VBS, Part 3

The boys went to VBS this week.  This was their third year doing it at this particular church.  The theme has been superheroes and it was Part 3 of the superhero trilogy, so the boys were already familiar with the characters and story.  In year's past I was able to volunteer, but this year they did not allow me to volunteer since we are not members of the church.  That was fine.  It's not often you hear, "No, you can't volunteer."  But the problem that arose was that Henry did not want to do it if I wasn't going to volunteer.  So, on the first day of VBS, he spent the morning walking around the house ranting, "VBS is stupid.  I hate it."  I convinced him to just give it one day to see how it went.  I knew he wanted to know what was going to happen with the superheroes.  So, he gave it a day.  He went in reluctantly, but after we picked him up and got in the car, he and Josiah talked the whole drive home about the story line and where they were sitting during one show, what snack they ate, etc.  Clearly, he'd had a good time.

For the rest of VBS, each morning, Henry would somewhat reluctantly go into his class, but by each afternoon he was all smiles.  Then, Thursday evening they had the "Big Show" for the whole family to attend.  At the end, they showed the theme for next year, Pirates, and Henry left saying he wanted to do the Pirates VBS.  So, it was a success.

Josiah had a great time.  He always enjoys these sorts of things.  When we were all there for the Big Show, they wanted to take a picture with each and every thing that had to do with the superheroes.

They pretended they were moving in most pictures...

Caroline was disappointed that she didn't get to participate, but we had fun together.  I was able to get a haircut (yeah!), we shopped at Goodwill where she wanted every toy they had (some of which I'm pretty sure we donated).  She even got to watch her movie from the library without the boys' commentary that it was a baby movie.  Every morning after we dropped Henry off in his classroom, we passed the Superhero pedestal, and every morning she wanted a picture on it.

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Henry has been into naming all the U.S. states recently.  The other day he said he was going to name all 51 states.  I reminded him we have only 50 states and he was pretty adamant that Canada should be included.  I was impressed, though, he named all but Wyoming.  And speaking of educating him in U.S. geography, I was working all week on our school room.  Basically, I hadn't touched anything in there since last June 1st, so there was a lot of putting away of the old and getting out the new.  Plus, we've done some rearranging of furniture to make the room more functional since Caroline will be doing more real school this year.  She will be starting CC as well and we're looking forward to this year because it is U.S. history and geography.  Part of the curriculum is learning all the states and their capitals, so hopefully Henry will ditch Canada and pick up Wyoming.

A few months ago, the kids put a hole in our wall.  What happened was I told the kids to go wash their hands.  One child was washing their hands, a second child came in the bathroom, impatient to wait their turn, and started washing their hands.  The first child, not happy to share the sink area, pushed the second child who fell back into the wall knocking the toilet paper holder which broke it and a chunk of the wall with it.  So, a few months, a few emails to Grandpa, and a few YouTube videos later and we fixed the wall.  Todd did the first steps with a little help from his friends.  They seriously were all over him the entire time he was working.  And I'm glad that he let them watch, and I'm glad that they see him fixing things.  They had many questions about it and were surprised that the wall was hollow.

We are down to our last week of summer vacation next week.  It is sad to leave vacation behind, but I'm looking forward to having a better routine to our days.