Monday, July 25, 2011

PANDAMANIA!!


Last week our church put on it's summer VBS (vacation bible school). It's a week where hundreds of kids come through the church and have a fun time watching leaders doing crazy things while teaching them stories from the bible.

This year, the kids learned five important bible points:

1. God made you
2. God listens to you
3. God watches over you
4. God loves you, no matter what
5. God gives good gifts

I had a crew of 5 kids aged 5-6. They were so sweet! We had a great time all week and at the end I brought them little gift bags filled with goodies - and sprayed their hair orange to match our vbs shirts. They loved it!!


This is Noah showing off his VBS shirt that was all blinged out front and back... this was before I stuck it in the wash mid week and all of the designs and glitter washed off. Whoops. At least Darren got a pair of glitter jeans out of it.



We get to have orange hair - in church!




Noah showing of his new and improved shirt that mommy had to do after the wash incident - he explained that this is his superhero pose.









One of my kids wanted to trace Miss Kim :) It was so cute, when they kids were drawing with chalk and were asked to draw a picture of something they were thankful for, Noah called a little girl on my crew over and showed her he had written her name :) He is a charmer.


I'll end this with our response for every time we heard a bible point...

THANK YOU GOD!


Sunday, July 24, 2011

Joining the Circus

I have had concerns about the circus for awhile because of how they train their animals to perform. Because of this, I was happy to hear that Circus Vargas had come to town with an all people show :) Jenny and I brought Noah out early so he could participate in a bit of a pre-show with other kids. He had so much fun, though the highlight had to be when he got to hold a giant snake!

I love that the little girl behind us is posing because it's her dad that is taking the picture :)





Faith's homemade dollhouse

Faith is our little architect. Our dancing, singing architect. She loves to build with blocks, and is good about instructing me on where everything should go. The other day she wanted me to build a house for "her faithys" - those are two playmobil girls that she calls Faith.

Once the building was complete, she became an interior designer and asked me to make a couch and a TV. Then two chairs for mom and dad.


You can see that the girls are snacking on chips - and per Faith's request, I made two paper plates for them. Oh, and a remote control... which earned Noah a whack on the head when he tried to touch it!


Watching TV - saving up for a flat screen


Friday, July 22, 2011

What does Livermore have in common with Iraq?

A few weeks ago, Darren found this spider on our garage in the middle of the night. Having never seen a spider such as this, he took a few snapshots to show our Clark Pest Control guy next time he came to spray the house. Well, Andrew our bug guy showed up last Wednesday (turns out he had just finished his Pandamania VBS at church - more about Pandamania coming soon!) and he had no idea what this spider was.

Since I am a closet detective, I got right on the case. When I zoomed in on the pic, I noticed two things: 1. it is hairy and 2. it appears to have 10 legs! I extensively researched (okay, so I googled) ten-legged spiders, and voila, got my answer. This is a solifugae!



Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to introduce to you, the camel spider, also known as a sun spider. Look at that sweet face - almost like a little spider-puppy! For the record, they only have 8 legs, with the final two just being "appendages" - but to me they are just legs.


These spiders are often found in Iraq and desert areas - but somehow it found it's way to Livermore. They can grow up to SIX INCHES LONG! And though they have really intimidating jaws, they are not venomous or dangerous. However, they have a reputation of being attack spiders because they are fast, they like shade, and they, well, sort of scream at times. Sooooo, imagine finding one of these in your shadow and you begin to back away, and it follows you...so you jog... and it speeds up in pursuit... you are screaming... IT is screaming... you get the picture. It would appear he is chasing you, when in reality he is just loving to hang out in the shade of your shadow!

This is the position it took with Darren, all threatening and stuff with his arms up. Not sure he realized how small he was compared to Dar.


Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Thursday, July 7, 2011

Happy Anniversary!

My husband is always amazing when it comes to surprising me for birthdays, etc. Well celebrating our 8th anniversary was no exception :) he surprised me with dinner at Wente and a Colbie Caillat concert (fell in love with her while dancing with a baby Noah to her songs). What an amazing night - can't wait for her to start :)

Cheers to another 8 years honey!!