VBS

Okay, so there's this thing called "Vacation Bible School," or if you're cool, "VBS." This year (July 6-10) we had a blast, or at least the games people did. Everything from dish soap to skittles...crocodiles to sponge balls...beanbags to a running hose... The theme was "Crocodile Dock," but the phrase the kids shouted all week (with the accompanying hand and arm motion) was "Fear not." No, I didn't do that right. Let me say that over. The phrase the kids shouted all week was "FEEAAARRR NOOT!!!!!!!" Like that, except noot looks really weird.

Annetta and I were had the privilege of being game leaders, and we had help in the form of Nick, who is an AWANA game leader. It has been my experience (wow! I sound like I think I know what I'm talking about there! I wonder if anyone will notice!) that as a general rule, VBS game plan booklets are, with all respect and utmost honor to the writers of said booklets, to a certain extent -- and I say this with reasonable certainty-- crazy. That being said, I think we did do some of the games from the booklets, but we also supplemented as we went along. We did a maze again this year. It was obviously a Maze to Top All Mazes, as we added on to it as the morning progressed, finally ending up with this masterpiece of great ingenuity.


But the grand Finale Of Games was, appropriately enough, on the last day. Our Games Staff swelled to four with the addition of Peter, who flew up from his house in the remote regions of a far away and distant land (uh, his location is a secret, in case you hadn't figured that part out) just to help us, because we Games People were just that cool!! Actually, he said he had other reasons, but I'm sure that he was just trying not to let us get too full of ourselves, and you can see how well that worked, mmhmmm. But on Friday, we decided we could play water games outside (instead of shivering indoors while pretending that our skittles were fireflies). So we got a slippery, pool liner out on the pastor's lawn, and dragged screaming barefoot kids down it. Unfortunately, it wasn't slippery enough to have the desired effect (which was sliding), so we swiped the dish soap from the kitchen, and I use the word swiped in the fullest meaning of the word. After coating the pool liner with the dish soap, we had the kids close their eyes and dragged them down. It was a definite balance test --- mainly for the leaders, not necessarily the kids. And so we sent the kids home with clean feet, and smelling distinctly like dish soap (of all things...).

Friday night was our VBS closing program. It included (but was not limited to) eating and a program, which included (but was not limited to) singing all 433 VBS songs with motions and speaking.

And then our tightly-knit band of VBS workers, in true VBS style, left the church and checked ourselves into the local hospital. No! We went home.