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Last week we took a trip to New York City.

Okay, not really... but we pretended to, along with a hundred other local kids!

Last week was Vacation Bible School, and our theme was New York City.

I volunteered to head up crafts to kids age 4 - 5th grade, and it was very rewarding.

The work really started a few months ago as I decided on the crafts and made lists of all of our supplies.

Then, the week before VBS, a group of awesome women from my church got together and helped prep the crafts for a few hours.

I cannot imagine having done it without them.  I would have been cutting skylines for two weeks and seeing foam stickers in my sleep!

At VBS, the kids made skylines...

... and Father's Day cards...

... and cloth napkins, among other things.

The napkins were my favorite craft.  We gave each child a cloth napkin and fabric markers to decorate napkins for local Meals on Wheels recipients.

I wasn't sure how the kids would do with such an open-ended craft.  I worried that maybe they'd color two or three quick things and quit, but they didn't.  All of the kids took the whole craft time on Thursday to work on their napkin, and many of them spent part or all of their craft time on Friday finishing.  They really put their hearts into it!

I know those people will be blessed by the kids' labors of love.

I pray that the kids were equally blessed by their time at VBS and that the Holy Spirit will be at work on each of their precious hearts.

A Colorful Day

Last Thursday we had our first relaxing day of summer.  We met our friends at the pool first thing in the morning, and it was really fun.  But by Thursday night, it was clear that something was really bothering Brennan's face, and by bedtime it was obvious that it was pink eye.

(This picture was taken after had already started his medicine, so he actually doesn't look that bad.)

I had told the kids we could go back to the pool on Friday morning too, but we ended up at the doctor instead.  It was a bummer for all of us, so we made the best we could of a bad situation.

First, when we got home from the doctor, while Cora was napping, Brennan and I made rainbow pudding pops.

We just mixed up regular vanilla pudding, separated it into six bowls, and added different food coloring to each bowl.

Then we layered the colors into plastic cups and put in some popsicle sticks.  We put them in the freezer for later.

Next, Brennan and I made freezer paper stencils for a new bag using my Silhouette.  Brennan is really excited that he is now old enough to have his own library card (you have to be five years old here), and I told him I would take him several times this summer to check out new books.

I thought it would be good for us to make a bag just for library books where we could store them, carry them back and forth to the library, and keep his library card.  

When the stencil was ready, we ironed it on and Brennan painted the letters.  I knew that I would have to settle for less than perfect if I was going to let him do it himself, but I think it's better this way.  It's his bag and he is proud of it.

I'm still going to sew a little pocket on the front to store Brennan's library card, so I'll take pictures of the final bag when we make our first library trip this summer.

After dinner, we all headed outside to try our pudding pops...

...and then changed into swimsuits to wash off the mess in the sprinklers.

Cora didn't much care for the sprinkler, but she sure loved watching her brother.

Sometimes what you get is even better than what you had planned.

Lydia's Graduation Party

Our friends, Tommy and Tricia, watched their oldest daughter graduate from high school last weekend.  As a mother, I cannot imagine what that would be like.  Watching them let go has made me so thankful that I still have some time...

Tricia asked me if I would be willing to help decorate for Lydia's graduation party.  She told me that she wanted to use the school colors of black, red, and gold, and that she wanted a candy buffet.  Other than that, she was pretty open.

I kept things pretty simple with black and red balloons, tissue poms, and the candy buffet.  I also did a wishing tree where people could write down their wishes for Lydia.

My favorite decoration was the centerpiece for the food table.  I made graduation cap pops with Ghiradelli chocolates, mini Reese's peanut butter cups, and some melted chocolate to hold everything together.

AND my the most exciting part about planning for this party is that I got my birthday present two days before the party...

Are you ready?

Are you sure?

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I got a Silhouette!!!  If you're not crafty, you probably don't care or even know what I'm talking about.  But if you are, you're probably pretty jealous.  I understand.  I'm jealous of me, too.  :-)

When I had owned my new toy for less than twelve hours, I had already made this banner:

The Silhouette came with the pennant shape, so I just had to type out the letters, send everything to the machine, and glue it all together!  I spent less than an hour on the whole thing!  I also made the little graduation cap for the card box and the word "cards" to go on it.  Easy peasy.

Congratulations to all 2011 graduates, and happy birthday to me!  :-)  I see lots of fun projects in my future...

