mutual.

Tonight for mutual the kids did a 34 picture scavenger hunt in 45 minutes.

The pictures they took were very creative and funny.

Easy activity, little preparation on our part and very fun.

Etiquette dinner.

Tonight for mutual we hosted an etiquette dinner.  The youth came dressed in their Sunday best.  We started by teaching the men how to go to the ladies house and pick her up, introduce himself to her parents, how to walk her to the car, open the door, etc.

Thanks Bishop for letting us use your awesome car -it makes for a nice ride!

 We asked a couple in our ward to teach our etiquette dinner.  They sat in the middle of the square at a very formal table and taught the kids and answered questions as the adults served the food.

{I seriously love my young woman ... it made my heart melt to see everyone dressed up and excited to learn}

 Too scared to eat - they were so worried about making a mistake!

They started with a salad and rolls.

Lucky Ana had two dates!

My favorite part was when the priests asked if this counted as a date.  My reply was "if you use what you learned and take your date home it will."

 Next it was on to spaghetti ... now that is hard!

I didn't get a picture of dessert, it was fresh berries with vanilla ice cream.

Our etiquette couple! Thank you!

These two informed that they made a "pinky promise" to go on a date together once they are 16!  Like that is going to be hard to keep!

I think the youth had a really great time.  We learned tons and maybe someday they will be thankful to know proper dating and dinner etiquette!

*side note: if you are thinking about doing this in your ward, it was really simple, didn't take a lot of prep and was very well received.  I can email you my planning document.

* Update to this post.  I have included the planning document below because I had so many request to send it out.  If you still have questions, feel free to leave a comment.  Good Luck!!!

value painting.

 Tonight for mutual we had a paint fight with the Young Woman value colors.  We read a scripture and the girls had to guess what value the scripture was about - the girl who got it correct painted the other girls in that value color {i.e. faith is white}.  It was a blast - we all laughed really hard!

Bodie came.

Sisters. Caroline & Audrey.

Big, Bigger, BEST!

For mutual tonight we played big, bigger, BEST.

The kids broke into teams and each got a toothpick - they had 40 minutes to go around the community and trade their toothpick for something bigger and better.

One team came back with a dog.

Most teams got between 10-15 trades

The winners - an old fridge. 

The prizes ranged from miniture Reese all the way up to King size Reese for the winners

{just a note if you do this for your mutual - I found 6 different sizes of Reese's for prizes..big, bigger, best!}

mutual.

My super cute Mia Maids came to see me and the baby tonight for their activity.  They brought a basket full of gifts, some homemade cookies and the cute poster seen below!

Love them.  Thanks girls.

byu basketball.

Gregg and I {and Truman} took the Laurels and Mia Maids to the BYU mens basketball game for mutual tonight.  I think everyone had a good time.

It was a late night for Truman - he snuggled dad the entire second half.

 

Hooray for BYU scoring over 80 points!  Free chocolate cake at Magleby's!

handcuff dinner.

Tonight for our combined Young Men / Young Woman activity we had a 'Handcuff Dinner'

We tied all the kids hands together and served them a spaghetti dinner with salad, rolls and brownies for dessert. We had about 55 youth there.

   

Laurels and Priest came early to set up and decorate the tables.  My Mia Maids made name cards for everyone.  We made sure to really mix up the age groups (Laurel next to a Deacon, etc).

This is one of my favorite pictures - Brandon is buttering Anne's roll for her!  Team work!

Bishop and Patsy are such great sports to come and participate with us!

After dessert we had one of our teachers lead a discussion about how this dinner experience applied to the gospel and our lives {I think at first the kids were thinking, what, this has gospel implications?!}

She started by talking about how the kids were all handcuffed {tied} together and how they had to work together like a team to eat.  Then she asked, 'How many of you have ever been on a sports team?'  Lots of hands went up.  Then she asked 'What other kind of teams are you on?'  Some of the answers included a family team, a ward team, a young womans/young men's team and of course the gospel team.  We talked about who some of their captain's on these teams are; parents, bishop, church leaders, Jesus Christ, etc. 

She talked about how we always need to make sure the Lord is on our team and that we are never alone.  She told a few personal experience with this that were great for the kids to hear.
She ended by sharing Doctrine and Covenants 82:10

"I, the Lord am bound when ye do what I say; but when ye do not what I say, ye have no promise."