Vacation Bible School 2018

Every summer, the kids look forward with GREAT enthusiasm to vacation Bible school at the big church. Gabby loves being part of skits. Caelan loves being on stage leading the song and dance of the week (and there's a ton of it). The boys (and girls too), like the social aspect--seeing friends every single day for a week! For me, it is exhausting (I've taken a two hour nap every day since the last day). However, this year was cool. I taught a kindergarten class of a dozen cuties--who sometimes gave me a run for my money, but mostly listened well and absorbed the lessons about Jesus. 

My two helpers--Brennen and Graysen! The VBS director made a special exception, so that Graysen (who technically should have been in a class) could help be a leader. He didn't want to attend class last year even, so this worked out. The director was desperate for teachers, so we signed up--again, even though I said to Buck I wouldn't :) Well, God changed my plan and I'm glad He did. It was a fun, busy, memorable week and hey, no car accidents with a brand new (still unfixed) van in the parking lot! Woohoo!



The sets and colors of VBS week were pretty amazing this year! Would you believe 375 kids came each day to VBS? And half of all the volunteers were in high school and middle school--the others were retirees and stay-at-home moms :) Class sizes were pretty huge, but the director is one organized lady and things went remarkably smoothly.

The theme of the week was "Jesus Rescues." When we are scared, lonely, sad, if we've done something wrong . . . Jesus rescues. The songs were familiar old hymns jazzed up and a few familiar *on the radio* ditties. The duet the girls did for their choir concert--My Lighthouse--was on this week's play list too :)

Music happened in two places--the big gym with the shipwreck scene and the children's room with the skits. Several of the songs had jumping and Caelan came home sore from the non-stop exercise each morning offered. Gabby's skit team also joined in the worship songs--in full costume. They lined up at the door to greet and send off the kids to their next station. Whole lot of hive fives and knuckles!




In the picture above, Gabby is playing Martha's sister Mary. Martha is at the table frantically preparing a meal, and Mary (in the striped green cloak) is chilling with Jesus. The Bible says, Mary made the better choice. As the older sister, this story always bothered me . . . lol :) I get it though--don't miss the joy of the party because you're so busy worrying about the details. Learn, don't fuss. Enjoy, don't stress. Figure out the most important thing, and pursue that. My kindergarteners' favorite part of the week was the "play" they got to see each day :) The skit crew performed their play four times each morning, and a new play every day!

Below is the finale gathering for the last rotation of each VBS day. Caelan is second from the left in all black. Gabby is farther down, still in her costume from earlier. It gets crazy loud in there, and the music pastor (whose little girl I had in my class) would make the lights dance with the kids. She'd giggle and say, "My daddy is doing that!!"



So as a recap of the other things happening during VBS week (which was basically 8 to noon), Monday the boys had a baseball game--but it got rained out (for the fifth time this season), so we went to karate and art lesson. Mrs. K had committed to baking a pecan pie for a friend who'd just had a baby. She thought she could do this in under an hour. I told her pecan is just about the hardest, most time consuming, and most expensive pie she could possibly make--plus she didn't have all the ingredients :) We worked together and made up a couple things, and got those pies in the oven. She ended up taking them several hours later than planned, but I guess they turned out deliciously--God's grace in the kitchen, right there :)

On Tuesday afternoon, I ran Caelan to work. They kept her hopping til we all returned at 6:30 pm to attend the 6:45 class. We don't normally go to the evening classes, but this one just happened to work out. We're hustling to get in the required 15 before testing this weekend.

Wednesday, Buck had to be at his pain doctor's office by 7:30 a.m. He said the cortisone epidural was extremely uncomfortable. The doctor had to try a couple of times, on live x-ray, to figure out how to get to the offending spot in Buck's lower back. The local anesthesia worked for the needle going into the skin, but not so much the muscle tissue :/ Unfortunately, it really wasn't successful. Buck was hoping he'd be one of those who felt instant relief. Nope. He was hoping the medicine would at least give him a pain break until the surgery could happen. Nope. He's calling the pain doctor today to discuss options (the neurosurgeon said the shot can only happen once every three months; I said if it didn't work the first time, tell him we want our money back).

If it had been any week other than VBS, I would have been there with Buck, because him driving around after all that made me nervous. But he did it. He went to the neurosurgeon's office and dropped off paperwork. He got some food, and then started working. Then he grocery shopped my giant list afterwards. He was hurting when he got home, bad. The kids and I unloaded the car because he was done. Ugh. Not my favorite to see him so owie :(

I mentioned earlier, that we were so glad to have music lessons at our house that day! Whew! Then we went to karate and left Caelan to work for a couple more hours. There were some special events happening for youth group that night (in two different states), but because Buck was covering vacation shifts, I could not be in two places at once for pick up, drop off, and leadership, so we just stuck to our "normal" Wednesday schedule of old. It was good for us to be home when Buck finally did get home that day.

