We hadn't had a sleepover at our church for a few years, and were celebrating that we had youth who wanted to and enough to make it fun.

The rooms were booked, the plans were made, when...property said..heh, we have an alarm system now.   It was a challenge, as they weren't sure how to turn off the motion sensing  for just one evening..and keep the rest of the alarms, ie fire, active.  They figured it out though, with assistance from the alarm company, and we were good to go.

What a great night....we had fun, the youngest were tucked in and the oldest group were up playing games, and heading to get midnight snack, when the loudest alarm went off, ......yup, the motion alarm had been set off.  

Did I tell you youngestson & i were there...oh, and my husband was one of the on-call people for the alarm system?

He showed up...and turned it off.  Two hours later....same thing when someone got up to go to the washroom.  Lol, it was a long night, where NO ONE left the room from then on, for fear of setting it off.  Easy way to keep track of the kids!

For the next alarm, they figured out that if we left a door open, the sensor would be blocked, and we didn't have to deal with it.  it worked...

Most of the youth group stories from my past aren't repeatable because we are all still living...

As I remember it, I was the only adult staying overnight.  But I think there must have been another - probably someone in her early twenties that fit right in with a group of teenage girls.  Great evening, theme activities, pizza party, singing, then settling down in sleeping bags on the carpet in the parlor to watch a movie. 

I settled in the next room in my sleeping bag, on a thin air mattress, with my trusted dog at my side.  Gradually the noise abated and it seemed everybody was asleep. 

I awoke to a thump, thump coming up through my mattress from the tile covered cement floor.  What's going on?   Investigation showed three teenage girls running around the gym, their heels pounding on the floor, the thumping amplified as it travelled through the building.   "What's going on?"  

"We want to stay up all night.  We have to keep moving so we won't fall asleep."

I guess I turned into a grump.  Those kids were soon into their sleeping bags, and I was muttering to myself  "I'm too old to do this anymore." 

I don't even get asked now.  Age has its own rewards.

lol Pinga and Seeler 

No youth group stories here.  Just lots of high school band trip stories!  

TL

Great idea for a thread Pinga! I enjoyed laughing with you and Seeler as I prepare for the sleep over tonight. I will let you know if anything particularly funny happens tonight. For now, here's a story from when I was a youth - it wasn't really funny, but it was certainly memorable (and I can laugh about it now).

We were having a CGIT Spring retreat at Camp Kwomais - a (now former) United Church Camp in Surrey. The wood cabins there stood in a row, only a few inches apart from one another. It was just before bed time and we were all in our cabins while our leaders were having a meeting. In our cabin we were in bed and quietly chatting with one another - and giggling of course! Suddenly our cabin leader came in and informed us that the girls in the cabin next to us were having quite a different evening and that they would all be leaving immediately. They had decided that lighting their curtains on fire was a good idea! We suddenly realized that we were thisclose to being caught in a fire - thank goodness there were a couple of leaders who, instead of being at the meeting, were standing outside and watching the cabins! It took us awhile to calm down after we found that out!

 oh my goodness, how lucky you were ....somgal

Seeler, yes, I realized I was turning into a grump with the teenage boys that we had....I didn't have the energy to keep them busy..and so..at one point, i had to say, someone else needs to do this now...well, or be with me to run them to exhaustion or..close enough that they are tired by 1.

aah, dks...use pseudonyms...

 bring 'em on TigerLily.

ok - this one is a 24hr marathon one.

It involves youngestson.  Now, youngest son is a pretty slender kid...not an ounce of body fat on him....He though was a keener at the 24 hr famine, but i was worried about him.

Come the morning, the youth were to be doing a youth service.  They had been having water/juice throughout the famine.

We were sitting in the pews..the kids were ready to do their part...when I looked at youngestson...and he was looking to be an odd shade.  We were at the front of the church, with the choir loft in the centre front. ahead of us, and a door that would take you out of the sanctuary on either side.   

I leaned over to say...are you ok? when...he started to lose it.  Turned out he had drank 3 glasses of grape juice.....PURPLE grape juice......he lost it...then lost it again, right beside the choir as he was rushing out of the sanctuary, then again.... lol..poor choir members..

