Vacation Bible School: D3 Agency

About 5 weeks ago, I stepped out of my comfort zone and taught at vacation bible school.  For those that don't know, vacation bible school (or vbs) is a week of fun and learning.  I had a classroom of 12 first graders.  Last year I was an assistant but this year I thought it might be fun to teach.  

A snapshot of one of our kids' belongings.

Miranda, during snack

There's Riley.  

Saying the pledge of allegiance at the end of the day pep rally.  

Chaos.  Pure chaos.  And lots of screaming.  The little girl in the pink dress is Riley.  The guy with the water gun is our youth pastor, Phil.  

Riley, and a group of preschoolers, leading in the music and dance at the pep rally one day.  

At first, I didn't think it would be good to have Hannah in my class.  But then I ended up with Hannah and Ethan, which was awesome.  Hannah wasn't clingy and I got to watch Ethan and her interact.  And do super cute things, like hold hands.  

The next three pictures are my kids at craft time.  I should've taken a picture of Hannah's final product.  In the past, kids have done multiple crafts over the week.  However, this time, they had one craft that they worked on all week.  

There's Big Hannah, looking perky.  But truly, she was a great help for our class.  And she's kinda funny.  

This is my class during music.  Every day they learned a new song and dance moves to accompany the song.  

Pandemonium over the water guns.  

These two pictures show our head pastor, dressed very silly, running around and spraying the kids too.  

See the small girl, with the black shirt and pink skirt?  That's Riley, contributing to the money collected that week for the back pack ministry.  

Story time with Pastor Phil.

More screaming, toe stepping fun.  

Battle of the sexes. 

The bike Hannah won at the conclusion of vacation bible school  It was a big week for Hannah.  She decided to be baptized that week.  After talking it over with David and I, we decided that Hannah was ready to be baptized.   She was more excited about being baptized than the bike. ; )

I had so much fun teaching; I'm already planning to do it again next year.  It was exhausting but rewarding.  

Random photo's

I don't think I've posted these photo's before.....

David and Hannah at the Coca-Cola 600 in Charlotte. 

The only photo of the Cernock's from the color run.  Look at the expression, intense.  

Riley's "run to the dollar store" outfit.  

Her first haircut.

And the ice cream treat that followed.  Hannah's hair was trimmed, as well.

Lucky (the cat) snuggles.  

One of life's many beautiful moments that I get to live every day.  

Summer reading.

Summer fun

Blendtec wonders

About a month ago, we made a big kitchen purchase: a blendtec blender.  I wasn't sure about it, but I knew I could take this blender and remove 3 kitchen appliances as this would take the place of all 3 items.  And anyone who has seen David excited about something can understand how his excitements jumps from him to other people.  

Chocolate Banana and spinach ice cream.  

One of the attachments that came with our blender.  Perfect for baby food, peanut butter, hummus and other dips.  

This blender will make heated soup.  It has a setting for ice cream and smoothie.  It has a juice setting.  The juice setting will also break down seeds from grapes and hulls from strawberries, as well as other similar things you wouldn't normally be able to include in your beverages.  This is beneficial because there are many health benefits associated with peels/seeds/hulls.  

I can also grind my own flour, which I'm pretty excited about.  In getting this blender, I got rid of my food processor, because this will do everything my processor did.  

I honestly never thought I was a smoothie person. I was wrong.  I make smoothies all the time now.  Yesterday, for breakfast, I had a spinach, kale, orange, peach, banana, chia seed and coconut water smoothie.  That was my breakfast, which I had at approximately 830 am.  I was fully satisfied until 130 pm.   

Today I'm going to make a pineapple, banana, orange, spinach, kale, chia seed and a yogurt smoothie.  I haven't made my own peanut butter yet, but I have a peanut and banana smoothie.  I've also used it to chop zucchini and carrots for zucchini bread.  After about a month, I can truthfully say that I am a blendtec lover!

The color run

I heard about color runs while we were living in Chicago and they sounded a lot of fun from the moment I read about them.  About 6 months ago, I saw one was coming to Fayetteville.  I went to The Color Run website and had it set up to be notified when registration opened to the public.  I was notified months ago, and received discounted pricing, so I signed us all up.    

Before the run, they're ready!

Playing around before the start.

The girls did a little warmup, here they are doing burpees.

Wade family and Cernock family before.  

Dancing while waiting in line to start.  According to news reports, the run had over 10,000 participants which was apparent if you were there.  There were people everywhere.  The race had a start line, and start waves.  So a small group (maybe 100 people or so) would start and then next group wouldn't start for 5 or so minutes.  This helped spread out the mass of people.  Which never really happened with over 10,000 participants.  

More shenanigans. 

Anxiously waiting our turn to start.  We only stood in line for 10 or 15 minutes.  The announcer was really fantastic and entertaining to listen to while we waited.  

And we're finally off!  Here's big Hannah, Hannah and Riley.  

Running through our first color station.  There were SO MANY PEOPLE!  The Hannah's are on the far left.  

Riley was unstoppable.  The lady in front and to the left of David had turned around to tell David how adorable Riley was.  

I absolutely love this photo.  

Full of color and spunk. 

Me, Riley, little Hannah and big Hannah.

Lots of people did this.  

The colorific finish. 

We had such a good time, even though it was hard to move through all the people for the entire 3 miles.  

Our companions, the Wades.  Notice the stroller off to the left, that's Joshua with his blanket over him.  He enjoyed the color run too! 

If you look up near my hairline, you can see the color that stuck around after my shower.  

And here. 

And here too.  

The kids had so much fun.  I think Riley would've run the entire race, if we had let her.  From a running standpoint, it was far too crowded to participate in that aspect.  There were over 10,000 people who participated in the even so the crowds just never thinned out.  However, our family had such a good time that I will sign up for us to do it the next time we have the opportunity.