VBS is Complete!

Tonight's the finale of VBS at Schweitzer for 2008, and it really was a fun time. The 2nd graders were a lot of fun, and other than having to play nurse to one of the kindergartners who fell down, split her lip, and was just about to pass out from hyperventilation, I don't think we had any major catastrophes. I'm a little bit tired, but really glad I got to participate this year.

I can hardly believe there are only 3 more weeks until school starts! Where on earth did summer go? I called and got details about car insurance for Jacob, and heard pretty much what I expected to hear. It's certainly not cheap, but we'll figure it out somehow (send donations to 4219 S. Linden....: )).

Today is my mom's birthday. I called her at work and we chatted and made plans to have dinner tomorrow night at Argentina Steak House which should be fun. I'm really grateful to have a relatively young mom. My sweet friend Paula is in the midst of walking her mom through end-of-life issues, and I can see the truly excruciating experience it is. Not to say that I don't do my share of worrying about having to do this for my parents in the future, but I am glad I (hopefully) can put it off for a few more years. Heck, my dad is in better shape than I am, or ever have been for that matter!

Well...off to gather the 2nd graders for the program!

Until later.

Day One Complete

Today was the start of Schweitzer's Vacation Bible School, and I had the daunting task of "guiding" 15 second graders from station to station all morning. Actually, they were really well-behaved, and seemed to have a good time. My last experience with this rather large event was several years ago when I took on the 4-year-olds, and I can honestly say that I'll take second grade ANY day over that! I even managed to talk Jacob into helping out, and he and several of the other youth group kids performed crazy experiments involving soda bottles and Mentos out on the lawn for the younger kids to watch. Three more days to go - we'll see how it all turns out!

Zak and I are still working on the videos for a new class we will be offering at church this fall. This has been a big project so far, and I honestly don't know what I would've done without Zak's great technical ability and creativity. We are VERY lucky to have him.

That's all for now! Until later!

Midsummer

I can hardly believe that summer is over halfway finished! Time just moves entirely too quickly. This has been a strange summer in so many ways....many people have passed away (my neighbor, Jim Metz; Fred Miller to name a few), and others have gotten bad news of horrible health diagnoses. It also seems to be the summer of several of my friends deciding to call it quits with their marriages or experiencing extremely rough patches in their relationships. It's just been a little rough around the edges to say the least. Work is going fairly well....lots of planning and preparing for fall. I'm trying to stay excited about things, but sometimes it just feels like work.

The kids' schedules have finally settled down a bit. Baseball is over, and Jacob had a good year. Playing in the Freshman Legion Allstar game was definitely a highlight. Sylvie had a lot of fun swimming on the Southern Hills swim team this year and managed to place 2nd (out of 62 7 and 8-year-old girls!) in the breaststroke at the Greene County Swim Meet. I will post pics later.

My next goal is to try to find some time to truly relax and enjoy the rest of summer. We've been trying to find time to plan a trip to Chicago to visit some family and have some fun, but so far have not been very successful. It's also time to start planning something exciting for Jacob's 16th birthday (which falls on the first day of school!). I'm hopeful that some happy times are ahead.