Move VBS

I just went to get my camera to pull off all the pictures I took today of Abby doing the different activities at VBS, and I discovered it's not in my bag. Must've left it on the counter of the 2's and 3's room at church. Grr! I'm not worried about it being stolen, but it is kind of annoying as this is probably the last chance I'll have to blog before I go on vacation, and I wanted her parents to get to see the pictures. :(

Anyway, I think Abby is really enjoying it! The first day, she obviously didn't know what to make of it, and yesterday she was still a little shy, but apparently the third day is the charm! Today she got excited when we pulled into the church parking lot, then ran straight to her class without me when we got to the auditorium. We still have the "wigglies" when it comes to assembly, but really, it's such a long time for small kids to sit (20-30 minutes each time) and she does better than several kids who are a few years older than her.

I bought her an "offering brick" today to put on the offering pile. I think I was expecting a little more enthusiasm, but she seemed kind of unimpressed with it. Oh, well! I wanted to get a picture of her putting it on the pile, but one of my "not so well-adjusted" little ones *hums loudly* began misbehaving at the exact moment Abigail went up. I turned to take care of it and missed the moment completely. Oh, well.

We've been coloring pictures each day with our daily verse... "...God made the world," "I am fearfully and wonderfully made," etc and each afternoon we come home and put them on the fridge. :)

This is the daily schedule of events, for whomever is interested: We arrive a little early and hang out with our class before assembly. During assembly, we sing songs, do the brick offering, and pray, then we go to our classroom. We color our picture of the day, then we have some free play before storytime. During storytime we learn about the daily truth, and we usually have a small activity that illustrated the daily truth - the first day, when we learned about how God made us, we got to feel some dirt in a bucket; the second day, we learned about our sense of hearing and smell by passing around small film canisters filled with scented cotton balls or small objects that rattled. We also learned about our sense of touch by passing around frozen objects (Abigail loves frozen things - MAggie uses ice packs frequently, and whenever she uses them around Abigail, she loves to touch them and then go "brrrrr!").

Today we learned about how Jesus was God's gift to us, so we passed around a big box with a box (a "gift") filled with stickers. When the music stopped, whoever was holding the box got to pick a sticker. There may have been a little maneuvering on the part of the adults to make sure everyone won at least once! :)

We have time in the gym, where we get to play with balls and buckets and stick horses and other fun stuff (today we got to climb around/inside a wooden pyramid), and then snacktime.

We do a small craft after snacktime, have a little more freetime, and then closing assembly. :)

After dismissal, we take Anna to lunch, as we're all starving by then. Today Anna was going to lunch with some other folks, so I thought we'd just go home and eat there, but we had to detour a little bit to drop Anna off at her truck (she rode with us that morning), and all of a sudden Abigail got really excited. I couldn't figure out what in the world she was so happy about until I realized our path was taking us right by Chickfila. :) She kept saying a particular word over and over again - I don't know if she was trying to say "there" or "Chickfila" or just "chicken" - but I tried to reason with her.

"We're not going to Chickfila, Abigail, we're going to go home and eat YOGURT and PEANUT BUTTER" (normally this is enough to make her want to run home right away).

She kept repeating her word.

"We'll go home and get food, Abby, ok?" I kept telling her. I kind of expected her to throw a little fit.

She looked over at Chickfila, and she turned to me with her face all glowy and hopeful, like she just knew we were going to get her favorite food, and she said "Please?" just as perfectly as anyone could say it.

It was the first time she's ever said "please" to me - not that I don't encourage it, if she asks for something by grunting at it I always ask her, "Can you say please?" and she'll nod and say "Yeah!" which I accept, since her heart is obviously in it, but she never actually says the word.

So my heart absolutely melted. I am a bad nanny. I totally took her to Chickfila and bought her nuggets and she got so excited she started giving me kisses. It takes so little to make her so happy. And seeing her so happy makes me so incredibly happy, too. I'm justifying it as she asked so nicely, and didn't throw a fit at "no," and said "please" for the first time, and was really hungry - she ate seven of the eight nuggets. :)

Anyway... tomorrow is our last day of VBS and tomorrow night I fly out for vacation and won't see her for a whole ten days. This is the first time in my life that I'm actually worried about getting homesick while I'm away. I know she and mommy and daddy will have fun, but I'll miss her terribly. I already wish we could just skip VBS and spend the whole day reading "One Fish, Two Fish" and watching Pooh Bear and going swimming just the two of us.