The McCathran Family: Summer Spectacular!

I realize I'm woefully behind on my blog and posting pictures of the kids, but I've had a great excuse. Last week was our VBS at church--we called it Summer Spectacular (the name we stole from Richland Hills' VBS). I helped direct VBS and am still recovering! We had it in the evenings from Sunday-Wednesday and it ended up being so much fun. We had 90 visiting children come which we were super excited about because one of our goals was to reach out to our surrounding community. We used the kid's Christian band, Go Fish's, VBS curriculum, Backstage with the Bible. The premise of the material was for each evening to start with a concert and then have the kids go "backstage" for the Bible stories, crafts, games, and music. The Bible class material basically told the Gospel story so for kids new to church, it was perfect. We hadn't had a VBS at our church in about 8 years and some of us parents really wanted to bring the tradition back and let our kids experience the wonder of VBS. I'm on the Children's Ministry outreach team at church and we initially started planning it in April and somehow I became the leader over the volunteers, curriculum, crafts, and registration. I really do need to learn to say no one of these days :)

I learned so many things throughout this experience, but probably the biggest is that I need to learn to delegate more! I also learned that I have incredible friends that will work their tails off! We had so many fun late nights up at the church working on decorations and crafts and formed some wonderful new friendships. I have so many thank you notes to write, but it's so hard to know where to start.

I know Jake had a truly spectacular time. For the next three days after VBS was over, he woke up asking to go back. Our slogan for the week was "God Rocks" and he yells that all over our house! In fact last week due to a storm, our power was out for 7 hours and when it finally came back on, Jake yelled, "God Rocks!" If all of the work of VBS was just to have Jake understand how Big and Wonderful God is, than it was worth it! Jonesa taught his Bible class which made the week that much more special for Jake. He loved having Jo Jo as his teacher. Grace just got to participate on a small level, but they brought the little ones into pre-school music/puppets each night. She LOVED the puppets and danced with the music and had a ball. Bless her heart, I drug her to the church so much during June, I'm pretty sure she thinks that's her second home!

Ty was also awesome in helping with the kids while I got VBS ready. Sunday morning, I left early to man the registration table, and Ty was going to bring the kids a bit later for church. He called me at 9:30 to say that Jake was throwing up. He took wonderful care of him all day so I could finish getting all of the decorations ready and run the volunteer meeting Sunday evening. My kids missed the opening night, but Ty was a trooper taking care of them so well.

Another neat aspect of the week was the mission project the kids did. We wanted the kids to understand that part of loving God is loving and serving others. We chose our heart organization, It's My Heart, to serve. We had the kids bring items for comfort bags for children in the ICU with CHDs at Texas Children's. We also had the kids make cards for kids in the hospital as well. We have three kids and two adults at church with CHDs so it's an issue close to home.

Even though VBS was exhausting, it was such a blessing! I'm so thankful that I have deeper friendships with so many…I'm thankful that so many children were touched by God through the week and that our own kids hopefully grew to know God better…God does Rock!

I forgot to take too many pictures, but here's a few I took plus some from others:

Gracie

The It's My Heart Table

The registration signs…since we had a musical theme, each group was a different instrument. The kids had backstage passes for nametags which had the pictures of the instruments on the back of the tags.

Jake performing on the last night

Grace with my friend Jennifer's daughter, Emma.

My favorite craft of the week which was a bit of a nightmare to prepare. One night we did the Ten Commandments so for the Pre-school kids, they did a matching game with symbols to represent each commandment. It turned out cute, but took forever to prepare! Hopefully, the kids liked it :)

Grace talking to the puppets during music time

The last night the elementary kids performed a Go Fish song they'd learned that week, a new version of "The B-I-B-L-E." It had choreography to go with it and was totally reminiscent of Spring Sing for me! The kids did a fantastic job, and I love that in this picture, the boys from the youth group are performing with the kids. The youth group served as our group leaders and did a great job!.

The last night's lesson was on Jesus dying for us. The teachers put iodine in water to symbolize sin and then added bleach to show what Jesus did for us.