This weekend, Sept. 24 and 25, Cathedral School will celebrate its 164th Fall Festival!

This is one of the longest running festivals in the South. The whole community is invited to come out and enjoy fun, fellowship, family and friends. The festival holds excitement for everyone!

Bring your children and grandchildren Saturday from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m. to enjoy the midway games, cake walk, dunking booth, art projects, face painting and more.

Adults can also enjoy the tailgate room where fans can watch their favorite teams on big screen TVs, participate in a raffle to win a recliner or just keep up with football scores.

Everyone can also enjoy delicious foods like our traditional juicy burgers or purchase casseroles, scratch cakes, books, Cathedral merchandise and homemade candy or cookies.

Raffle chances will be available for various prizes including a laptop computer, flat-screen TV, Apple iPad 2, iPod Touch, gasoline gift certificates, chest of linens, $1,000 savings bond, Vera Bradley luggage and grand prize of $5,000 cash. The much anticipated class-theme baskets will also be on display.

The baskets are purchased through a silent auction that begins Saturday morning and ends Sunday at 1:30 p.m. Baskets this year include a tour of spa treatments, New Year’s in New Orleans, Thanksgiving in Orlando, casino weekend in Lake Charles, New Orleans getaway, a wreath for every occasion, Ole Miss, young hunters and Great Mississippi River Balloon Race. Every year these packages get more exciting!

The fun continues Saturday night with the adult dinner and paddle wheel raffle. Plates of barbecue ribs and bowls of gumbo will be available for takeout on Center Drive from 5 to 6 p.m.

Dinner inside the cafeteria begins at 6 p.m., and the paddle raffles start at 7 p.m. We have had many amazing prizes donated from very generous Miss-Lou businesses and individuals to make up our prize packages. Please visit the Cathedral website www.cathedralgreenwave.com to see a full list of packages and instructions on how to purchase pre-sold paddles.

Come join us for a fun-filled night of prizes, food and drink, which concludes with the drawing of the $5,000 cash grand prize.

The festival continues Sunday at noon with lunch on the midway, including the Sunday special — jambalaya grits. Seating will be available in the cafeteria. Midway games, raffles and other activities will continue on the elementary playground and in the multi-purpose room from noon to 1:30 p.m.

As the midway activities come to an end, join us for bingo in the cafeteria from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. The winners of the raffle items will be drawn during bingo. At 3:30 p.m., we will close the doors on another successful and fun-filled Fall Festival weekend.

Dan and I along with Amy and Jay Gamberi, our co-chairpersons, personally thank all of those who have given so generously in time and support toward this worthy cause.

The entire school community, parents, alumni, students, faculty and friends all work together to make Cathedral’s largest fundraiser a success. Such success would not be possible without the generosity of Miss-Lou businesses and individuals.

We invite everyone to come out and enjoy the fun!

Denise Thibodeaux is a co-chair of the Cathedral Fall Festival.