Kinderfest

Last Friday, the girls' school celebrated Kinderfest. Kinderfest is a fun, end of the school year field day that the kids always look forward to.
 The afternoon starts with an all school parade. The kids sing songs and march outside to the big black top area where a ton of games are set up.


 A few of the games that Alyssa enjoyed.


 One of the games Emma loved playing was a relay race in which they fill a sponge with water and run it across to the other side where there is a tuna can that the water needs to be transferred to. Good old fashioned homemade fun, no frills needed.


 Alyssa with her friends during the parade.


 Emma, Bella, and Claire.
I left Rebekah for a playdate at Claire's house while I came to the school to help out with the Kinderfest games. It was the first time I have ever left her at a friend's house for a solo playdate. Claire has 4 little sisters, one of which is about one year older than Bekah, and another who is about 6 months younger than her. I was a little worried about leaving Kamele, but it's safe to say she LOVED her afternoon with all the little girls, and did not miss me one bit :-) She wasn't ready to leave when I returned to bring Claire home and pick her up.


 Enjoying Kinderfest! The weather was perfect for the occasion.

Hershey Track Meet

Last night, Alyssa was in a district track and field meet. She told me about a year ago that track and field was the sport that she liked best, and that she wanted to run in competitions. There aren't too many opportunities for kids her age to join a track and field team/club, and that is kind of how she got involved with gymnastics last fall. She has loved gymnastics a lot, and I think even if she never pursues competitions in gymnastics it will have helped prepare her for any future sports she might like to compete in.
 Anyway, when she had the opportunity to compete here, she was sooo excited! She brought home the sign up form one week before the event, which didn't leave her much time to prepare, but she learned so much just from the chance to get out there and run some races.

She has a November birthday, and with school cut off dates being Sep. 1st, this typically makes her one of the oldest kids in her class {and I think this has often worked to her advantage}. I imagine many other sports are like this as well, but here they use the calendar year as the cut off dates, so even though she is 10 right now, because she will turn 11 before the end of the year, she ran in the 11 and 12 year old age group. She was quite a bit smaller than the rest of the kids :-)


 




















She chose to compete in the long jump. I wasn't at the meet because I had to teach at church, but looking at these photos I could tell she took a very gymnast like approach to the long jump.


 She also chose to run the 800m and 400m. She likes the longer distances. Dave said that in the 800 she was keeping up pretty well with the 1st place runner until the end of the race when the girl who was in 3rd sprinted right past her to take 2nd place. Alyssa ended up 3rd. She seems very motivated to practice now. She told me that once we get home from Pennsylvania she is "going into training."


 There is a hint of a smile on her face in this photo that you can kind of see if you click on it. I wish I enjoyed running that much!

Alyssa's events were all towards the end of the night, and she had a fun time cheering on friends throughout the meet. When I got home from church she was so excited about her ribbons and to tell me that one of her classmates at school won 1st place in the softball throw. It was fun to see her that excited!

Zoo Animal Antics

I took Kamele to the zoo one day last week while the older girls were at school. She has recently been fascinated with a book called Happy Birthday to Whooo? which has many pages that look like birth announcements for baby animals. Each page has a few facts about a newborn on it and you flip the page to see the baby animal being described. I thought she would enjoy a trip to the zoo after reading this book so many times.
 Each time we read through the book I always have to laugh at this page. A mother whale nursing her baby often enough for it gain 200 pounds each day sounds completely exhausting!!


An equally exhausting prospect...giving birth to up to 200 babies at once!
 As we read how the daddy seahorse is the one who gives birth to the babies, Rebekah kept asking me where the mommy was. She wasn't satisfied with my explanation that the moms do not have a large role in taking care of the young seahorses and decided that the mommies must all be out shopping.


 Rebekah convinced me to let her sit on my lap as we put a quarter into the foot massage machine. It was terrible! She was laughing the whole time, but we were bounced around so much that there certainly was not anything relaxing, rejuvenating, or reviving about it as the sticker on the machine suggests.


Our day at the zoo was very nice though, and I wasn't going to make a post about it, but then as we looked through all our pics from the day I realized we had caught some of the animals being very sweet, and for others we had caught them when they weren't on their best behavior...
 One of the first animals we saw was this cute little chipmunk. He was just hanging out right off to the side of the path and I rushed to grab the camera because Emma loves chipmunks. I was surprised that this little guy just sat there watching us as I fumbled around with the camera bag.


 As soon as I got the camera out, he ducked under the leaves playing peek a boo.


 I don't think there is anything unusual about this behavior, but Rebekah loved how this seal kept swimming by on its back.


 And this little cutie swam right up to the window to say hi! Kamele was trying to kiss the glass.


 These bears would not stop wrestling in the water. They kept dunking each other and clawing at each others necks and faces. Rebekah was concerned so I explained that sometimes bears and other animals play like this and that they weren't trying to hurt each other.


 Rebekah suggested that maybe they were getting married. A cute interpretation of animal behavior for a 3 year old, but the funnier thing is that later when I showed the pictures to Alyssa she said the same exact thing!


 This dall sheep kept sharpening his horns on the tree branch. Then he would jump down and back away from that wooden box around the tree trunk. He would take a running start and head butt the box, seemingly as hard as he could. We watched him do this about 4 or 5 times, poor confused guy!


