How I'm Spending Summer Break

1. Pinterest.... Not that this is different from any other day, but I am working on something here.... I decided that my boards are over loaded! I have an enormous amount of pins that I will either never actually use or I have no clue that are there. With that said, I have decided to reorganize my pinterest boards. Instead of yummy recipes, I now have yummy breakfast ideas, yummy lunch ideas, and yummy dinner. My teacher board has been broken into about 30 categories. This is not fun at all, but I feel like I will get more use out of pinterest this way. 

2. I decided to plant a pot garden... Not working out so well. My herbs are doing well. My jalapenos are doing well... the strawberries, blueberries, tomatoes, and cukes are not. Kind of sad.

3. Cooking! Also nothing new, but I am actually meal planning to help me save money and boost my weight loss! So far, so good! July will be better with the money saving because I will be a little more organized!

4. Reading! I read Diary of A Mad Fat Girl in about 6 hours. It's fantastic! I am dying to read the sequel, but I don't have the money to buy it this month. They have one copy in the entire Hinds Co. Public Library system, but it's checked out right now. I hope it gets turned in soon! 

Other than these 4 things, I am pretty boring. Staying up late, sleeping in, hanging out with friends, playing some games, watching a lot of tv, and doing a good bit of walking. 

Did I mention that I am also facebook stalking all of these people and their pool/beach pictures.... living a glamorous life through the lives of others via facebook!

Youth Missions Week

Each year, our youth group participates in a week of missions projects around Natchez. This year, they visited Adams County Nursing Home on Monday. At the nursing home, they painted fingernails, played bingo, and talked with the residents. On Tuesday, the youth went to Kyle's house. At Kyle's House, they played games with kids, made several crafts, and painted a Parkway Student Ministry Sign on a section of their fence. This is the only day I have pictures from. On Wednesday, the youth went back to the area nursing homes to visit Parkway church members. It really meant a lot to the Parkway members to have 15 people (especially youth) show up and spend time with them. On Thursday, they helped with odd jobs around the church. Some of the boys fixed up the Rec Center, which houses the the children's room and the workout room. The girls helped the secretaries send out letters to the church members about our new paster, Jeff Brewer. Then they all went and helped a church member do a few things in her yard. It was an awesome week for everyone involved, and I look forward to next year's youth mission week!! 

The youth that got to paint the sign... Kent was also there, but had to leave early! 

Their painting on the fence! 

The bottom two pictures are of the youth making crafts with the kids. 

BYBC 2010

All I can say is WOW. I was talking to one of my parents/volunteers this weekend, and we both completely agree that this past week was the best week we've had. It was a wonderful experience for the kids, youth, and the adults that helped out. Here are a few pictures, so you can what a typical day at BYBC looks like! We had the BYBC in the church's backyard. We did this, so that we could have a few things inside to get the kids out of the heat for a little while. 

Each morning the girls started us off with a puppet show that displayed the theme of the way - Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. 

After the puppet show, Steve went through the wordless book with the kids. At the end of the week, the kids made a colors of faith bracelet, and were all given a wordless book to take home. This was by far, the most learned thing we did. At the end of the week, all of the kids could tell you about the colors, and what they meant. This is something we will continue to use to share the Gospel with kids. It's awesome! I recommend the wordless book resources for anyone and everyone!!! 

After our "morning meeting," we started rotations. We had bible study, games, crafts, and snacks. Here are a few pictures from that!! 

The older boys acting out part of the Bible Study- Jesus temped three times in the desert. 

Mrs. Suzy came to my rescue and lead Bible Study for the rest of the week. She is a wonderful teacher!! The kids all love her, and she can keep them all in line... as you can see!! 

Craft time... Mrs. Danielle is just wonderful all around. We had a lot of extra craft stuff from years past, and she took all of that and allowed the kids to make stuff from it! They loved it, it saved us money, and the kids thought is was all AWESOME!! 

On Monday, the kids told Mrs. Danielle they wanted to build a house......so on Thursday, Mrs. Danielle brought big boxes, and let them paint them. These boxes will be turned into a village in an unused Sunday School room in the preschool area. We will have several houses, a church, a school, stop signs, roads, ect. 

