KidBlast 2017

I have been so busy since I last posted on here.  

Friday I drove Hannah back home.  Liz and I met at a McDonalds at the Gatlinburg exit off I 40.  I was home in time for dinner, and Michael took me out.  I was wiped out!  It is so worth it to have Hannah here, but I'm always tired.

I came into the weekend tired, but had a lot I needed to do.  Saturday I cleaned the house after Hannah was here and I was doing fun stuff with her instead of cleaning.  Sheets, vacuuming, laundry, bathrooms, etc.  I also worked on bills and mail I had been ignoring.  I started getting ideas together on Pinterest for the summer tutoring I will be doing over Skype with Christina's best friend, Stacie's, two boys.  (I'm super excited about it.)

Sunday was church.  I asked Kara to come sit in big church with us because I knew what the sermon was going to be about.  Every year they do movies for a month.  Now, we don't go in and watch movies instead of worship, we make the movie a topical lesson for the week.  Main topics from the movie are chosen and used to share the gospel.  Next week we talk about The Shack (which I haven't seen, but plan to watch by Sunday.)  This week we talked about Inside Out.  If you haven't seen it yet (it's a Disney movie), you have to.  You can borrow mine.  It helps teach kids (and adults) how to talk about their emotions and why each one is important.  The main message of the movie is sadness (depicted as a character) is the most important because true joy (another character) can't be experienced without letting the sadness in first.  Huge.  And very true.  The gospel message at church is sadness is completely Biblical.  But the difference is Christians have sadness with hope, which is different than non believers, who just have sadness.  This sermon was so good for the three of us who have been dealing with the sadness of Tim's health for a long time, and the acute sadness of the recent bad news for several weeks.

After church we went to lunch, then Kara and I went back to church to help prepare for KidBlast.  Even though we headed home around 6 or 7, I worked well into 10:00 and eventually had to just stop.  I had to get up early Monday morning to be in charge of registration for KidBlast.  (KidBlast is our version of VBS.  Instead of two hours or so, ours is from 9am to 3pm, Mon-Wed.  It's intense and wonderful.  4 children made the decision to follow Christ this week - that we know of.  Kara said she knew the stuff they talked about and already made her decision before.  It was geared toward kids who hadn't heard the gospel before.  To that, I say, good!!)

Monday's registration was absolutely crazy.  This year we used a computer program called church teams (you should check it out for your church - it's really cool) that I used for months ahead of time whenever I had free time.  I got everything set up so that when the kids came up to the computer, they entered their name and printed their name tags, which had an emergency contact phone number on it, their class name, and what they're allergic to.  A second label printed for their parents and acted as a receipt to pick them up.  That process also took attendance.  (You have no idea how much work goes into stuff like that!  But, I digress.)  It's a good thing it was that smooth because we had a record number of kids come and our numbers almost doubled (even though our help didn't double - help us Jesus).  Monday was bad because I had no electricity (which I needed for two printers), and so many people just showed up without registering first.  When they got power cords for me, that ran pretty smoothly.  But people registering that morning did it all wrong - I had to go back and fix it later.  And I had to get them in classes.  It was a mess.  And we weren't planning on those kids to be there and ran out of food.  People, please register for things ahead of time - there are reasons we ask 6 weeks in advance to start registering.

Tuesday and Wednesday were smoother - honestly it's because fewer people showed up without registering ahead of time first.  We still had computer problems, among other things, but I recognized it as Satan's attack and he just can't win against the power of God.  This week especially.  (Let me tell you a power of God story really quickly.  Late into Sunday night, I was so tired and hungry and hadn't even taken my medicine yet - it was like 9:40pm.  I had been fussing with the printer for hours.  All of a sudden, it started eating the labels I was trying to print and making a grinding noise.  It was toast.  I couldn't get it to work.  I cried - every store was closed so I couldn't just get a new one.  I prayed.  God, please fix this printer!  We want to do good things for You this week and will be handicapped with only one printer.  200 kids coming through 2 printers is hard enough.  Only one printer will be bad!  Even though I opened the printer up and tried to fix it, I tried again after the prayer.  I don't know how I knew to do what I did, but I performed open heart surgery on that printer and fixed it!!  Praise God.  He is in the details.  Even label printers.)

It was hot, loud, and long days.  Here are some fun pictures and videos.

Kara in small group with her teacher and
her best church buddy, Ava.

Kara in art class next to, you guessed it, Ava.

This just summed up the week for me.  Technology is cool -
you can see the sound board on the iPad.  We used a lot
of cool technology this week - registration included.  Yet we
are in the south and there is a John Deere hat laying around.
The rest is messy and chaos and crazy.  Yep, this week.

Here are videos of the kids.  Like I said, we had 200 this year (last year was closer to 110).  The noise level can't be conveyed just in the videos.  It was deafening.  Then each grade had a cheer and they would scream it out.  Then other teams would scream theirs to compete.  Ouch.  (You can see one little boy with big red headphones on because he couldn't handle the noise.  Meanwhile, Kara and her teacher had earplugs in.)

(They had to do rec inside two of the three days

because it rained.  Kara is on the right, black shoes, white socks.)

Each team wore their color.  Fifth grade was orange.  :-)

I found my Waldo in the crowd.

I came home to get Kara's glasses for her and saw five deer
by the woods on our driveway.  They were so pretty.

Day 3.  We're getting tired, but today is splash
day so we're excited for that!

By Wed afternoon, I quit early and came home
around 12 or 1 to wait for the furniture to
come.

This was the fifth attempt at delivering the furniture, but it finally came!  We got a smaller dining room table, which actually matches the coffee table exactly.  All of it is from different stores, mind you.  In fact, the two end chairs are from one store, the 4 middle chairs from another, and the table from a third store.  (The table does have one leaf and two extra chairs in case we need to seat more.)

And the foyer credenza finally came.  I need to put more in there to see if I think all of those colors really go together.  It does look a little different in person.

Those are mirrors.  There is actually really
great storage in there.  And I love that you
can't see the mess because of the mirrors.

It is distressed.  I like one piece in each
room to be "rustic".  Any more than that
and stuff just starts looking old.  In my
opinion, that is!

Last night Kara and I burned the boxes the furniture came in, but I had to take this picture of her and her kitty.  The moon was much bigger and fuller in person, but the sunset is pretty.  (Especially when you remember the sun is setting behind me - this picture is looking east.)

Today I will be in my bed.  I'm totally not kidding.  I'll probably do more work to get ready for tutoring, but it will be done from my bed.  In pjs.  With no makeup.  Okay, I'll do laundry and cook dinner, but that's it!  Maybe mop - I haven't done that in a while.  And maybe I will throw on a little makeup.

Praise God for a wonderful KidBlast and for children learning about God.  Especially for those dear ones who gave their lives to God.  It's all worth it for just those four.

Praise God for a lull in my schedule now.  I need it!!  Rest is scriptural and I am about to cash in on it.