Guys like girls who.....

How would you answer this question? This was one of the first questions posed upon the teenagers at Revolve.

...but before I get to the answer, I'll tell you about getting there first!

First of all, this weekend was amazing. It was extremely fun and to my surprise not the least bit stressful. Well, I shouldn't say not at all...because standing in an arena with 10,000 teenage girls SCREAMING at the tops of their lungs was a bit stressful...but other than that it was great. Our girls were, thankfully, not obnoxious screamers, they had fun..but they were not acting at all like crazy teenyboppers.

We started out the morning at 7:30am on Friday. The kids watched me walk down to the church...it was sad for me:(

We met at the Church, loaded our stuff prayed with Papa and headed out on time as scheduled.

The trip down was absolutely uneventful..which was awesome. I had no trouble getting around in the 15 passenger van and along with Kirsten's amazing navigational skills (her GPS) we didn't have any trouble finding our way around. Besides always picking the EZPASS lanes at the toll booths we didn't have any trouble. (For the record..the signage for these stinking things is REALLY bad!)

After a couple of potty breaks and a lunch break we made it to Philly right on schedule. Connecticut is still in foliage season so it was beautiful to drive through. I wanted to stop to take pictures..but I didn't. It was hard...but I managed. We drove through NYC during a pretty time of day as well. We learned that you could probably pay this countries national debt with all the tolls in Jersey...and we had a lovely saranade of the theme song for The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air while driving into Philly. (You know how it goes..."in West Philadelphia born and raised...". Pretty much every girl in the van knew all the words and we had a good laugh about it).

We arrived at the Spectrum quite early actually...and found a nice parking spot in the lot at the Eagles Stadium (and here's me..wearing my Pats jacket. I thought sure we would come back to the van with no tires or something). We were able to walk around a bit and it was quite quiet. The sun was setting and it really was very pretty. We had a nice time stretching our legs after an 8 or so hour car ride before we headed into the Spectrum. (The girls had a great time making fun of me for my tree obsession...I will post those pics on the photoblog.)




The doors opened at 5:30 and were were the first in line to go in. We found our seats and enjoyed an empty stadium for a little while. We found out quickly that poor Jessey is deathly afraid of heights...she wanted a seatbelt:)


It didn't take long for the place to fill up and soon after the Tour officially started. It was pretty exciting. Friday night was pretty much an introduction to everyone that we would be listening to on Saturday. It was a good taste of what was to come in the morning. We headed back to our Suite in NJ after it was over..again, another wonderfully uneventful trip.


We were quite happy while checking into our place. Our suites were pretty sweet:) I don't think anyone had any trouble falling asleep...as we had plans for a fairly early wake up in the morning.
On Saturday morning we woke up to a nice little breakfast at the hotel..and then headed back to Philly for the day long conference.

The music was entertaining and the speakers were really really good. Basically it was a two part type of conference. One part was the issue of boys...pretty much the biggest issues for teenage girls, obviously. I liked how the speaker, Chad Eastham, broke it down. Long story short...he went through what it is like to be a teenage boy and what it is that boys are really into. Ultimately..it boiled down to "boys like girls who....are comfortable with themselves". Boys don't like girls who are over the top, who are trying to be something they are not...but boys like girls who are balanced in their lives. I tend to agree with this. Of course, there were many angles in which he went at this subject, but that was pretty much the overall idea of it.

Another one of the main speakers was Jenna Lucado (Max Lucado's daughter). She brought them into the more spiritual aspect of their lives and used an illustration of her with a ginormous chocolate heart....with a wrapper on. Again..this is the very basic idea..but she came to the story of herself standing there really really hungry holding onto this chocolate. Her friends think she's crazy..."why don't you just eat the chocolate?" they would ask. She related this idea to our relationship with God and how alot of time we have him there...but that there is some sort of wrapper getting between us and him..not allowing us to really 'dig in' and enjoy him. This wrapper being any number of the things that teenagers are dealing with on a daily basis.

There were many other testimonies of different experiences. I'm pretty sure that everyone of the teens was able to relate specifically to these different testimonies. The drama team was amazing..and had a great way of putting the two concepts together, using regular daily struggles and using different angles of bringing our spiritual lives into the picture.

Overall it was very well done. There were a few points that we tried to clarify with the girls later and we had good discussion about what we had heard during this time. Just like any girly gettogether..we had both laughter and tears and ultimately a great time.

After the conference on Saturday we headed to the King of Prussia Mall...pretty much the biggest mall I've ever been to. I don't know where it rates among the sizes of malls..but it has to be up there with one of the biggest. We were brave and let Melissa lead our way to get to the food court...

We were also brave and let the girls head out for a few hours with instructions to stay with atleast one other person..and to be back at a specific time. During that time one of my best friends who lives in Lancaster came to the mall to visit me. Megan had a baby 7 months ago and I got to meet her for the first time. We sat and visited the entire time and it was nice. Her husband is one of my most favorite drummers out there..he was the one to inspire me to finally do it myself. They both came and we had a great time visiting..and cuddling with baby Naomi!

The girls were amazing..and were all back 4 minutes before the time we told them..and then they had to wait for me while I did a little shopping at Old Navy:)

We headed back through Philly to NJ to our hotel. This was probably the most "eventful" part of our trip because we did manage to get a bit lost. The girls were WIRED from the day and were having fits of laughter in the back..which caused Kirsten and I to not hear what the GPS was telling us. We ended up somehow taking a wrong turn...but it was no big deal. A few trips around the Ghetto in Philly with the Church van (haha) and we were back on track:) Did I mention how much I love the GPS??!!

During this time...the girls in the back were wild and crazy. At one point Jessey (our quiet little Jessey) had actually crawled under the seats in the van to grab Lacy's feet. It really was hilarious...and of course pictures were taken. (and no..I didn't actually take the picture because I was driving!) ..and only Jessey would be able to get this good of a picture of herself while being squished under a row of van seats!

We headed back for some debriefing at the hotel...and pretty much went straight to bed. We woke up to another breakfast...a couple friendly games of knockout and we were off.

Another completely uneventful trip home (PTL) and we drove into the church as if we had just won the state championships. We handed over a bunch of wild and crazy girls to their parents...and headed home!

I can't wait to do it again next year!!!!