Cora's Dedication

On May 22nd, we had Cora dedicated at our church.  It was a very significant event for us as a family, and I have put off writing about it because I haven't been sure I would be able to express adequately what it meant to us.  And, if I'm honest, I'm afraid of silence.  I used to get lots of comments on this blog after I was featured on other blogs, but things have gotten pretty quiet lately.  It's probably because I was featured as a craft / decorating blog, and posts about my kids don't really interest those who don't know me.  I totally get that.  However, I can't cater just to those who don't know me.  One of my main reasons for blogging is to keep a record of our lives for my children, and I want them to know how incredibly important Cora's dedication was to us.

So, despite my fears that people won't care, I have to stay true to my heart and my kids and write about something that matters to us...

We are thankful to go to a small church.  We are not mega-church people at all.  We want a church where we can know people and have everyone know us - where we can build lots of meaningful relationships.  We just want to be driven by Jesus and not distracted by numbers.  One of the benefits of having a small church is that it can be really personal.  And that's exactly what Cora's dedication was.

In the past, our church has done mass dedications the way most churches do.  However, they weren't really personal or meaningful.  We didn't dedicate Cora as an infant because it didn't seem important to to stand up front and have her look cute for two minutes without giving any real thought to the reason we were there.

One day, our children's ministry director - and my good friend - Hope, shared with me that her kids' dedications were some of the most significant days of her life.  I simply couldn't understand that.  Brennan's dedication had been nice, but I would hardly count it as that significant.

As I talked with Hope about how I wish dedications at our church were more meaningful, she started plotting and scheming to make them just that.  And before I knew it, she announced that the church was going to try something new: dedicating only one child in a given month.

The new method would require "homework" for the parents which included writing a letter to the child about who they wished the child would become.  The point was not just to talk about worldly success, but to talk about our deepest prayers and aspirations for our child.

Writing this letter was the most significant part of Cora's dedication.  It gave us an opportunity to be thoughtful about parenting and how we defined "success" in Cora's life.  It was a chance to be intentional.

After we had finished our homework, Hope came to our house and videotaped us talking about Cora, and reading our letters.  We probably shot 45 minutes of unedited video, which she is going to burn to CD for us to give to Cora someday.  I cannot imagine what that would mean to me, to have something like that from my parents.  It makes me cry and gives me goosebumps to think about it.

In the end, the video was pared down to about 3.5 minutes, which were shared with the congregation.  Then we were called up front, Hope read some scripture, and our pastor, Jay, prayed for Cora.  It was very, very sweet.

If you'd like to watch the video that was shared with the church, you can view it here.

The dedication is just a chance to acknowledge that our children belong to Jesus.  We want nothing more in this whole world than for our kids to know, love, and serve God.  It's really that simple.  We are thankful to Hope and our church for an opportunity to proclaim that in a way that will hopefully impact others and leave a legacy for our kids.

Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord,

the fruit of the womb a reward.

Like arrows in the hand of a warrior

are the children of one's youth.

Blessed is the man

who fills his quiver with them!

He shall not be put to shame

when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.

—Psalm 127:3-5

Crazy Days of... May?

May was a wonderful month for our family, but I'm glad it's over.  It was nonstop busy, and I'm exhausted.

Jim's mom visited for the first two weeks of the month, and my mom visited for the other two weeks.  During their combined visits we celebrated Mother's Day, Jim's birthday, Brennan's graduation, Cora's dedication, my birthday, and Memorial Day.  Jim and I started coordinating a new FPU class halfway through the month, and I helped plan a friend's daughter's graduation party. I also spent some time organizing and prepping crafts for next week's Vacation Bible School, and I threw out my back at the beginning of the month, which meant lots of delays and trips to a chiropractor.

It was all crazy and fun (except the part about my back), but I am ready for a slow, lazy summer.  I want to take lots of trips to the pool, plan play dates with friends, drink lemonade, buy flowers for my front porch, watch TV with Brennan while Cora naps, visit the library, and read some fluffy fiction instead of all of the useful instructional books that are currently on my nightstand.

Several of the events from May deserve a post of all their own, so I will hopefully start playing catch-up over the next few days.  In the mean time, here is a random picture that doesn't fit anywhere else.  The picture below was taken at a tea at Belmont Mansion with my mom and her friend Michelle.  It was a very yummy tea with the best cucumber sandwiches, scones, and petit fors.  Mmmm...

And now I'm going to curl up under a blanket and do absolutely nothing.  Maybe I will dry my hair in the next hour, but I don't have huge aspirations beyond that.  Today is a day of recovery, and tomorrow probably will be too.  Look out summer, here I come...