We recovered quicly, with a couple of damp cloths...he chugged some water, and the service went on. 

aaah, teens do recover quickly.

 seeler: you are smart to have a dog along.  it would wake you if anyone got up to mischief during the night...or was having a tough time.

Many people don't realize the comfort and assistance a companion dog can provide.

we had a a great close to our youth group last May, we stayed awake all night 3 leaders, 7 teens, we where organized with games, movie, crafts even made bread( from the 85th anniversary starter) to serve at Communion the next day, we had a midnight walk to the ski hill( we live in a small community) looking at the stars! and even a sunrise service at the river, the youth where great all night, by 6:30am they where tired and silly. we had lots of laughs and good memories to share in later years, we had a great night and most of us went to Church the Sunday morning. By noon on Sunday I was so tired went home and slept for 10 hrs...

 sounds wonderful, phgo1

I just realised that I never went to a church related overnight as a young person.  A week of Guide camp every year plus weekends, these all being in tents.  Anyone else know how to set up oneof those heavy canvas military surplus tents - bell or ridge style?   I can do both - sometimes I think they were easier than some of the modern lightweight tents!  We need an instruction sheet to set up our Northwind the first couple of times each season. 

Guide camp was fun - and I learned a lot about camping which came in useful later on in life.  Some of the skills are useful in general life - like cooking, lighting a firepit for a weiner roast, keeping food safe to eat, treatment of minor wounds, tying things together, canoe safety and so on.

The 'youth group' I attended for many years was our church choir (which also drew many youth from other churches/denominations). We travelled regularly performing. The one incident I thought of when reading this thread was not a fun memory, but a vivid memory. We were enroute from Thunder Bay to Orlando by bus. Our accommodations for the journey included sleeping on the floor of church halls or sometimes if we were lucky carpeted meeting rooms. We would give a concert in exchange for the use of the church. One of the churches we stayed at was in Gary Indiana.  While we were settling down for the night in a room with windows facing out to a parking lot area (ground level, not a basement) a large number of older youth/young men arrived outside and were throwing things at the windows and generally harassing us. The adults on the trip and a few of the older youth in our group were 'patrolling' from inside and trying to keep 45-50 young people calm inside. I think police were called and the group dispersed and left us alone. Coming from a small city in NW Ontario - this big city 'gang' scare was eventful and memorable.

TL I have many band road trip memories too.

Pinga, I'm guessing youngest son hasn't had grace juice since. Yuck.

 Heh Kay, which camp did you go to?  

Myst: wow that would be scary.  Did your choir really sing for free , in exchange for sleeping over in the church..wow.

I took our youth group ( 12) to a 3 day event at a training center( along with other kids from saskatchewan, Manitoba and Alta.

We met at the church to drive out. One young man came hacking and coughing and I asked him if he was okay to go. He responded that his mom had had him at the doc and he had some meds to take.

That night the kids were getting ready to party(watch movies, popcorn etc) when there was a knock at my dorm door. I opened it and there was a group of teens - all talking at once. So and So didn't feel well . Before I could open my mouth the kid with the cold passed out at my feet.

He went to hospital, parents drove an hour to get there. It seems that if 2 of the medication were good. 4 would be better.It ended up being a overdose of the cold meds.

I tell you it scared the hell out of me. He missed the event and was given a lecture by hospital and parents to use his head regarding medications,

Pinga, we usually arrived at a church and they had a meal for us, then we would have a concert and either sleep at the church or be billited by families. It may well be that money was exchanged as well - to help pay for the trip/bus etc costs. Our spring break 'circle' trek for a number of years included concerts in Dryden or Fort Frances Ont, Kenora Ont, Winnipeg, Fargo ND, Minneapolis and back home to Thunder Bay.

Oh wow, crazyheart - that would be quite a scare.

myst, the leader of this group was not from Regina, was he?

No the leaders were from our church in Thunder Bay. The story sounds familiar does it?

Pinga - it was so long ago that I went camping with the Guides that we used some farmer's pasture.  The better times were when the cows had been chased out several weeks earlier.

Yes, but the story didn't have such a happy ending here.

 I just posted the RendezVous information on my page.....time to start reminding those youth in and around our congregation that it is a great opportunity.  

Now folks, with your stories, you would think it was all stressful

where's the fun and silly stories?

myst,

my wife is from Thunder Bay and thinks that sounds like a great trip.  but she does not recognize the description.  Which church???

