The Afterschool Crew & Outreach

And if you think I already had my hands full....

I want you to meet the "afterschool crew"!!!! We have 2 friends stay with us afterschool for a few hours!!


If all kids were as easy as these two... I'd take more in:) Love these kids;)



I saw this Outreach linkup from The HomeSchool Village on a friend's blog. To be honest, I get soo overwhelmed and consumed with all the "book learning" the kids and I do that I often neglect reaching beyond our home. Sure, occassionally we'll have friends over for dinner and always stop to talk to neighbors on walks, etc!! But there could be soo much more!!

We are involved with outreach activities through our church. Being pastor kids, they get volunteered a lot;) But I really think my kids LOVE picking up neighborhood friends for Awana or helping on Operation In As Much projects,etc! And we pack our Christmas Shoe Boxes for Samaritans Purse (actually recieved a letter from Botswana this year!!).

Funny thing is that I've already been brainstorming how to pray weekly for some of our "shut-in"/older church members. And then having the kids make something for them and us visit them. Our members LOVE seeing the kids (not sure if they would LOVE seeingthe kids in THEIR house... just kidding... LOL!!!). But I do think many would appreciate more visits;)

So this has really challenged me to start placing some simply ministry and outreach items on our schedule weekly! Looking forward to getting more ideas from this linkup:)

Tuesday!!

This morning we did some preparations for Kidz Club and then headed to the park to invite people to the Club in the afternoon. I'll be honest that I was a little intimidated to initiate conversations (just part of my personality), but I got over it and had some conversations with strangers. And then I was further encouarged by my poor attempts to invite people when I saw them waiting for us at the park after lunch:)

We had kids waiting for us when we got there and many staying playing the games from 1 to 4pm!! We really had kids everywhere..... here is a busy time at the craft station.

The parachute was another HIT.... the kids had a blast!!!


Although the kids had a GREAT time at every activity!!! This was a favorite for the kids and on-lookers..... it was a relay with water balloons. The kids would be put into teams and given water balloons. Each kid would run to the cones and try to pop the water by sitting on it and then running back to their teams after it popped. Anyway, it was soo funny and the kids LOVED it!!! Plenty of kids left with SOAKED bottoms:)


After dinner, we did go to the SkatePark with the skateboarders...again, just truely amazed at their talents, courage, and perservance (trying tricks over and over).

Our VBS Week

Well we had a pretty good group of kids this morning at our Outrigger Island VBS!!!! We had about 23 kids (including the little ones), which was fun. I always am a little disappointed when I don't have returning kids:( But I was excited today to meet many new kids and to "catch up" with my sweet returners.

Anyway, I had a very early and active morning.....so while my kids are napping I'm going to nap, too!!!

Maybe tomorrow I'll be able to post some pics of pieces of our VBS:)