Celebrate Good Times!

Yesterday, my SAMmy's group (Strength Among Moms Ministry) had their end of year brunch. It was quite the celebration. I brought my camera, but of course was running around so much, I did not take one picture! Ugh! I hate it when that happens!
We did have a fun time, though! I did manage to snap a few shots of the gifties before I took off.
Look what I bought the child care workers, and some of the door prizes. They are from a local chocolatier shop - Knoke's Chocolates:
And for my small group, I made these little pails, with our group picture in them:

We had three small groups this year. We played a form of the Newlywed Game called the "SAMmy's Sista Game". Funny. We played it like the Newlywed Game, only we had three couples - one from each of the small groups. They were asked questions about each other and their experience in SAMmy's this year. My group won! These were the grand prizes:

You can't see it, but the hat says "SAMmy's Sister" on it, as does the bag.

The gameshow kind of backfired, though. As the game show host, it was my job to ask the questions. One of the questions was something like, "What is one thing your small group leader said over and over to your SAMmy's Sister?" I asked that to the couple from my small group - Do you know what they said? (And they were right!) Megan said that one thing I said to her during our smal group over and over was "Moron!" Everyone thought that was a smart alec answer, until her partner Jocelyn flipped over the card to reveal that that was the answer she wrote on the card! Did I turn red!!! (Because I am their small group leader who apparently calls her a moron!) Everyone in the audience either laughed or gasped! I was so embarrassed that I didn't explain...and I should have! You see, that was an inside joke. It's not like in Bible study I sat there and called her a moron because she didn't know the answer to a question or anything!

The whole moron story came about one afternoon when we were all socializing at our SAMmy's Sister Jen's house (Jen of Oils for Wellness) and Megan was putting herself down. We were telling her to quit talking bad about herself...and to lighten the mood I said, "Yeah, knock it off, you moron!" I guess you had to be there - we all thought it was funny. That's how our group rolls. And from then on in, we joked about it. And, we WOULD joke about it at SAMmy's in our small group...but we had a ton of other inside jokes, too. We are a really tight group and we laugh. A lot. Megan never took offense.

But, of COURSE - that was her answer for the game show and OF COURSE - that's what Jocelyn wrote...so OF COURSE - everyone wondered...and I never thought to correct anybody because I was a) laughing and b) embarrassed. But it WAS pretty funny! And, I'm pumped that my team knew each other the best...and won some pretty great prizes. We did have an awesome group this year - and got to know each other REALLY well!!!

Anyhow, so yesterday was the perfect ending to a really great year. Next year, both Jocelyn and I will be small group leaders, so we won't have the same small group. Boo hoo! But, this year was just really special. It was fun to celebrate that.

Now, I get to start writing the curriculum for next year's groups...it makes me wonder how my small group will be next year...I hope it will be just as fun!