August 10: I'm Back!

I'm going to try to get back into the daily blogging habit.   I have been a slacker this summer, but now I have no more excuses for not blogging.

My camera is working!  It sat in the rice for three and a half days, and when I took it out, it worked!  I have read that the camera can begin working again, but may later stop working if there is any residual moisture inside.  I am keeping my fingers crossed that it will not happen that way with my camera.

Our crazy summer schedule is over!  Summer Fest was the last big event at the end of a busy summer.  Now we have a few weeks with barely anything going on, and I am so excited to relax for a while!

Summer Fest went pretty well, I think.  I really enjoyed the planning process for this event, which started way back in January.  Most things worked out just as we planned them, and that is always nice.  I wish we would have had a few more kids attend, but I think the kids that were there had a great time and hopefully learned something too! 

As I said before, we decided to write our own VBS this year.  We took out some of the things we didn't like about traditional VBS, added in some ideas that we thought would make it more fun, and the end result was pretty good.  Since it is Olympic season (and I am in love with the Olympics), we went with an Olympic theme.  Here was our stage decor:

 That cauldron is over eleven foot tall, made completely out of styrofoam (made by an extremely talented guy in our church), and it was pretty amazing.  On the first night, we had an opening ceremony, where our main character of the week, "Super Steve," ran into the auditorium and lit the cauldron.  It was not a real flame, but it was pretty realistic.

I was too busy to take many pictures, but here are a few from our week: