D-Now Host Home Parenting Done Right

For several years now, J and I have volunteered to be host homes for the D-Now weekend at our church.  For those of you who are not familiar with D-Now, it stands for Disciple Now.  It's basically a weekend long camp for teens where they meet in both small and large groups to learn more about and worship God.  Church members sign up to be host homes and a group of kids come to stay with you for the weekend.  The WHOLE weekend.

We've always taken boys.  It's a nice change of pace to have boys around for one weekend a year.  This year, we had 9th through 12th grade boys.  There were 12 of them at our house, including the two group leaders.  On Saturday morning, I made 48 biscuits, 6 cups of chocolate gravy, 36 eggs and 3 pounds of bacon.  It wasn't enough.  I should have made more.  Boys eat a lot.  Like an ungodly amount, a lot.  They were all, like:

Lesson learned.  After breakfast, the boys headed out with their group leaders for sessions and games and didn't get back to our house until late Saturday night.  J and I were already in bed, but could hear their conversations.  They were discussing that nights' sessions and they closed with a prayer circle.  Each boy said a short prayer, and I overheard this:  "Dear Lord, Thank you for Justin and Courtney opening up their house to us this weekend. And thank you for that awesome breakfast Courtney made this morning."  Amen and amen.  'Cause THAT is host home parenting done right, ya'll!

Confession:  I may or may not have engaged in some permanent marker/caramel syrup pranks on any fools who decided to go to sleep early.  And by early I mean before 4:30 A.M.  And by fools I mean silly teenage boys.