The Apostle's Creed

Lily's preschool class lead the congregation in saying The Apostle's Creed at church this morning.

We are so blessed to have a lady in our church who uses modified sign language to teach the children "worship chants".  My kids LOVE it!

This is totally Lily's thing to have motions to a song.

And Peter's thing because it allows him to be active as he learns Truth!

Look at her sweet face.  I could just about die.

It was just so sweet and I was so proud of her.

VBS

It was our 3rd year to do VBS at a church near us (not our church).  Its during the day, and ours is at night.  I think its fun for my kids to have a daytime VBS week.  It feels like a summer childhood essential.  So although there is some initial guilt of sending my kids to a church that isn't ours and I'm not helping with, everyone there welcomes us and its always a sweet picture to me of the body of Christ and a reminder of salvation.  We receive a great gift without doing a thing.  And I love what my kids learn each year!  

This was the first year Lily could go.  As I've mentioned, Lily is more shy than Peter and nervous about new social settings.  So it was perfect that the week's theme was "Facing Fear, Trusting God."  There were some tears but the staff were sweet to let her bring her blanket a few days and move over to Peter's class a few days.  By the end of the week, she was singing the songs, doing the hand motions and chanting, "Facing Fear, Trusting God!"  It was a sweet gift from God to work through that in this setting (and something we have to learn and do it over and over, right?!)

Here are pics from "Family Night"...  I convinced our friends, the Z kids, to come along with us all week!  :)

The "kids" on the "coaster"!  Mike is soo fun.  We love him.  So thankful for the strong & gentle man my husband is as we come up on 10 years of life together.

Peter told me his favorite song was "Change my Heart".  When I went and looked it up and saw the lyrics, all I could think was of course. 

ps- thankfully, I'm not feeling too nervous for K... we are mostly excited and trying to soak up every drop of these sweet last weeks of summer!!

Today's Miracle

Mike and Peter leave early on the mornings that Mike is helping in Peter's class.  Then Lily and I come along at normal time.  This morning when we went to leave, I couldn't find my keys.  No surprise there!  Normally, I'd completely get completely flustered by this.  I'm all ready and great, I can't find my keys.  I looked around at all the normal places but no keys.  Mike wasn't answering his phone (of course).  And I had nursery second service so there was no chance that  I'd get a second chance to go to worship.  And as we were telling our kids this morning, everyone suffers if we don't make it to church to worship.    Instead, I called my friend Emily.  They normally go to second service so I thought it was a long shot that they'd be able to get us.   And they are usually more on time than us.  ;)  BUT when I called Emily, she was about to leave, b/c she also had nursery second service.  AND she had an extra car seat.  So we were able to enjoy riding to church with them.  Amazing.  I was just so thankful for God's provision of riding with them.  And for friendships where it just doesn't matter.  And for the chance to see God in the even bigger miracle of me not losing it.  Woah, that's a big deal.

 All three girls were wearing cute smocked dresses so I had to get a pic!

We asked Mike's parents if they'd watch our kids after church so we could go to a mission update.  After we settled into our seats, I was telling Mike about the whole debacle.  He asked me if I looked a few places.  I had.  Then he reached in his pocket, pulled out his keys, then pulled out mine.  Haha!  

My Therapy

Lily is such a little doll to hang out with.  She has her 2 year old moments of testing her limits but in general, she's a doll.  Last night, our MCG (missional community group) from church was in charge of set up and greeting for the Maundy Thursday service at church.  We had an international/community service with the 4 congregations that meet in our building... our church, the Arabic speaking Sudanese fellowship, the Spanish speaking fellowship and a Nepalese one.  It was cool.  So it was a little chaos for the kids as their boundaries were vague as we greeted everyone in the gallery.  By time for the service, Peter was done so he and Mike went home.  Lily sound a MCG friend's purse and decided it was her own.  She carried it in and then sat and colored next to me... crayons, markers, stickers and we were done.  Lily put her stuff in Paige's purse, the purse on her shoulder after every activity and started leaving.  ;)  Finally we did leave.  Peter was in bed, so she stayed up with us for a little while, being the Mommy.  She put stickers on my fingers, knees, etc and said they were bandaids and then asked me if it felt better.  Then she brushed my hair.  We finally headed up.  As I brushed her teeth, she reassured me, in her sweet little voice, that she was "still the Mommy" (even tho I was brushing her teeth).  We went in to get ready for bed and Baby Audrey sat in her lap.  She read a book to Baby Audrey.  Then a second time.  Baby Audrey wanted it read a third time but I had to tell Lily that as the Mommy, she needed to tell Baby Audrey that they could only read the book two times since it was late.  She finally agreed after a tickle.  ;)  We laid there, saying prayers and singing songs. Then as we are about done (this isn't going to be a great climax after I've made this story so long), she says to Baby Audrey who was laying next to her in the bed, "I'm going to do a race tomorrow, Baby Audrey, and Goo is going to watch you."  (We did the 10K last weekend.) She is such a trip and a cute little thing!!  She doesn't miss a thing!  I love and so enjoy her!

Peter is taking his Jesus Storybook Bible to church.  He loves it.  (This boy still LOVES his books.  I love that even in his busyness, you can almost always "get" him with a book.  He is so interested and just wants to listen & study a story.)  He's enjoyed "reading" the stories leading up to and through Jesus' death and resurrection.  And I love that its been re-told and talked about at preschool.  Mike said that despite his melting down at church, he was just flipping though and looking at the stories on the way home last night.  Mike said from the backseat, he could hear Peter saying (in a deep angel voice),


"This is a tomb and these are for dead people!  Jesus is not here anymore!  He's alive!"

YES!

Here is our reenactment from this morning...