Kids Late Night Extravaganza – The New Tradition

A few months ago my friend Valerie began telling me of her plans to celebrate the end of the school year with her children by taking them on an all nighter of fun.  Being a former Youth Pastors wife I had plenty if experience when it came to all nighters of fun.

Back in our youth Pastoring days an All Nighter meant loading onto a bus around 10pm and begin heading to the first of many activities such as bowling, skating, broom hokey, putt putt golf, with stops along the way for food. This activity lasted until the next morning – hours of fun for active teenagers and one exhausting night for the youth pastor and his wife.

So, you would think I’d look at Valerie and say you are crazy but instead I said could we join in?  The planning began and we soon realized that many places were not opened in the middle of the night for two moms and their kids like they were for 100 teens and their youth pastor.  So our all nighter of fun quickly turned into a Late Night Extravaganza.

We began our late night extravaganza at 4:30 pm by giving our kids their first clue- an oversized ticket that Valerie made using her handy dandy Cricut machine.  We began driving to our first destination only to have to hear “where are we going?  Give us more clues.” Until we entered the parking lot, then they knew it was time for dinner and our first stop at The Old Spaghetti Factory.

After dinner we continued with a clue for each destination to add a little suspense along the way.  Our stops included Bowling (using our kids bowl free coupons), Dairy queen for ice cream, a movie, a round of putt putt golf and we ended with mid night munchies at a local drive thru.

Our schedule looked like this

4:30 – Meet at Valerie’s house

5:00 – Dinner at Old Spaghetti Factory

6:30 - Bowling

8:00 -  Dairy Queen

9:00 - Movie

11:00 - Putt Putt Golf

12:00 - Midnight Munchies

The Novotny kids were home and in bed by 1:30am  (Valerie’s kids really did stay up most the night watching movies with their super mom)

Our kids enjoyed their first late night extravaganza and are already wondering if these two moms will make this an annual end of the school year tradition.  I guess they will have to wait and see.

You could do this fun event anytime of year  - so why not add this to your Summer Bucket List of Fun to do with your kids this Summer