What a few weeks this has been!!! I keep wanting to sit down and write, but I've been going non-stop for what seems like forever. The past week has been completely devoured by my responsibility for decorating our entire church for vacation bible school. We are borrowing a lot of decorations from another church up the road, which is great, but I wasn't able to get them or even see them until last Friday, which *wasn't* great, because I couldn't do a lot of planning or working on things that we'd need that they didn't have until this past weekend. It's a huge job, because there are five classrooms that need to be done in their own theme (since the over-arching theme of the week is an amusement park, the rooms are wild west world, outer space race, doubloon lagoon, storyland castle, and the carousel), plus both the downstairs and upstairs hallways and the large entryway room. PHEW! I've been there every day this week for at least a few hours, and will definitely be there tonight and tomorrow as well. I'm trying not to think too hard about how few people have shown up to help out. Three people have come so far, one woman every afternoon and two other people once each. Since about 125 kids usually come, you'd think people would be more inclined to help, but it seems like it's the same few families you always see whenever there's volunteer work to be done. I'm having fun with all the themes, though, and it's going to be finished in time, which is the important part. We've even got some cool K'Nex sets up in the entryway to support the carnival theme! AC Moore was having a 1/2 price sale on the kits, so I got the Hometown Carnival set and the giant swing ride.
Otherwise, things are going really well. The kids are getting along a lot better so far, probably partly because they haven't seen a whole lot of each other since they went to camp one week after the other. Also, Josie is a lot more interested in being on her own in her room in the last few months (FINALLY), so she's not hanging around downstairs where Patrick usually is.
I've also started a walking program in the morning for the dogs. First thing when I get up, I get the kids together (they're usually up before I am) and we all walk down to the local fairgrounds, which is a huge park with several playing fields, street hockey rink and a surrounding pathway. It used to be a horseracing arena back in the day. Anyway, the back entrance is about four blocks from the house, so we all head down there and once we get there, I get out the extendible leashes and let the kids run around the fields with the dogs. It's helping Baci's freakiness issues a lot, and I know it's great for all of us, too.
I'm looking forward to Sunday, when the decorating will be done and the kids will be at VBS every evening from 6-8 through Thursday. It will be the first time all summer when there will be a week where we don't have to be anywhere at any particular time, and I won't be worrying about when and how I'm going to get everyone done.
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11 years ago
4 comments:
I think it's because different people have different interests: like, some people volunteer at schools, some people at animal shelters, some at libraries, etc. So it's not like a few people are carrying the whole society (the way our local PTA always manages to imply), but more like the same few people are in that one particular volunteer situation. I personally would rather donate an actual chopped-off hand than donate my time to decorating a church for bible school. Sounds like a HUGE job.
glad to have you back! and good for you on the decorating, it sounds very cool. when we used to go to church and lost our mind and volunteered w/ the youth group (when the girl was a mere toddler no less) we got sucked into being conned into doing everything kid related w/ the church and that sort of turned us off. there's some quote about abusing a work horse or something but i can't remember it.
My mom always used to help with VBS when I was a kid, and I remember it being a MASSIVE undertaking. They would always insist on serving homemade cookies each night, too, so, like, a HUNDRED ladies from the church would donate a dozen cookies for each night of the week. It was nuts. Our current church doesn't do VBS, which is A-OK with me!
Are you able to sort of sit back and enjoy it now, or will there still be more work for you??? Something that really sticks out in my mind from going to VBS as a child is the record we got to take home with all the songs on it. Now that was back in the day! Do kids go home with CDs now?
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