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!

On Passover

We celebrate Passover at our house.

It's something that I go back and forth with myself on, because it is OH so important to me that our kids are Christians.  However, in the end it is also important to me that they understand their father's heritage (and theirs, too) and the origins of our faith.  Beyond which, I've come to believe that the reason that children stray is because they are curious.  So, if I answer their questions and don't make Judaism taboo in our home, they won't wander towards the mysterious faith of their father.  I know that probably sounds terrible to read, but when we had Riley, we determined that I really cared and Austin not so much, about what religion our kids were.

Over the years I have really struggled with how we balance our family.  There are a lot of websites and organizations out there supporting interfaith families that make Jewish choices and support completely ignoring the other parent's religion- but that's not really a balance.  For me, what we do now is much more a model of cooperation based on what our religions mean to each other.  We celebrate Passover with Daddy.  Mommy stresses out and cooks all day and sets a nice table and we pack our backpacks with what we would take if we had to go on a journey across the desert.  We eat macaroons and pavlova and charoset and bitter herbs.  We tell the story of how the angel of death passed over the houses covered in the blood of the lamb.  We talk about how Great our God is and how much he wanted the Hebrews to be free from bondage. How our Great God rolled back the waters of the Red Sea. We hunt for the afikomen (and inevitably someone cheats). We go to bed happy.

And then, we wake up and it's Holy Week.  We talk about how Great our God is.  We tell the story of how death passes over those of us who are covered in the blood of the Lamb.  But this time, the Lamb is Jesus, the perfect sacrifice.  We talk about how God has had a plan of salvation all along, through the Hebrews and the Israelites.  How much He loves us and wants us to be free from the bondage of sin.  How our Great God rolled back the stone from the cave that no longer held our Risen Lord.

Because it's the same story.  It's our story.  It's the story of a Great God who loves His People so much that He would go to any length to free them.  And I'm glad my children have that knowledge, even if I wish their daddy shared our faith, I'm so glad that we are able to give them more ways to know God.

Good Pesach.  

Soo Cute!

I love following a trail of blogs when I have a free minute and when the kids went to bed tonight I found someone's adorable craft blog with a giveaway! It's very Michelle Obama-esque (and while I don't love liberal politics, I do so love Mrs. O's style!) If you become a follower or leave a comment, you can win it!

(And if you won't wear it, you can subsequently send it to moi. I am in need of cute things.)

http://mypoppyseeddesigns.blogspot.com/

More Crafty Goodness

This time just for Logan! First and foremost, someone has a birthday coming up!! I can't believe that my snuggly bunny is going to be FOUR!! I love all of my children, but they are all so different, and if I could have my way, Savannah and Riley would grow up, but Logan would stay 3 forever. He's such a sweet and happy little guy!! I hope he keeps his temperament forever!

So. Logan wants a pirate party. Riley has always wanted to have 9000 people at his parties, and we've had them out and about at different venues that can accommodate that. Plus, our townhouse is pretty cozy (not that we don't have our annual 30 kid Halloween party in it, but that's REALLY a squeeze!) Logan, however, has a spring birthday, which means we can have a fun outside party that momma can actually plan and have fun with!! Here's part one- the invitations. I used scrapbook paper that was designed for a family album. It was antique colored with lines, and then I cut shapes, antiqued it more with a brown ink pad, stamped on the piratey shapes, and wrote everything on. Then I scrunched them, unfolded, and rolled them up and tied them with twine. They were a pretty big hit at preschool!! I love doing little kid birthdays and I'm so excited that I get to have fun with this one!!

The invitations look a little weird on here, but that's because I blurred out the information on them, because I don't really want the whole interwebz showing up for the party. :)

Next, Logan had crazy hat day at preschool. Which I forgot about until, oh, 12am the night before. Go Mommy!! So, I took one of my Holy Cross hats, painted it with green sparkle paint, added paper ears and embellishments, and I think it turned out really cute!! Here's Logie in his hat:

I enjoy that his preschool has this little tradition of Easter Hats. I think it's really cute and so different from anything anyone else does! I also got to stay and be room helper today for the class Easter Party. It was so neat to watch his teachers in action, but boy do they have more than a saint's helping of patience!! I can't stand it when my children talk over me, but Logan's teacher was so calm and happy even with 16 kids talking over her at times!! I could definitely learn from that, although she does have a few years of practice on me- she's definitely a great model of how to interact with munchkins :) They actually both are.

