More from the lake and VBS thoughts

Ford had a great time too even though he is working on two teeth that are absolute bears! Hopefully they will pop through soon and give him some relief - poor little fella. He loved his bath in the sink in the motorhome and taking walks with Pa Pa.

Our little swinger has graduated from the baby swing to the big girl swing. She is afterall a professional. I had to put all of my images of head trauma aside and let her go as high as she wanted. She has her Daddy's adventurous spirit which I love. I'd love it more if I had spent the past 7 years taking care of all of the bad things that can happen to kids in the PICU. I have to find a balance eventually if I'm going to survive motherhood.

Rhett got home safely and we had a day to hang out and now we are back to the grind. He is working like crazy this week and we are doing Vacation Bible School at our "old church" (as Claire calls it). I had first graders last year and that was a bit overwhelming so this year I am back in my comfort zone with two year olds and it is tons of fun. It just makes for a long week having something to do every day. I'm also mulling over a message from our new church yesterday about the centrality of the home when it comes to the Gospel. I never do justice to David's message but in this one about the Gospel and parenting he talked about how American families have in effect out-sourced the spiritual training of our children to our youth groups, preschool ministries and vacation bible schools at church. God's design for the training of our kids is very clearly in the home. So why is it that was send our kids to church or on retreats and expect that they will get what they need there while in effect ignoring our responisbilities in the home on a daily basis? All of those ministries are not bad things at all - in reality they are great things- but they should be the cherry on top not the ice cream (that was a yummy analogy, huh?). This year at our new church instead of sending the kids off to VBS at church they are bringing VBS into homes all across the area by having small groups of kids meet for a couple hours a day with small group leaders (both men and women) in host homes. How wonderful to breakdown this wall between "church" and our homes. Very cool.

If your kids haven't been to VBS lately let me tell you around here it is somewhat of a spectacle. Gone are the days of simple crafts and bible stories. Everything revolves around a theme that has decorations that you would not believe and there are sports, activities (electives like sign language, wood working, dance etc.). It's all a little over the top in my humble opinion. What is the purpose exactly? Is it just to fill days for parents and entertain kids? Or is it to genuinely teach them who God is? Most of our day today was spent revolving around this beach theme instead of around any biblical anything. Sure there was a story about Moses but the rest of the day was turtles and fish. At one point the other teacher and I looked at each other and asked "how can we bring this back and tie it into the Word?". The very least we could do is send something home with parents telling them what we learned and talked about, what songs we sang, what verses we learned so they could continue to nourish the seeds that were planted. I hope I'm not sounding critical I never really even thought about it until yesterday and now I just see it. I realize I am talking about 2 year olds here but lets not sell them short. They are more than capable of learning simple biblical truths. I just hope we don't blurr that message with lots of things we think we need to add to make it more "fun".