Dairy Daze...and Now Beyond

Vacation Bible School This summer, for the first time ever, Ellen is helping with VBS instead of attending as a student.  She is 17, and could still be in a class, but the crafts teacher needed help so Ellen signed up. The craft class is held in the kitchen where I was helping, so I snapped a few pictures of Ellen at a distance.  I caught some epic expressions.  She doesn't read this blog and the kids are all looking away from the camera, so here you go.  Hahaha...  (She is the one on the left in the dark brown shirt.)     This one wasn't zoomed in, so I got the leavings of the mac and cheese, as well as a few of the adults.  This class had about 24 in it!  In all there were over 90 kids in attendance.  Quite a few kids for a little country church.  Usually we average about 50 or so in all.

Here is my once-monthly blog entry. Really, I DO mean to blog more often, but somehow it just gets pushed to the wayside. I really need to update the photo too. Well, that will have to wait as well. Above please see Ellen and her newest buddy; the only other little girl in the pre-school VBS class. Fact: In 2 days we, Ellen and I, are flying out of MO and back to CA for a 2 week visit. Fact: Last week was Vacation Bible School at church. I am still frazzled from that. Fact: In the 2 weeks before and the week of VBS I get nothing done but the very basics. Fact: Now I needs must do cleaning, cook lots of food to sustain my husband in the 18 days I am gone, because he won't go shopping or do any major food prep by himself, and try and prep my garden for my absence as well. Fact: The weeds are taking over my garden. Fact: I will not be here when the peas need harvesting. Fact: I need to tie up my tomatoes. Fact: Oh, yes. I have to pack for both Ellen and myself. Any more ...

Here is a picture of about half of my onion crop. Most of the rest of it is still out in the garden, waiting until I get a chance to harvest it. I am going to chop many of these up and freeze them for later use in stir-fries or soups. It cuts down on prep time. I do not eat raw onions; they come back on me something awful. But hubby and Ellen love raw onions. Hubby likes them sliced up with cucumbers in salted vinegar water. I eat the cukes, but not the onions. Ellen eats the onions but not the cukes. She frequently has onion breath. ******** This week I am slaving away at VBS. I am teaching the preschool class. So far I have had 6 students in my class each day, though we originally started off with 7. One student decided to move up to the next class with his grandma; which was fine with me. He is one of those squirrelly kids you can't keep still anyway. I forgot to take pictures today, but I will try to remember tomorrow. Thankfully there have been plenty of helpers ...

Today was the last day of VBS, which always involves a barbecue and some kind of entertainment for the kids. I slipped off to home early to put the baby down for her nap, so I don't know what exactly the entertainment was. Yesterday was "wear camouflage" day; something that one of the teachers and his class of boys came up with. I don't own a stitch of camo so I ended up borrowing a camo T-shirt from a friend there. Some folks didn't bother with it either, including the pastor's wife. The pastor is big into hunting and owns lots of camo, apparently his better half could care less. This is a picture of him up a tree in the parking lot doing a lesson on Zacchaeus. It was hard to get a good shot of him because the sun was behind him, but this turned out pretty well; keeps him anonymous. He stayed up the tree for at least 2 hours; from about 9:30 AM 'til 11:30 AM or so. For a couple of the classes it was a fun surprise, but the older ones had caught on by the ...