Summer comes to an end

So our summer has come to an end. It has truly been a wonderful summer filled with time with family, friends, serving others, camps, swimming, singing, playing outside, etc. The last couple of weeks have been busy busy. To wrap it up we have been skating, gone to Thomasville to see Grandma Gay, been to Splash island water park, taken dinner to Granny and Granddad Thornton, shopped for school supplies for the Migrant Worker's Children, shopped for our own school supplies, visited Emily's school and met her teacher, taken lunch to the Bradfordville Beginning Steps ministry teachers during their teacher planning week, visited with Family from Jacksonville, Celebrated Daddy's Birthday, Dedicated Baby Molly to the Lord, hosted a "Tiara Club" meeting (more on this later), practiced math, visited Books a Million, Have Read and Read and Read, cleaned the house and had a couple of play dates...wow I'm tired :) I can't tell you how much fun I have had with the kids this summer! I have been truly blessed to get to know each one of them better and got to maybe make up some time with them that I lost around this time last year because I was so sick! Our S.O.S. service projects went really well and the kids really got used to it and loved it towards the end of the summer. When we were taking lunch up to the teachers one day at the school at our church...John Daniel said "this shows them that we love Jesus." My only goal with this is that I wanted them to see and feel (put hands on it like a hands on experiment) that what they were learning in the Bible was doable, real, and relevant. The only thing we didn't get to do was to do something for the PEDS floor at TMH but we will work on that!

Now for the "Tiara Club" explanation....Emily has been reading a series of books called the "Tiara Club." She has also been watching Kit Kittredge the American Girl Movie. This spun the idea of having her own club. This child of mine is super imaginative! While John Daniel is doing the practical she is making up movies and songs and clubs. So in my effort to encourage her reading and to teach her work ethic and social skills..I had an idea. I told her that if she was to continue reading the books, get ideas from them, write invitations, plan the party or club meeting, speak in front of the others, write down her thoughts and make lists, create her guest list, plan the menu, and earn money by working for me to help pay for the party then she could invite all her friends and they could have a "Tiara Club" meeting at our house. She was so excited and started planning in late June. She made lists, had a folder of ideas, we picked out cheap invitations at Target, she started really working for me, and she started writing the invitations. I was actually pretty impressed by her attention to detail especially since she can be a little flighty at times. The only thing she ended up getting a little slack about was writing the invitations (she got tired of it) but she did invite 18 people and I told her she had to write every one. I made a deadline for mailing and she completed them with some gentle nudging :) We had the meeting this last week and it was great! All 18 kids showed up and all the moms thought it was a great idea, some even wanted to continue the club meetings. Emily had them all bring a backpack, their favorite book, and a small notebook. She planned two crafts...one was a bookmark and the other was a decorated ice cream bowl. She planned a scavenger hunt where the boys hid some stuff animals and the girls then had to find them in the yard, and had everyone share a picture, sentence, or a theme that they especially liked from their favorite book. Then we had snack which consisted of an ice cream sundae bar with all the toppings! The kids did great and participated nicely. It was a little crazy having 20 kids in the house at once but it was neat seeing the older kids help the younger siblings with things. All these kids are the greatest! I love Emily and John Daniel's friends!