Thursday, Buck joined us for a little VBS time (he wanted to see Gabby's skit and the worship party). He had two days off in a row, so he was making phone calls, trying to get a cell phone line added because Caelan takes the kids' shared phone to work, which means the kids at home have no communication options when I'm going to pick her up, etc. 

After VBS, Buck wanted to take us out to lunch. We went to the yummy little deli that recently opened, because the kids hadn't tried it yet. How nice it was to not have to worry about throwing together lunch after the busyness of the morning! Shortly after we got home from there, Buck and I headed to buy chicken food and wood chips at the farm supply store, then restocked the kitchen with local grocery items (it was a big list for that store, too!) After unloading at home, I went with Buck for his haircut appointment. Then Buck ran Caelan to work, so I could make supper. I picked her up just in time to get home to take the boys to their baseball game. That's the one in the pics and video below. And those are just the things  happening outside of the house last week. I thought life was supposed to be chill in the summer? :)

Okay, back to VBS! My class got to be on stage during worship. They were pretty excited about it! Then all the helpers got to be on stage--at least one of mine was NOT pretty excited about it ;)





But despite his lack of enthusiasm for dancing on stage, Brennen, and Graysen too were good helpers for my crew of four- and five-year-olds. The boys took the kiddos over to the vortex of missions each morning to drop in their coins. One day, Graysen brought enough of his own coins for each of the kids to put in the vortex during snack time. The overall goal for the week was $2,500 to buy shoes for kids in our city who have none--by week's end, the kids collectively raised nearly $3,800!! Pretty incredible. Other tasks my boys helped with: bathroom breaks, keeping the line in line, watch-dogging my most rambunctious little boy, counting to 12, assisting with crafts, and being characters in our own class Bible stories, which we jammed into half an hour with the aforementioned bathroom breaks and a couple of long walks to and from the far reaches of the church and grounds. Whew! Glad they were on my team :)








I was impressed the girls got members of both the M and the E families on stage for one of the closings! Who cares if you don't know the moves? Show some enthusiasm and a good attitude and the littler kids think you're the coolest!











On the final day of VBS, the kids had three rewards for the missions giving: popsicles at snack time, the VBS emcee got an ice cream sundae built on her head in front of them, and they got to run through a fire truck hose spray in the parking lot. 

This sounds super fun . . . it was complete chaos with kindergartners. 

Some teachers had kids take their shoes off and some of mine randomly fell in with those groups; I lost all but three of the kids and both my helpers. I couldn't find Buck who was also there. Some kids wanted to get wet, some adamantly did not. Some moms came early. One boy's dad was having surgery, so people I'd never seen before were there to pick him up . . . chaos!! It was the most stressful 15 minutes of the whole week for me. But, with Buck's help, we found all the children, located their shoes, and mostly had them in one place for their parents (or designated pick up crew) to find them.



Another last day event (that I liked much better) was the "after party." They catered a big old bbq luncheon, complete with balloons, free t-shirts, a massive dessert table, music, you name it--as a thank you for VBS volunteers and their families. Of course, when we were stuffed to the brim, they were hoping we'd stay and clean up the church for Sunday services :) I figured six of us at a solid half hour of work is a legit three hours of clean-up help.

But then my friend farm Stacy handed me her baby.

Stacy is in charge of ALL the crafts for VBS and she's amazing! She has the whole bus barn tricked out as a massive craft station for the hundreds of kids to roll through. But once the week was done, all of this had to go back inside the church, to her house, to get sorted, on and on. She needed to direct traffic, the six-month-old needed some love, and I was the right lady for the job :) 

We stayed way more than half an hour. Buck and I even did a team feeding of baby food. Huck wasn't sure about the bearded guy spooning veggies and rice cereal into his mouth, but he was willing to accept the offering :) 

It was fun! But eventually, we needed to go. It has been so hot here--heat index winking at the low 100s for the past week. I feel like we had other Friday commitments or plans or at least ideas. I can't remember now what they were. Because at least half of us spent the rest of the afternoon looking pretty much G$ in the accompanying picture. What we didn't realize is this is the beginning of a round of yet unidentified post-VBS illness. Buck has it, Graysen has it, and Brennen has been moaning in pain since midnight of last night. I suspect strep. We cancelled all of our karate and art plans for today to rest some more (yesterday was busy, because we went to big church to cover two services of getting singing children on stage for the VBS program at the first and second services). Tomorrow I was supposed to take a new mama a meal, but I'm probably going to take Brennen to the doctor for a strep test--yup, that's what I'm a-fearin' we've got another round of. Ughhhhhhhhh!!