Encounter Talent Night!

I guess I should begin from the beginning.

Every year, the kids have a talent night at Encounter. I got a phone call from Kelly a couple of months back where she said, “Hey. So, Charie (the Youth Pastor) asked if we would MC Talent Night.”

My initial response was, “No!” In years past, the MC’s were usually a couple of senior guys who dressed up (sometimes in what looked like drag) and were really goofy and silly. I knew that there was no way two third trimester moms could do anything similar or even remotely funny.

But, Kelly said she had an idea….and it was actually a really good idea….so I was sold it.

We spent about a week working on little video clips. The idea behind the talent night was that we were newscasters for the TV Show called “Secret Lives”. The show’s theme this week was what really went on behind the scenes for various couples on our center that these teens really knew. The video clips were our attempts to catch the real lives of these well known couples.

For example, Caleb is known here on center as being the big, bad security man. In our secret life video, you have three scenes. Scene 1- Caleb is practically a drill sergeant. He whistles Ben and I awake at the crack of dawn and makes us do morning push-ups....even though Ben is only 3 and I am pregnant. Scene 2- we are eating breakfast and Caleb is instructing us how to eat in military fashion. When Ben interrupts, he looks and Ben and yells, “When you address me, you address me as sir, you little peon!” Poor Ben looks so helpless and caught off guard. Then, Scene 3- you hear the music and then see Caleb playing Wii Just Dance and shaking his hips to “Womanizer”. The kids just died laughing because Caleb has ever only been serious around them. Good times…..

So, the video clips were like that….we had about 6. In between each video clip, we would cut to a commercial break. The commercial breaks were actually the talents that the kids put together themselves. And, the talents were SO great this year!!! The night started off with some great musical talents. Seriously, the kids here are just so darn talented. Then, throughout the night, they just got funnier and funnier. We had two kids who were fire eaters, too. I was really proud of all the talents. There wasn’t one this year where you just cringed and prayed that it would be over. So, yay!

Then came the moment of sheer embarrassment. Kelly and I had choreographed a dance to “All the Single Ladies”. Just picture two 30+ week pregnant women up on stage about to dance to this song. Oh, wait, you don’t have to picture it. Unfortunately, others took pictures FOR us.

We spent about a minute doing silly Beyonce/Glee moves. We were told later that Kelly had the attitude and I had the dance moves. I wish I hadn’t smiled so much, but I felt ridiculous. :)

We were hoping that the kids would think that this was the extent of our skit. But, we had more up our sleeve.

Three guy sponsors then came out on the stage to “join” our dance. Apparently, they had been working on the same song so when they heard the music, they rushed out thinking that they had missed their cue. We, ladies, were just angry with them for ruining our dance. They insisted that this was THEIR dance, too, and that they had worked really hard on it all week. So, we decided to let them show the crowd what they had been working on.

The three guys danced for about 50 seconds and then we joined in with them at the end.

It actually went really well. I had choreographed the guys part and they learned it at 4pm the day of the talent show (which started at 7pm). They were great sports and really made the skit hilarious. Hope you enjoy the pictures….