Vacation Bible School

No wonderful pictures of Vacation Bible School this year ... sorry! I was in charge of the preschool group, which made for a very busy, but pretty entertaining (if you like being in a constant state of motion!) five days last week. Throw in some car problems (just a dead battery ... thanks kids for leaving a door open!) and some birthday suprises, and it was a pretty exciting week.



The VBS theme was great - lots of space and earth lessons, and they all tied into God. Remind me to tell you sometime about mom and Jenn's philosophy on VBS. Let's just say I don't think Cokesbury is going to be calling them up to design a curriculum! To keep my preschoolers entertained when they got squirrelly, I let them find "martian messages," make comets, play "From the Earth to the Moon," run a supernova relay, sing "I'm a Little Rocket," etc. But I have no pictures of those activities. Here are a few shots I snapped throughout the week with my new phone. As you'll see, I hadn't exactly figured the camera part out at the beginning of the week. The shots are blurry. But, you can make out the "space telephones" the kids made in science ...

And the sunshines the little guys painted in art ...

On the last day, I threw the SLR in the bag, so these are better photos. In science, we made an "excitement explosion" to celebrate Jesus' life. You can only imagine how this group of 11 four-year olds giggled with delight when the baking soda/vinegar combo popped the bag open!

At the closing gathering, the kids were so cute dancing together. Grammy helped me out on Thursday and Friday, and she can attest, they were adorable ... but we were glad to send the non-Schnittkers home with their parents at noon that Friday!

Under Pressure

I know, I know ... this is a scary first image on this post. But, I wanted you to see the ACTUAL DIRT that was on my face when Dennis and I pressure-washed the driveway a couple weekends ago. This is actually what we did during the day on the 3rd of July, between the morning fun out in SouthWood and the fireworks that evening. I had ulterior motives for getting the front walkways pressure washed that weekend (which I'll fill you in on) but both of us agreed it needed to be done in a major way! Yes, that's a before/after comparison of the dirt on our driveway. My adorable husband thought it would be fun to keep this square around to chuckle at ... but I said "no thank you!" Not only did we do the front of the house, the porch, the walkway, and about half of the driveway (the other half is still dingy) ... we also tried the pressure washer out on a piece of deck furniture. Amazing! Good thing we don't own it though, because it's kind of addictive. AND ... it gets you really messy. We were racing to see who got the shower first!

Happy 4th of July!

Hope everyone had a GREAT 4th of July! We actually celebrated on Saturday, the 3rd, because that's when everything was happening in SouthWood. I posted all of these photos last night (many "stolen" from Auntie Jenn, who was also snapping pictures on Saturday) but don't have time to add the "sparkling commentary" now. Vacation Bible School starts this morning .. and we're on our way out of the house soon! So, enjoy the pictures now, and I'll add some explanations later. By way of explanation, I had to post these today because I don't want to get behind with my blogging. Some of you may know, it's birthday week here. Someone is turning the big 4-0!





Tyler tried his hand at the watermelon-eating contest. He's not very fast ... but he's a good sport!

Tyler spent the afternoon with Mommy and Daddy after the morning festivities in SouthWood (see the post "Under Pressure" to find out how much fun WE had!) but Abby got to hang out with Auntie Jenn for the day. I admit, first Tyler was a bit miffed at being excluded from the Godmother-Goddaughter fun, but we had a fine afternoon. However, we decided to give Auntie Jenn some attitude as a joke when we got to her house for the fireworks. Anyone familiar with with Jerry's greeting for Newman on Seinfeld? Here's Tyler's take on it ...

That night, we had a BLAST at the fireworks. SouthWood puts on quite a show ... and so does Jenn! She had water balloons ...
Silly string ...

And the light show she organized was AMAZING! :)

Tyler has come a long way since last year. He only started out covering his ears this year ... but by the end he was saying "oooh" and "aaah" with the rest of us!

Happy Fourth of July!

Patriotic Meal Prep

With 4th of July just around the corner, we decided the kids and I decided to make a theme meal with patriotic flair! As you can see from the menu above, we included many of the kids' favorites in the lineup (why else would there be no greens and many starches!?!) This whole idea kind of started, when I saw a recipe for Triple Decker Baked Alaska, in Family Fun magazine. It looked like fun, and I thought it would be a good project for us.
You make cupcakes (half of the batch gets Cocoa Powder) then stick some strawberry ice cream in the middle. And, the meringue goes on top!
During the day on Thursday, Abby and Tyler worked on our table runner (although Tyler ended up finishing it on his own while Abby took a time out in her room for bossing him around!)
And Abby made placecards for each of us with our historic name of the evening.
I was Betsy Ross, Tyler was Paul Revere, Dennis was Ben Franklin, and Abby was Augusta Ada Lovelace (Incidentally, AAL is the first computer programmer in the US ... Abby learned this by Googling famous US women. She says she thinks AAL was important because where would we be if we couldn't get on Webkinz! I mean, really!?!) The nametags, and other table decor like the flag, actually sparked some good dinner conversation. I even pulled the laptop over to the table so we could reference the order of statehood, the timeline of the revolutionary war, the making of the flag, etc.

And, as dinner came to a close, we pulled our USA placemat out to quiz Abby and Tyler on the capitals. Last week, at the library, we found a great book on tape with a state capital "rap!" I am just amazed at how many they have learned in just a week! And, it's been pretty fun to brush up on my state capitals in the car. How quickly that information leaves your brain!

Oh, and the Baked Alaska was a hit with the troops! Will the kids be helping me with every meal from now on ... I don't think so, but it was fun for an evening.

Too Close for Comfort

Look what was smack dab at the end of our driveway yesterday afternoon! Had it not been for Abby's friend, Anabelle, or my decision to back the car out of the driveway, we might not have seen it. But, Anabelle spotted it and I'm glad she did! Our neighbor was able to come over and help us out, because it was quickly headed right for the snake-sized gap along the bottom of our garage door. Guess Dennis knows what task is now been moved to the top of his "honey do" list ... fix the weathering on the garage door! Let me tell you - this snake was big (Ray says it was an Oak Snake) ... I'm thinking at least 4-feet long. And, I think 2-3 inches around! So gross.