Church Activities

Our church activities are keeping us busy as well. Our small group Bible study meets one evening each week. Every other week, we meet at our house, so that keeps us on top of our house-cleaning activities, which is a good thing. Jock and I also help once per month, teaching/being helper for the preschool Sunday school classes. That doesn’t take much prep time, only one Sunday morning per month of being at both services (attending one and teaching for the other). The preschoolers definitely keep us busy though. I teach the craft portion of the lesson to three different groups (ages 3, 4, and 4/5), and Jock rotates with the 4/5 group to the story/music, and game/snack areas. It’s really a lot of fun, but those preschoolers (usually 8-12in each group, but varies) definitely keep you on your toes!

Jock and I are singing in the worship choir, which sings for both services once a month. We sang last month for our church's anniversary celebration, but will miss this month. Hopefully we can make most months after this, because we really enjoy it. Our church has wonderful music program, and it's such a joy and a blessing to sing with the choir!

In addition to Sunday school, Kaylen has activities on Wednesday nights, which include learning Bible verses, Bible stories, and an activity that goes along with the weekly lesson. This fall’s series is focused on Paul’s journeys. Kaylen chose her activity (they have several classes to choose from) for this fall’s series to be the creative cooking class. They don’t really cook, but they assemble snacks. The teacher is superbly creative with the snacks and tying them into the lesson! The first week, they decorated cupcakes to look like lawn mowers (green frosting, chocolate bar mini for the body, M&Ms for wheels, a licorice string for the handle), and tied it in with "All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord stands forever" (1 Peter 1:24). Then during the week, we have to practice the Bible verse, and Kaylen gets points for doing other pages in her weekly packet, which include coloring pages, word puzzles, community actions (e.g. praying for neighbors, sharing about what God means to you, etc), and a prayer. At the end of the semester, they use their points to "buy" treats and trinkets. It’s really an awesome program, and she’s REALLY enjoyed it last year and this year. She’s learning so much – she’s such a little sponge!

This Wednesday, Jock and I had a little dinner date while Kaylen was at Kid Central. She doesn’t even know we did that, or she might’ve been mad that she didn’t get to go out to eat – one of her favorite things! We did make the mistake of heading to Applebee's though - Wednesdays is their 99c kids night, so it was packed. Luckily the bar was empty, so we just sat up there - and got great service from a bartender who was not busy at all! It was really nice to have that time together where we could just talk amongst ourselves – no little ears present, no manners reminders, no requests for condiments or seconds, etc – something we don’t get to do very often.