 This sweet baby camel that we saw when he was just about 3 weeks old back in March...


 was trying to climb up his mother's back. She seemed to be trying to take a nap on the ground, and the baby seemed to want to nap on her back. It looked very awkward and uncomfortable.


 The highlight of the day for Rebekah was seeing the flamingos!


 What started out as a nice conversation between these two quickly soured...


 They became really noisy and aggressive with each other. The way the one on the right has it's neck completely recoiled just about describes the entire interaction. A third flamingo quickly got involved. And I thought flamingos were just pretty and pink.


 




















Rebekah loved running around the butterfly garden. We can't wait to bring Alyssa and Emma here over the summer. The butterfly garden is a recent addition {and it's still pretty tiny too, but nice}.


 At least there are some standards by which my baby is still considered miniature :-)

Chalk Bunnies

Although the girls have been loving gymnastics, I'm not sure how much we will be in the gym this summer, so I took a lot of pictures during the last couple of practices. Here are just a few :-) ...
 




















Alyssa loves beam. Probably her strength at gymnastics right now is her flexibility. She has worked very hard at it.


 Emma's strength is probably how hard she works to make every movement perfect. She loves all the details.


 Doing her best to vault like the big girls.


 

 

 
 

 This is quite possibly my least favorite gymnastics skill ~ EVER! Windmill circle around the bar. They are really painful until you learn the exact technique needed to get around the bar. Think bar burns on the inner thighs ~ Ouch!!


 


 

 Almost in sync with their handstands.


 She was so proud when she learned how to do a one-armed cartwheel.


 A coaching moment between me and Rebekah?


 She loves the gym {and is pretty comfortable there too, from the looks of this pic}! Alyssa looked at this picture, laughed, and said, "She thinks she's hot stuff!"


 Sorry about the blurry pic, but Emma always runs down the runway for vault with this same happy expression on her face. Anyone who has ever tried to vault knows that it is entirely impossible to do a good vault while you're smiling this big, but it seems to work for her! She loves vault.


 Like big sister, like little sister.

Building Tomorrow Today

I will utter hidden things, things from of old- what we have heard and known, what our fathers have told us. We will not hide them from their children; we will tell the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the Lord, his power, and the wonders he has done. He decreed statutes for Jacob and established the law in Israel, which he commanded our forefathers to teach their children, so the next generation would know them, even the children yet to be born, and they in turn would tell their children. Then they would put their trust in God and would not forget his deeds but would keep his commands.
Psalm 78:2-7

The above verses from Psalm 78 opened a very exciting church service last week in which we celebrated the ground breaking for a new children and youth wing at our church. And what an amazing "standing order" we are charged with ~ to teach our children, so they can in turn pass on to their children "the praiseworthy deeds of the Lord...so they may put their trust in God"!

The church is already quite big and beautiful, but we are outgrowing a number of the school age classrooms. For example, we sit at child size tables in my classroom, which for my kindergarten students is no big deal at all. However if they had a full sized adult teacher {there's a hint of a joke there in case the humor didn't translate to text :-) } this would be more of a problem. I find the kids respond so much better to the lessons and the invitation to submit prayer requests when I am sitting with them, instead of talking over them (so I gladly scrunch up my knees and sit with them every Wednesday night). There just isn't room in the classroom, and all the classrooms have their own space concerns, for normal sized seating for 20+ students and many of the other learning materials we would love to have in place there.

Also, the only praise and worship area that our teens and crossroad age groups have is in the gym where the music bounces off the walls. It will be an awesome blessing to their ministry and every young person who steps into our church to be ministered to, for them to have their own auditorium for services!

 I didn't get very many (or any) good pictures of the actual ground breaking ceremony outside. I was standing around the perimeter of the building lines with a sign to show where my future Kindergarten classroom will be.


 Running up to me with our sign.


 Oh no, our construction hats are blowing away! It was a really windy, chilly night.


 The children's choir sang during the service. This is the best attitude these little girls could pull off :-)
They're singing: Oh No, No, No, don't build your house upon the shifting sand, when the rains of life come pouring in, those walls will never staaaaaaaand! Gonna build my house {gonna build my house}, on the Rock {the solid rock}.



I remember during the celebration of our Pastor and his wife's 35th anniversary of ministry at our church a story being told about how when they first came to serve at our church she was the main Sunday School teacher for all the children of the church. They had a small downstairs classroom that often flooded when it rained. She would have her students sit on the stairs leading up out of their classroom in order to hold lessons on those mornings. Certainly not the most ideal conditions for planting seeds of God's love in the hearts of these children. But, wow, how encouraging to see how God has rewarded her faithfulness and the faithfulness of others in the church! To see the church grow from that time when she was the primary teacher, to where it is now with several teachers offering several different opportunities for times of learning throughout the week to several hundred children is nothing short of a miracle.

At this same time I think about my parent's church and the new growth they are being blessed with there as well. They are a younger, growing church that has just received a more permanent location for their church home. It's not the permanent location, but as Pastor Rob would say it is without a doubt a "game changing moment" for their wonderful, young church. I'm reminded of Ephesians 3:20 that says God is able to do "immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine." And I would have to say that is exactly what he has done in both cases here in response to a faithful commitment to reach their communities for Christ.

To be in a church that takes it's ministry to the youth so seriously and stands closely alongside families in their efforts to live out Psalm 78:2-7 and lead our children to a lifelong relationship with Jesus is incredible... And I'm so thankful for it.
 
 
 We are the Church of Tomorrow.