A Rare Treat!

Last weekend we had the opportunity to drop in on my brother, John and his family. John recently had hip replacement surgery, so he is housebound for a while. We really had a good time visiting with them! Tonya fed us, and fed us, and fed us!!! We must have each gained 10 pounds over the weekend! :o) She's a great cook! We really enjoyed getting to know my niece, Michelle better too. We don't see them very often and she's all grown up now (she'll be 20 in December).
We managed to get them to agree to let us teach them how to play Catan. It can be a bit intimidating at first. Once we got into it a bit they really had a great time! I hope we get to stop by there again sometime soon. We just never know where we're going to end up each weekend. (Watch out! It could be YOUR house!)


Michelle


Tonya


John (pardon his appearance--after all he DID just have major surgery)


The Catan board (such fun)


And finally...Michelle is showing us there are other uses for roads than just placing them on the board.

VBS--Part 2

I know, I'm really slow getting this on here, but I haven't had good internet connection in quite a while. When it's a slow connection I can't get the pictures uploaded.

Anyway, here are some more highlights of VBS in Arkansas!

CRAFT TIME!!

Each night we had a different craft. Leora did a wonderful job making sure it all ran smoothly. (Especially since we didn't always have it quite ready for her).

The first night we had them make pet rocks--David and Goliath story so we incorporated the rock :o)

Night 2 was spray dye t-shirts. The kids really seemed to enjoy doing that. We had written "Wanted By God" on the back of each shirt and the kids spay dyed stars on the front.

Night 3 they made rattlesnakes out of empty water bottles.

Night 4 they made cowboy vests out of paper bags.

And, finally on night 5 they made "Wanted by God" door hangers.

Here are some pictures of the kids working on the crafts. Somehow Leora managed to escape having her picture taken.

We had the children split up into 4 teams. Each night they started out together in the church singing and listening to the Bible story. Then, we split them up and one team went to the craft tables, one went to have a snack, one went to do an outdoor activity and one group stayed inside to play a memory verse game. Laurie had a different game each night to help them learn their verses.


I'm going to post a few pictures from the activities, then I'll stop boring you with this photo journal of our VBS. :o)

What's a story of David and Goliath without a slingshot?? The kids LOVE to play with water balloons. One of our church members brought this super-powerful water balloon slingshot for Monday night. My dear husband decided to volunteer as the target. He came away from that with a few bruises!

Every year Shawn Gaddy sets up an obstacle course for the kids. They really look forward to the night they get to run through it.

Remeber how I said Laurie was working with the kids each night on the memory verses. As an added incentive, Pastor Charles (aka Snakeoil Snidely) agreed to be the target for some cream pies. Any child that learned all 5 memory verses by Friday night was able to smush a pie in his face. (Some of the adults were hoping they could qualify too!!)

Such a good sport!!




Last, but not least...we were able to borrow a horse for the children to ride. They REALLY enjoyed that. Most of the kids had never been on a horse before. Tim went through a lot of hassle to make that happen, but he came through! :o)



Our final service was on Sunday morning. We did a summary of the week using our skit. We gave out prizes for the children with the most points earned all week. We also had a cookout after the service. We had quite a few parents come to see what their kids had been doing all week. All in all, it was worth the work and effort put into it. We had about 60 kids every night and 53 kids on Sunday! A pretty good turn out for our little church!
Hope you enjoyed this glimps of our VBS!

Welcome to a new Blogger!!

And I do mean NEW! :o) Robert and Arlene Booth are the proud parents of little Kalena Nicole. Tim and I had an opportunity to meet her Sunday night (I can't believe I forgot to take my camera). I snatched a couple of pictures from Kalena's blog. You should pop over there and check out the others. I think there will be a LOT of them to look at in the coming months! I have put a link in my "blogger buddies" list to her photo blog.

Welcome, Kalena and Congrats Robert and Arlene!

Vacation Bible School Part 1

We're finally back on the road! :o) After such a hectic time at home it's almost a relief to be back in the swing of things (ALMOST). Anyway, I'm going to share some of the highlights of VBS and of our time with Laurie and the kids.


Welcome to Cowtown...this is where it all took place! :o)

There was singing....

Accompanied by Laurie on the keyboard...

I don't think we have any pictures of Laurie telling the Bible story or doing the memory verse games...she did an excellent job, as usual!!

And NOW.....THE DRAMA

Each night we had a little skit that kind of summed up the lessons. It was about a young sheepherder named "Davy". (Get the picture?)

This young man (Nelson) played Davy.

And of course, every story has to have a villain. Ours was none other than Snakeoil Snidely (played by Pastor Charles).

Then, there was the Narrator, Windy (played by Tim the first couple nights, and then by one our teens, Julian, the other three nights).

Davy had a girlfriend (Sweet Clementine), but for some reason we don't have any pictures of her. :o(

Then, we had Sheriff Saul and Deputy John. Our puppeteers, Omar and Mario did a fabulous job with them!

I'll share more about VBS soon, but this is a start, right? Just check back and you'll see some of the crafts and outdoor games we did. I'd just like to note that all of this was coordinated by my very talented sister! It's amazing how much work went into this week long production! She never ceases to amaze me!!