Vacation Bible School Part the First

I love VBS.  I think it's one of my favorite things.  I remember loving it as a child- especially at LCOC where they had Captive Free (a super cool Christian mission experience band of super cool 19-25 year olds who are the coolest people IN THE WORLD EVER when you're 8).  My love of VBS even allowed me to direct one when I was still working for churches, and as crazy as it made me, I loved every minute of it.  Our church doesn't hold VBS since they have full day camps all summer for children whose parents work, but we still found our way into 2 VBSes so that momma could get her fix :)

This past week (the beginning of my TV-free-ish declaration) was our first.  Our friends Ethan and Nathan attend 2 churches (how cool is that!!) and their Anglican Church was hosting one the week after school let out, which seemed pretty perfect to me!! Their mom was running the Bible Voyage portion and had talked to me in the late winter/early spring about ideas for how to run it more smoothly and I managed to wiggle my way into being her assistant.  Not only did Riley and Logan have a great time, but we also switched cars all week, since I still lack a car that can seat more than 5, and took our friends Heather and Kailey with us.  Savannah was miserable in the nursery and helped out in the story room and dragged me into opening and closing each day so that she could dance to the music.  I think for our next VBS in August I'll see if we can try her in a preschool class.  She's been potty trained for some time now and really loves participating in the activities rather than just sitting in a nursery.

Getting to teach the lesson on the 4th day, which in Group's VBS lessons is always the day we learn about how Jesus died on the cross for us, made me so happy.  I really miss being in ministry with kids- I love how spiritual they are when we let them be :)

After VBS each day we all (RLSH and K) went swimming at Grandma's house.  The boys have also been enjoying a lot of pretend play as knights.  Savannah is always the princess and since it's after swimming, she's usually sleeping beauty :) On Friday night, Mommy and Daddy got to go on a date to hear Derelict Dog play and Riley, Logan and Savannah got to stay home with a babysitter!! It was highly exciting since they usually stay with Grammy and Papa AND the sitter let them watch a movie!! Since it's TV-free-ish, I don't mind a movie for a special occasion like a babysitter! The sitter was awesome and really great with the kids.  She'd been at VBS all week and came recommended by our friend Kathy, who called her for me, but I'll have to wrestle her number away since the kids loved staying with her!!

TV Free(ish) Summer

We've been going to VBS for the past few days.  Which I love, because I am such a Children's Ministry Junkie.  It's so sad that I love VBS this much.  I love watching the kids get into it, I love setting up ghetto-rigged Bible Scenes, I love the super cheesy music, and I just miss being formally in ministry.  However, we have TWO VBS's this summer!! So yay for me :)

One of the things that I've noticed is that when I volunteered as a teenager, the kids were way more into the imaginative play portion of the Bible Stories.  But now, I think so many kids watch TV for hours on end, they're unimpressed by our lack of Oscar worthy special effects.  We've always tried to keep TV to a minimum for our kids, but I think I'm officially challenging myself to keep the summer as TV free as possible as of today.  If my kids lose their imagination I'll be really sad, and that's worth some extra effort on my part since I'm the one who has grown accustomed to using the TV for 30 minutes or so of child-free time to clean or finish a project.

Today following VBS, Riley made his own lunch and now the boys have been happily playing pirates for about an hour.  I think when they get tired of it, I'm going to set up the kiddie pool in the front yard and let them play outside with the neighbor kids and have popsicles.  We have some zucchini to cook in the only edible way I know (ahem, zucchini bread) and then there's craft time at the library.  If I pay off my $10 fine (oh the shame!!) then we can check out some books for tonight.  One of my goals for the summer is for Logan to know all of his upper and lower case letters by sight and for Riley to be reading independently on level 1 and level 2 easy reader books.  So, we'll see how this goes :)

In Which I am a Bad Blogger

So, sometimes, life happens :) And when life happens, I seem to forget about keeping track of it, even though I truly want to.  There are so many little happy memories that happen each day that I hope I don't lose sight of when I forget to write them down! Especially in the things, just the little funny things, that my children say.  I think at some point I need to go down my facebook status updates and pull all of their child-isms out and write a post on them.  Most are pretty funny :)

So, I will be going through and "post dating" a few posts....because I just learned that I can change the dates on postings! So a little cheating to catch up and then hopefully I'll be better!