Here's Logan's class. I love how different most of the hats are, although 2 of the boys come together (mom of one is babysitter of the other) so theirs were the same. Such individual creations :) It was also very sweet that the other classes came out to watch their little parade. Since they're only 2 day a week students, they didn't get to be there for the BIG parade tomorrow, but everyone came out to watch them today! Very sweet, especially the older kids who clapped and waved and made their day :)

The St. Patty's Party That Wasn't.

(Did you know that you can dye your rice krispies treats any color you want by adding food coloring to the melted marshmallow goo? You can. You can also cut them and frost them to look like clovers. With decorator sugar. FYI.)

We had planned for a St. Patrick's Day Playdate with Logan and Savannah's friends at our house, but Savannah is now sick with a tummy bug. Last night at around 11:20 she was crying for me and when I went up she told me that she had a booboo and I asked her where. She put my hand to her mouth, threw up in it, and, when I said, "Oh, clearly you have a booboo in your tummy" she responded "No, booboo in mama's hand". Obviously this is my daughter :) Never missing a beat.

Love that.

So, anyway, we had planned this playdate and I had a few simple crafts that I thought I'd share, plus we made teacher appreciation presents (I'm in charge of that for PTA so it's on my mind)

Our first craft for the party was going to be simple foam hats with shamrock decorations. One of the reasons that I like waiting until the last minute is that I get things on clearance! I bought these things yesterday at our local Michaels for $.33 each (including the bags of foam adhesive shamrocks!!) Not very complicated, but our target audience was between 1 and 3, so simple is good. I wrote Savannah's name on hers and then let her stick on the shamrocks.
The next craft I planned was decorating little cloth bags. We were supposed to go on a hunt for gold coins so I had these small bags ($.50 each) and my fabric markers ready to go to make rainbow bags. I had a story from the library about the gold at the end of the rainbow, so the plan was to read that, decorate the bags with rainbows, and then hunt for our gold chocolate coins. Savannah wasn't much interested in this one, so I did it for her. Forgive my ugly attempt at a leprechaun.
Finally we have the teacher appreciation gifts. These are a little more involved, but we did them over two days. So, here goes. First the supplies. You will need to assemble some glue, glitter, a terra cotta pot, your green scrapbooking paper scraps, scissors, bamboo skewers, a green crayon, tape, floral foam, small brads and ribbon.
No, it's not sideways at our house, I just have no clue how to rotate pictures on here :) So, first things first, paint a line of glue around the top edge or rim of your pot and roll it in glitter. We put our floral foam inside first. Also, if you've never tried Martha Stewart's glitter- you totally should.
So, next, paint a little glue on your floral foam (or sqeeze it out, whatever floats your boat) and let your baby cut up a ton of ribbon to be grass. We also added some confetti. That's optional :)
So now we have a glittery pot of grass! Hooray! Next, cut up your scrap papers into hearts. You'll need 4 as far as I'm concerned, per 4 leaf clover. Savannah preferred 3 and Logan enjoyed 5. But I say 4. Either way, it was a good way to practice counting to whatever number. Line them up in circular formation, and attach them one at a time with the brad. We also had a little circle plastic embellishment that came in our brads. I had run out of green by the time I decided to take this picture, so there's an orange one. True story, the flag of Ireland is Green, Orange, and White. I'm an unintentional GENIUS ;)
Fabulous! Now, peel your crayon a little so that you can use it on the side and color the skewers green. I'll wait. Done? Excellent. So, now you'll want to either glue or tape them to the back of your shamrock. I'm not very patient, so we prefer tape. Once you've assembled them, stick them into your floral foam. At the end, we add a square piece of paper to a skewer and write "I'm so lucky you're my teacher" and the child's name. Or, in Savannah's case, Coach, since she has a swim coach, but no teachers yet. :) Although this would be cute for a Sunday School teacher, too, no? People tend to forget them, and they need love, too!
So, that's our party that wasn't, and our St. Patrick's Appreciation gifts. Hope you enjoyed! We're going to be around sipping gingerale and eating crackers for awhile, so maybe I'll come up with something else cute, too! We have a shamrock shaped cookie cutter- maybe some potato stamps!! With Green Paint! That'd be fun on a t-shirt!