VBS Re-cap

Totally unrelated to this post, I just came downstairs to find L tying playsilks around one o

Well VBS is over for another year. Had a bit of a rocky start, but a good week.

Background: There are 2 SDA churches in our city, we'd attended one a month or so ago, then the 2nd one. Girls decided they liked the SS better at the second one, so that's the one we're attending. BUT the first one (HH) had, in their bulletin the week we were there, a note saying VBS would be this past week. As far as I can tell the church we're actually attending doesn't do VBS. So, I wasn't at church to hear announcements about it & such. Anyway . . . the website & the person dh asked about what time VBS started failed to mention that VBS was NOT AT THE CHURCH!!! It was in a community center building downtown (which made it a great outreach, but confused me abit). So we got to the church the first night & thankfully some other random people were at the church doing something else & were able to tell me where it was, and even find someone I could follow to get to the park (since telling me "the park at such & such intersection" meant NOTHING to me LOL). But after that confusion, things went well.

The girls were terribly shy all week, though by the end were starting to interact w/ the other kids in our group, but they had fun, so that's what counts.

The whole week of later than usual nights (& of course, they wouldn't sleep in to make up for it, sigh) has worn on them, and by the last part of the week their moods during the day was showing the lack of sleep. But they loved the crafts. They were only willing to participate in the "outdoor activity" one day, the parachute day, but were content to sit on the sideline & watch the rest of the time. And they LOVED the "robin & worm" game we played w/ the parachute. I've promised them that next time we see Mama & Papa or otherwise are in a situation w/ enough people to do it (need at least 4 adults (or more than 4 kids) to hold the parachute plus the 2 kids on/under the parachute) they can play it again (though it may not work AS well since our parachute isn't as big as this one was, but we can try (note to self, FIND PARACHUTE in the next week or two. I don't think I've unpacked it yet).

Snacks are always good thing. The Bible room was run by Mr. E who is the SS teacher for their age group at HH, and they were pretty nervous around him (from the time they were tiny they've been much slower to warm up to men, then women), but he kept teasing them abit each night & by the end they were actually willing to talk to him LOL.

The other station was an "outdoor skills" type thing (compass reading, knot tying, etc) and tended to be a tad over their heads, plus it was the last station for our rotation and the other kids were getting pretty restless by then so it was hard to get too much out of it over all the chaos, but I think the girls learned at least a tad about the various topics. Enough about compasses the first night that, when I was being frustrated trying to find my way through town to get there w/o following someone (& w/o going totally out of my way to go past the church and around, like I had the first night) they suggested that I needed a compass. Not really, but they at least learned that compasses help you find your way LOL.

At the end of each evening, they passed out a ziplock bag with about 3 single serving snack items (usually fruit (applesauce, etc), something sweet, and something salty), with a piece of paper w/ that night's memory verse. The girls thought that was the best thing EVAR since I tend to not do too much of the single serving junk food stuff. So they had a fun week food-wise as well. And how sweet is this? One night the salty snack was Doritos. The next morning A wanted to eat hers for breakfast & I said fine. L came down a few minutes later & was hungry so I suggested that she eat her Doritos too. But she said "no, she had promised to share hers with Daddy, so she wanted to save them till Daddy was home" awwwww . . .

Someone came up to dh in church this morning & gave us a copy of the DVD slideshow thingy from VBS (so apparently some people from our church are involved w/ it as well) because the girls were on it. The girls & I just watched it (twice) and there's a segment of the girls playing robin & worm, so if dh can help me figure out how to imbed that into a post here &/or take out still pictures, I'll do so. I checked the church website but they don't have pictures up yet, but I'll keep checking.

Craft idea I took away from it all . . . bubble paper. They mixed dishsoap, water & food coloring, put it in cups, gave the kids plain pieces of paper & straws and the kids would blow bubbles in the soap water until the bubbles raised up above the top of the cup, then put their paper on the bubbles to make some cool designs on the paper. It was easy, relatively low mess, and the end result is really cool.

Craft idea that was a good idea but . . . last night they made ice cream (put the milk/sugar/etc in a small ziplock, put it, along w/ ice & salt in a gallon ziplock, and shake until it turns into ice cream). Plus side, for me, it's something I've thought about trying for quite awhile, so it was nice to see how it all works w/o having to try it here only to have it not work or something. And it works well. BUT the majority of the kids were too young to really shake it enough to make ice cream (especially w/ the time crunch of needing to make it in time for the kids to also eat it before they needed to move on to the next thing). My hands HURT from holding such a cold bag long enough to shake the girls' up (and someone else helped, so I only shook the equivalent of one bag), if we do it here I'll make sure we have dishtowels to wrap them in so our hands don't get so cold, I think that bothered the girls (& alot of the kids) more then the shaking, itself). L only ate a few bites of hers. I think the combination of it being more ice milk than ice cream (based on the taste, that's my guess anyway, and perfectly understandable considering they were doing it for 100+ kids (busiest night was 101 kids, lowest was 81 kids))and I'm not sure she's ever had plain vanilla ice cream LOL (if we have vanilla we put fruit or chocolate sauce or something on it). But I told the girls we would do it sometime here at home and could make chocolate (for L) & strawberry (for A, thinking for that one I'll make vanilla & then stir strawberry jam into it after it's frozen). So, good idea, kids liked the ice cream, but I think my kids at least, didn't really feel like they DID anything.