on October 25th, 2019. After the football game youth began flooding into the High School Cafeteria. When they arrived they signed in with our volunteers and headed in for snacks, drinks, and dancing!
One thing is for sure: there was a lot of laughing at this event. One of the highlights for us occurred during the song “Don’t Stop Believin’”. Completely on their own, the entire group circled up to sing the song. Then they came together in the center for the chorus. It was encouraging to see all of them in sync for a moment. Clicks faded, divisions fell away, and they were just one big circle.
We love doing events like these because we see so many smiles. Life won’t always be easy or fun for these kids. But it is our hope that we can offer some enjoyment, some laughter, some fun that will help outweigh the bad days. God loves us so much and freely gives us good things. He asks us to love others the same way. So what we love to give them is a few hours of happiness. For a little while they are just kids having fun, wearing funny hats in front of a camera, and singing at the top of their lungs. Loved dearly by God, by us, and by their community.
We want to thank all our volunteers for this event. We couldn’t do it without you! Thank you also to PHS for allowing us to use the school facility. Thanks to Autumn Fennewald at Sweet Serendipity Photography for taking photos at the photo booth. She has a great eye! Thank you to Cass Lester for DJing for us again. He knows how to get the crowd moving! And a shout out to the Booster Club for bringing over a pile of delicious pork sandwiches, the kids were thrilled and so were the volunteers!
Although this was a 7th-12th grade event, we had very few high school students attend. We sort of expected that, but we wanted to try one more time to keep it open. We are taking notes about these things and plan to make some changes to future events, separating the age groups and finding unique ways to bless the high school students in Pleasantville as much as we are blessing the Middle Schoolers.
You can see a highlight video below!
If you would like to donate to help us throw more fun events like these, you can learn how here!
And just for fun, here’s the prep video from Emily and Jennie as well! :)