Since the high school was not going to be holding homecoming this year because of Covid, Christie Callister asked me if I wanted to help her host it. Me being me, I said YES! I wasn’t even thinking that this dance would be held on Saturday, September 26 and that Sidney would get married less than a week later! But oh well, it all worked out and was AWESOME! We had just over 700 kids come. We charged $6 per person. Something cheap enough for them but something that would make enough money for us to be able to pay for the DJ, the Porta potty’s, the drinks, event insurance and all of the posters and signage we were going to make. Because it was such a big event in a time when we aren’t supposed to be really having big events, the health department got wind of it and contacted us. Principal Bart Perry sent out a totally passive aggressive email about us regarding the dance. We took a lot of flak and criticism and also a lot of praise. We plunged forward and held the most fun, memorable homecoming dance ever!
Since we had SO much money left over, we decided to buy really awesome gifts and hold contests for the kids to win them. We bought several sets of AirPods, several sets of Apple watches, a couple of big outdoor Bluetooth speakers, and then tons of gift cards. Gift cards to Chevron, Subway, Starbucks, Gandolfo‘s, Crumbl Cookie, Burger King, you name it! And we even had enough left over to donate several hundreds of it to a local family whose teenage son had committed suicide two weeks prior.
We had hula hoop contests, the limbo, street dance and country dance off‘s. The kids were more than willing to oblige to each contest as well because they knew they were going to get something super fun out of it! At the end of the night several kids jumped into the pool, fully clothed. It seriously will be a night for them to always remember.
