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Yeay! Photo essays for all!
Tonight concludes our church's weeklong VBS and fundamentalist animal sacrifices.

But first, possibly the sweetest thing ever beheld:

If that's not the most preshus thing ever, then you CAN'T FEEL.

Look, a photo of Liam not sharing!

Last night we kicked off our week-long VBS. My job as the song leader is to exhibit an enthusiasm not unlike that of a cheerleader, which is completely unnatural for me, typically. I was the girl who was briefly scolded by my cheerleading coach for not being "perky" enough and for looking forlorn on the floor. I became a basketball cheerleader simply to get a tri-sport patch on my letter jacket. I was punished for this action by way of long bus rides to games in other towns with a group of giddy girls who loved to karaoke to country songs - including one about some little boy and girl and how the girl dies or something and the guy is all "don't take the girl" or something my gawd I WANTED TO DIE TOO. I always wore headphones and cranked up the Guns-n-Roses. It was a dark time in my personal history.

It's a lot more fun to cheer on a group of kids than it is a bunch of sweaty basketball pimpletons. I'm able to get into it more and the kids had a blast last night. Instead of like regular vacation Bible schools where parents drop the kids off, the program we're using involves the entire family. \

The downside to VBS is that my schedule is sort of tight this week. I've got deadlines, new math curricula to decide on for Liam, and I've got to figure out a way to stop Ewan from plugging himself up with plastic outlet covers, which is what he does now that we're trying to take the binky away:

I spent Easter morning in a crowded church pew with two indecently sassy children, the eldest of which recently discovered his free will and relishes exercising it at the most inopportune times. He's also learned how to roll his eyes with such an exaggerated force that I worry that they'll up and roll right out of his head. I asked him if he could sit down, stop wrestling his cousin, and stop trying to crawl under the pew please and he responded with Excessive Sighing, a phenomenon not normally witnessed until the teenage years, and eye rolling. After the third time of asking politely and trying to nudge him into a different behavior, I decided to pluck him from off the floor, take him into his grandpa's office, and swat him into a different direction. Usually, I spank after my first warning is ignored and as a result, Liam knows that when I ask once or furrow my brow he'd better knock it off or LO, THE SECOND COMING. As a result, I rarely have to swat him.

After we emerged from the office, he bleary-eyed not because he got a swat but because I told him to behave or else the Easter bunny would DIE - I'm kidding, I threatened to sit him out during the egg hunt - did his behavior perk right up.

Mary, the woman organizing the egg hunt, asked everyone to bring candy-filled eggs, if they wished, for the children's egg hunt. WE HAD FIVE HUNDRED EGGS. WE HAD TO HIDE THEM ALL. Twenty minutes of thick, Midwestern heat later, I gave up trying to creatively hide the eggs and settled for flinging them all over the grass instead. I looked up and saw that everyone else had opted for the same method.

The kids tore out of the building like they were on fire and began the hunt. Ewan wasn't so much concerned with the quantity of eggs he found, but with opening and closing the same ONE plastic egg for the next hour. It took us a half an hour to fling five-hundred eggs all over the place and ten minutes for the kids to gather them all.
I didn't anticipate the heat; the temperature hovered in the 50s last Easter; yesterday it was 90 degrees.
And we hid candy-filled eggs.
Mostly chocolate.
OH YEAY.

 

Liam and his best friend J.J. sat on the pavement while going through their loot and got melted chocolate everywhere. I told Liam eleventy-thousand times: "DO NOT OPEN THE CHOCOLATE. It is melted, you are in a suit." Liam heard: "Screw that, GET CHOCOLATE ALL OVER YOUR SUIT."

Each of the boys' grandmothers bought an unholy amount of chocolate for each of the boys, plus toys. Chris and I got them each a chocolate cross, which Chris later decried as kinda Satanic and totally weird, just get a stupid chocolate rabbit next time. Initially I thought "Hey, cool! The symbol of Christianity upon which our Lord and Savior totally died! In chocolate!" TASTY.
Okay, it is kind of weird.

 

(I now have a hideous quantity of chocolate in my refrigerator: Six rabbits, two crosses, three boxes of mini egg whoppers, a bag of chocolate eggs, two Reese's peanut butter eggs.)

Afterwards, we conducted a behavioral experiment at Chris' aunt and uncle's house wherein we fed the kids tons of sugar, chocolate rabbits, and assorted chocolate eggs, let them refuse their naps and run wild.
I'm still twitching from it.