VBS 2014

Vacation Bible School has come and gone yet again. The theme this year was "The Whole Armor of God" (or something like that.)

We did our usual Tues-Fri evenings and finished up with a fun day on Saturday. We had a lot of kids, for us! The smallest number was 20 kids one night, and I think we usually had around 25.

Instead of having multiple teachers and several groups of kids rotating throughout several decorated classrooms during the week, this year only the upstairs, downstairs hallway, and fellowship hall were decorated. The kids were divided into two groups -- the younger group went downstairs for a craft and snack while the older kids stayed in the auditorium for the lesson, then halfway through the evening they switched. Each teacher was responsible for one night's lesson which they taught twice, once to each group. While I was not an active part of all that, I thought it worked out pretty well.


The decorating was awesome, as usual. The crafts were amazing too -- each night each child put together the piece of armor that they also learned about in that evening's lesson, and they stenciled their own personal crest onto each piece. At the end of the week they put on all of their armor and were knighted. They LOVED it!

Eric was part of the skits -- this year he was Squire Tryer, trying to become a knight.

I did the snacks and while I didn't get pictures of most of them, for reference:
*Tues. -- the breastplate of righteousness and the belt of truth -- vanilla cupcakes in foil liners with buttercream icing sprayed silver, and a Fruit by the Foot "belt" around the cupcake part
*Weds. -- feet shod with the preparation of the gospel -- Nutter Butter cookies with gel icing to make them look like flip-flops
*Thurs. -- the shield of faith -- rice cereal treats cut into the shape of a shield with molded chocolate cross "crests" on them
*Fri. -- helmet of salvation -- sugar cookies with royal icing helmets and decorated with gel icing
*Sat. -- sword of the Spirit -- pretzel rods attached with Twizzlers to make swords

On Saturday I also served lunch which was chicken nuggets, li'l smokies in barbecue sauce, meatballs, corn on the cob, rolls, fruit, and raw veggies.

Forgive the sporadic and terrible pictures. I didn't get any of the castle in the auditorium -- someone was teaching while I was going around taking pictures, so I didn't want to go in there, and then I forgot to go back. It was a pretty awesome castle, too. I'll have to come back and add a picture of the girls in their armor.

The "dungeon"