Vacation Bible School

Phew! What a fun, busy, and wonderful week! Our church hosted their outdoors/camping-themed Vacation Bible School this week, and there were 995 kids in attendance. Amazing, huh? It's incredible to see the dedicated core team and hundreds upon hundreds of adult and student volunteers who make the week possible and successful. This year 160 of the kids were bussed in from an inner city program, and 50 kids joined us from another local church. My role was to work with my friends Lori and Chris on nametags for the kids and volunteers, labels, and mailings for the week as well as to assist at the Help Desk. Ethan had a great time in the childcare where he got to listen to Bible stories, play, have recreation time, make crafts, attend "big worship", and eat snacks. He made a lot of fun crafts and was thrilled to share them with me everyday. His favorite parts of VBS were attending worship in "big church" (sanctuary) and hugging the Children's Ministry Pastor who dressed up as Flower the Skunk. He learned the lyrics to a lot of the week's songs and sings along when we play the CD in our van. I wish I would have thought to bring my camera, but I had my hands full during the week as Dan was in the Netherlands for work all week, and it was the first time I had to get all 3 of us fed, dressed, ready, and out the door at a decent time 5 days in a row. I kept Ryan with me as I was hesitant to put him in the nursery when he's this little, especially for over 3 hours a day for 5 days in a row. He did very well! He slept most of the time, and when he was awake, he played happily in his stroller. He was only fussy briefly a couple of times when he was hungry. This morning I carried Ryan around in the Baby Bjorn for awhile, and he loved it! We spied on Ethan's class in "big church" worship, and it was fun to see him dancing and trying to do the hand motions for songs. Next year Ethan will be old enough to take part in the actual VBS programming which I'm sure he will be thrilled about.