Swim Lessons & VBS

What a great time we had at VBS and swim lessons over the last few weeks!!  

The VBS theme was Weird, Wild One-of-a Kind.  The event began Sunday morning and continued through Sun/Mon/Tues/Wed evenings.  Noelle brought her friend, Evelyn, and their crew won the pizza party for having brought the most canned goods to donate!

Luke and I headed up the Bible Adventure session, which each "crew" came to during each VBS session.  We were reminded of how precious all of these little souls are as we involved them in the bible stories.  We got to wash their little feet, run and hide from Saul (which did induce some tears, oops), cover them with sticker leprosy, and give them drinks of water from a well.  We were amazed and delighted by how easily these little ones were transported to another time and place and totally involved in the stories.  

I think my favorite moment of the week was washing those sweet feet.  I loved hearing their comments and questions - Is it cold?  This is embarrassing.  I don't want to do this.  Oh - it feels good!  Can you wash my feet again? Why are we doing this? This is weird!  I love this!  

Regardless of their initial response, I'd say each child felt loved and cherished as the Silverthornes (our co-leaders) and ourselves knelt down and rubbed those little feet.  I loved looking up at one child at a time, taking a minute to fully focus on serving and recognizing that one child.  I was overcome by love for these children, knowing that the Lord's love for his disciples and for these kiddos far surpassed mine own.  Loving on these VBS-ers and seeing other adults love on our own kids definitely increased our sense of commitment, thankfulness, and connectedness to the Alpine church.  

And, our VBS mornings were our swim lesson days.  We had all 3 kids in class at the same time, which was awesome!  Isaiah and Noelle were probably in classes too easy for them, but they enjoyed them and thrived.  Noelle's teacher said she's never had a student so willing and eager to swim - "She's crazy good!"  Lucy mastered airplane arms, rocket arms, jumping in, bear claw arms, and she learned to be dunked w/o tears.  I really loved getting to do a mommy and me class w/ her.  Most of the days she was fully delightful and delighted by the whole experience.

Sorry to the lady in the back!  Ha!

And we did classes simultaneously w/ the Kitchens boys!  Ryan and Noelle were in the same class.