Boys' Bibleman Birthday Blast!

Beau will turn 9 in a few weeks and Champ turned 7 a few weeks ago.
We celebrated last night with many of our friends.
I am always left feeling so blessed after a party.

God has been so generous in offering us such good people to know.

The boys picked a Bibleman theme.

After the kids arrived a played a little bit, they were invited to decorate a t-shirt.
Blue for Beau's team and green for Champ's.

They weren't by age, but just how Mama divided them out.

In the Bibleman movies, the heroes enter a chamber for "Full Armor Sequence," to don their Full Armor of God. Here we had Hanes 50/50 shirts and some fabric markers. ;)

After they went to play some Bibleman's Scripture Slam, a/k/a kickball, the Righteous Warriors vs. the Scripture Sentries.
I think it was mostly friendly. It is hard to find a game that 4 and 5 year olds can play alongside 10 year olds. Many of the dads stepped in to play... I mean, help. ;)

The Warriors and Sentries then headed over to the recharge station for food.

And then we did the pinata.
We skipped the blindfold, b/c I was too lazy to go back in the house and find one.
See below RE: pinata.

I have no idea what Beau is doing here... but it is so funny.

What was left of the shark pinata made a great hat.

Skeezix ate and ate and ate all night. When she wasn't keeping up with the boys!

We were blessed with many fun, new, thoughtful gifts.

And of course, CAKE. And some goofy grins to boot!

The party wasn't perfect.

JB made a point of saying last night that we won't do pinata's anymore for the boys.

The boys and their guests are simply getting too big. Or our parties are getting too large. But I would rather have no pinata than less FRIENDS! I had about 9-10 pounds of candy in that poor shark pinata and some of the little kids got, um, ZERO. Even with asking the bigger kids to share some, it didn't go well. And I just have to admit that the pinata idea doesn't fit These Disciples' idea of what a party should look like. If we just had kids of all one age, or have our kids only invite as many guests as how many years old they are, then maybe it could continue. But we like to invite families and we don't ask the kids to try to identify some of their friends as "worth" inviting. Pretty much anyone they see and play with and call a friend is someone we want to celebrate with.

The other "downer," was related to food safety. We had a number of food allergies present last night. Not only our own peanut, tree nut, soy, sesame, pea, and bean allergies, but we also had three other kids with peanut and soy allergies, as well as beef, pork, milk [x3], tapioca, seafood, gelatin allergies. In my efforts to keed all anaphylactic-reaction-causing foods off the table, I totally failed to remember one guests' intolerance to food dye. :( I am grateful that he and his parents were so gracious and forgiving. Thankfully, he came with his own, safe, cake!

Tennessee Vacation ~ Knoxville Zoo

Yes, we saw a few animals, too...

Tennessee Vacation ~ Theater

Before we left for Pigeon Forge, we looked into what other things were available to do in the area. We had a LOT to consider. The area is VERY built up, with everything from white water rafting to Elvis impersonators. One of the things I heard about via AAA was The Miracle Theater. I took the time to read about it before we went and it seemed worth evaluating further when we arrived.

It wasn't hard to find, as the theater was just a few driveways down from the road our condo was on. Each day we would pass The Miracle and see the Las Vegas style signage that advertised it's presence. We were a bit put off by the gloss, but we weren't TURNED OFF. The boys were so excited each time we saw it and Beau remembered me looking online at the website. He really, really wanted to go.

Wednesday evening, JB, Beau, Champ and I headed over. It was $34.95 for JB and I, but the boys were free. We then coughed up $14.95 before we even entered the theater, to pay for the boys to have a camel ride. It came with a "complimentary" photo. The camel's name was Abba. We later saw him IN the play.

The showiness of the inside of the theater made me a bit uneasy. "What have we gotten ourselves into?" I wondered. We poked around the gift shop and had our photos taken again in front of a mural of an angel and somehow passed on the opportunity to own the 8 x 10 glossy finished printout. We were shown to our VERY, VERY good seats and looked on as some other people purchased flashing cross necklaces and light-up mugs the size of my head. I am not making either of those things up. I was figuring at this point that we had just spent our money on this lavish theater and what kind of money they were raking in. I hoped that we could make the best of it.

Then the emcee came out and as he shared, many of our reservations began to fall away. He shared about the theater's goal of sharing the gospel and of the production's history. As the musical started we were blown away by the cast, the music and the mechanics. The boys LOVED the angels sword fighting overhead!!

At the intermission, the same emcee [who played James and later the thief who didn't come to accept Jesus] talked more about the mission of the theater and invited people to purchase half price tickets to donate to area nursing homes and children's homes. We went out into the lobby where MOST OF THE CAST [minus Jesus and Satan] were working in the concessions! Seriously. Judas put the butter on our popcorn and Peter pulled our Coke off the draught.

After the second half [and about a gallon of popcorn] we were so glad we had not missed the chance to see this production. It was spectacular and Biblically sound. We were blessed.

If you click here, you can see a video. We had different actors playing Jesus and Satan, and they do change the musical a bit from year to year, portraying different miracles and parables. We'd definitely see it again, given the chance.

Birthday Time Again!

Our second July birthday!

Skeezix turned 5 today.
We had a friend party yesterday with five wonderful families we know.
Parties for us are not usually drop-off occasions [although they CAN be].
We love to have the whole family stay - older and younger siblings, Mom and/or Dad.

The kids [17 plus 1 infant!] decorated t-shirts.

Angel out for a ride.

I am embarrassed to acknowledge I bought a pinata for the first time. Normally I make them, carefully over about a week. I like them strong and cheap. They are like $1.75 to make... ripped paper, some sugar, flour and water. And a balloon from the dollar store. But I didn't leave myself time, so instead I spend $12.99 on this star. It was MUCH PRETTIER than mine are, and just as strong for this crowd.

A powerhouse on the pinata.

We even had the adults take turns... I should have posted those pics, huh?

Some lovely, fun gifts.

Preparing to sing!

TA DA.
This is SUPERCAT. On a CAKE!
Skeezix drew it and I recreated it out of partially hydrolyzed soybean oil and powdered sugar. ;)

Today was her real birthday.
They had VBS this morning at Pittsford Community Church.
Then she requested quesadillas for lunch and they played with some of her new toys from yesterday.

At 3:15PM or so, Nan picked her up for a date at Build-a-Bear. Or shall we say, Build-a-Super-Cat.
SuperCat is beautiful.

The brothers were very big on making today her day. They reminded one another constantly that it was her birthday.

I can't not kiss this joy-filled child. I should have been videorecording her the last two days. She exudes JOY. She is just so amazingly joyful.

Check out the progression of expression on these next photos.
She is opening the mask and cape for BibleGirl, from the Bibleman series.

Mommy didn't have it in her to make another cake... so we ate the left overs from SuperCat.