Gladiator Breakthrough 2008

This weekend I was SO blessed to be able to be a group leader at our church for a weekend retreat for middle schoolers called Breakthrough. It is really a weekend to allow kids that have finished 5th grade to get to know some middle school kids and what the middle school youth group is all about. You know, breaking through to middle school. I can hear the ahas now. Our theme was becoming Gladiators for Christ. And that we all have "gladiators" in our way of following Him and we have to just keep fighting them. Avery got to go and so I loved getting to "check on her" throughout the weekend.


Me and Suzanne led the group together. She is going to be a Senior this coming up year and reminds me SO much of me at that age. Just goofy and fun and not afraid to make a fool of herself. Ha. No. The kids LOVED her and even though she made fun of me the whole time and told me I was old, I LOVED leading a group with her. She is AWESOME!!


They had us make up names for our groups and I had gotten these blue bandanas for all the girls (to match our Breakthrough shirts). A few of the girls had the bandanas tied around their heads and someone in our group had the BRILLIANT idea to cal us The Blue Unicorns. We turned our bandanas around to make a point with the end of the bandanas, and The Blue Unicorns were born. We thought it was so clever and cute, but needless to say, I'm not sure anyone else did. Ha. But it was SO funny ALL WEEKEND!! My girls LOVED it!


We gave ourselves the most creative group picture for this one. ( I'm serious. All weekend we were SO creative and NOONE gave us the credit, so we just gave it to ourselves.) We rocked it OUT!


Avery got to go and so I loved getting to "check on her" throughout the weekend. Her group leaders were Sylvia and Bailey (not mine of course) and she had a BLAST!


Bethany, Avery, and Sydnie


Part of the weekend was getting to fight some real life Gladiators. They were dressed up in all kinds of outfits. I am sad I didn't get a picture of them, they were awesome. So Avery got to fight on the joust with one of them. One hit and she was DOWN. She got a big strawberry on her foot which she still has a scar from. She was upset and embarrassed, but got up and was fine.