Interesting and scary in some cases to read these stories.  Yikes Myst!

You know my band trips kind of all blend together in my mind now.  Mostly we travelled in our province and stayed with families who agreed to take a couple of us in.  Once we went to Vancouver by train (2 days) which was memorable and involved almost no sleep.  But in terms of funny overnight stories the one that comes to mind is one where we were in a hotel somewhere.  And as I remember it we were divided into groups of 4 so I had 3 "room-mates" for the night.  Anyways, we were being silly and making a lot of noise in our room late at night and finally a chaperone came along and kind of shouted "lights out right now!!" at the door.  I'm not entirely sure which one of us was crazy enough to turn the lights off before we found our beds and opened the sofa bed.  But someone turned those lights off.  And so there were 4 of us in the pitch dark crashing into things and each other and laughing and trying to get to bed.  Quite honestly I think we were noisier with the lights off lol.

As band trip stories go I think that was one of the innocent moments.  I won't write about some of the other stuff lol!

TL

I just got back from our youth group sleep over. The kids had a total blast. We started off with a games night (for anyone who wanted to come) and then the youth, myself and one other leader stayed over. There were great howls of laughter as they played a dance game on X Box, then there were a couple of rounds of hide and seek and we watched Toy Story 3. The movie ended just before 1AM and the kids got ready for bed. At this point, one of the youth discovered that his pillow had gone AWOL. We searched high and low and could not find it. We must have spent 15-20 minutes looking around for the pillow. We searched every room that he had been in, and had just about given up when we looked over to the couch where the other leader was sleeping - sure enough he had two pillows - one of which belonged to the youth! At this point the other leader woke up, and the pillow exchange was made (the church has plenty of extra cushions). We all had a good laugh about that!

Kay - I was a Girl Guide too and I remember those tents (and how much I hated them)! Did you set them up on wooden platforms?

I was reminded of a provincial Girl Guide Camp that I attended back in 1992. It was the 50th anniversary of the Alaska Highway and the local Guides had decided to host a provincial camp to celebrate. Girls from all over BC and some from Alaska too came and spent 19 days driving along the Highway from Dawson Creek to Fairbanks and back in a school bus. We gathered for a few days at a Girl Guide Camp just outside of Dawson Creek for a few days before we hit the road. On our first day on the road, we went to a Game Farm just outside of Dawson Creek. Nobody had anticipated that we would be driving around the farm so, on our way back, when we were about 10km out of town, we ran out of gas! Picture this: about two dozen Girl Guides and their leaders pushing a school bus along the highway! We were quite the sight! Eventually somebody took pity on us and drove a couple of our leaders into town to pick up some gas!

some great stories!!

As a teenager, I had a group to camp with and that was great.  Same as DKS- too many stories and everyone is still alive, so I'm not sharing much ;)

As a youth leader, I only agreed to 1 sleepover a year when I started at this church, since they had already been doing a Famine event each year.  They love it.  I'm not sure I do - why not just start early one morning and call it quits in the evening????

We've had our anxieties over the alarms, but nothing awful has happened.  It does work well to petrify the kids enough to keep them from sneaking out at night. And beause we were doing the Famine, my rule was Eat or Sleep.  So at Midnight, I became a bit of a grump and turned off the movie that was being very deliberately turned ON while they watched me out of the corner of their eyes - what would I do?  I marched over and turned it OFF.  They got over it quickly ( I think they mostly understood the eat or sleep argument) and we all fell asleep to the quiet sounds of tick tick tick texting. :)

But they love a Ouija board in the church, and Wii or PS3, and some teambuilding games.  This year, I'm planning to get them out of the church to do some service activities so that the weekend is much more than just fun.  I hope Ithis isn't too uncool for them.

GordW - I thought of you after I had posted our usual 'trip towns' as I missed Atikokan in my post. We always started there. Your wife would be quite a bit younger than me. The church I attended was Wesley UC and the group was the Wesley Collection, quite well known in 'those' parts throughout the 70's. Did your wife attend a UC in TBay?

She grew up in St. Paul's, so other side of the city.  And she would have been a teen in the 80's.

That's neat Gord. I know St Paul's.