July 14-17

Monday the 14th was the first day of our VBS at our own church. We did make sure to go over on the 13th after all the other fun stuff and help set up.

The whole experience was pretty amazing. We had a Monday through Thursday program of half days. 9am to noon. One thing it DID show us is that we really do enjoy our flexible beginnings in our mornings. Our homeschool day starts BETWEEN 8:30 and 9… depending on our eating schedule and if we all have a late evening.

The kids were broken up into 4 groups and we had kids in each one. I was in charge of following along with the littlest ones. Ages 3-5… lots of adorable energy. By day 4 they were rather fed up with the routine. I think it was really the little guys’ limit at that point. It was nice though, while the twins were together it was fun for the other 3 to spread their wings a little. And since Echo was only MOSTLY potty trained I really had to be there anyway.

We had various stations… science, craft, storytime, music, snack and games. I was the only one who was attached to an age group and not a station. Each day there was the same rotation for each group so it was nice and consistent.

There was lots of creativity… snacks were themed as well and the pastor was there to open 3 of the 4 days. We had one day with no water due to road work but we managed! And the science teacher brought owl pellets for the big kids to dissect (just like we had seen on Dirty Jobs… the boys were so excited!).

So here are the pictures… I tried to get a bit of everything and everyone. So much fun!!!!

Here I go jumping ahead again… but last year we were not settled in a church and missed out on this most fundamental Sunday School experience so we were doubly excited to be involved this year. Anyway… The program was in place of the sermon this Sunday (15th) and was a play about the stars deciding who would light the way in the front for Baby Jesus’ birth.

All these close ups are from practice before service

The twins each had a speaking part and all 4 learned the music… in the end, Emanuel had behaved so well during practice that he got to be Joseph!!! I totally wish I had known how to zoom in on the cell phone to take better pictures but Ken got a whole bunch of video and I took some pictures with the camera when he was done with it as well.

We had to have them dressed in the same colour top and bottom so it was black all the way. With Echo in her pretty white dress thanks to Grandma when she and Grandpa Mike came through over Easter I figured a nice group picture in front of our amazing tree was in order.

I am seriously overwhelmed by how wonderful people are to SEND our kids so many presents this year. It has made our lack of extra funds for presents a non issue for the Canadian Christmas (which is what we call our morning present opening with anything mailed to us and from Ken and myself directly as the rest is done in the afternoon once Joe and Faithe and their kids are here… so basically what we would do at our own home before heading to the grandparents’ for Christmas day).

I finally got to wear my LBD. I absolutely love it. My mother in law has some eye for pretty outfits because she was the one that spotted this one!

Baba had a friend ask him to go to the football game so we had Nana as our visitor. She brought Echo at service time so we didn’t have to chase her around while we ran through practice.

There is nothing more Christmas-y to me than a church pageant and this one was cute! I was glad I was able to help out a bit… I was in charge of changing Mary and Joseph out of their star costumes and into their manger outfits and send them up the aisle at the end. Fun!

Of course we wore our Echo out in the end. But she majorly loved the dress!