The youth boys are awesome! They showed up and did anything and everything we asked them to do. The hardest part of their was leading game time. They showed up early everyday and put together a game plan. ALLLLLLLL of the kids loved them- and so do I!! 

Snack time!! Always a good part of the day!!

My personal favorite part of the day was music time. The youth did an amazing job teaching the songs and motions, and getting the kids engaged in worship. I look forward to worship time at AWANA!!! 

Overall, it was WONDERFUL!! I look forward to AWANA starting next Wednesday. On SUnday, we will have our Back- to- AWANA celebration at the church. It starts at 5:30!1 We look forward to seeing everyone there!!!! 

Block Party

Once again, this is a little late, and my camera was MIA. *note to self- assign my camera to someone who remembers to use it on major event days*

A few summers ago, we decided to opt out of VBS. It was becoming a lot harder to recruit volunteers to make VBS work as it should, so we decided to go to other events. For a few years, we did a sports camp, and then two years ago, we went with Evangelistic Block Parties. About this time, we had a group go to New York on a mission trip. On that mission trip, the group did these types of Evangelist Block Parties in a park in Brooklyn. They worked well there, so we decided to try them out in Natchez. The idea of an Evangelistic Block Party is basically a portable one day VBS. The first year we tried this, we went to 2 different communities. Last year, we tried three. Two at two apartment complexes in our town, and one in the backyard of our church. They were all a huge success. One of the apartment complexes we went to was the same complex we went to the first year. A lot of the kids and parents we talked with were very excited to see us back and all asked if we would come back again next year (which was this year). So, we did. This year, I really wanted to focus on sharing the Gospel with the kids. So many times, it's easy to get caught up in the games, food, and crafts, and forget the real reason that we are doing the block party- to share the Gospel. For Bible Study, I looked a several different VBS themes and found GCF's The Race Is On.

I always like to do a craft that has something tangeble for the kids to bring home to remember the Bible Story. This year, one of our Sunday School teachers and WMU ladies, brought me an idea called Witnessing Dolls. Basically the dolls share the story of Salvation, using CEF's Wordless Book. For the block party, we decided there wasn't a way to have each child a doll, so I created a handout that worked as a doll on one side and had the colors of faith on the other. For the actual craft part, the kids made colors of faith bracelets using the different color beads.  You can click on witnessing dolls above for a link to witnessing dolls guide.

For recreation this year, I decided to use Centri- Kids' OMC!! It's really hard to explain. To see pictures of OMC in action, click on this OMC!!

We do these block parties on Sunday evenings. We basically move church to a different location for the evening. We had a good group show up to help. At the block party, we meet for 2 hours. In that 2 hours, the kids go to Bible Study, Crafts, Rec, and they are fed.  I try to have people to not only teach kids, but also teenagers and adults because you usually have a big number of those come, as well. For food, we usually do hot dogs, chips, lemondade, and popcorn- if I have someone to bring the popcorn popper. Even though we had a terrible rain storm come 10 minute before we were set to begin, we still had 50 kids come. It was a huge success, and we look forward to heading back there sometime soon!!

here are a few pictures I captured from my blackberry during dinner time.

Bro. Wayne holding a witnessing doll that his wife, Mrs. Cheryl,

 made to use as the example. 

Some of the crew gathered around the food table.

Some of the kiddos enjoying their hot dogs!

Our SUPER DUPER, WONDERFUL youth that came out to help (and volunteer to be creamed with shaving cream) with OMC!!

Some more of the kids enjoying their dinner in the bleachers. 

Natural Science Museum

Yes, I know this is a month late, but we had a lot of fun and I want to share!

In June, I took a group of 15 to the Natural Science Museum in Jackson, MS. It was so much fun!! The one thing I didn't really prepare for was the trails that you can walk behind the museum. I didn't really know they were there, so I didn't wear appropriate shoes to hike in. However, we still hiked through all of the trails, and had a great time! Hear are a few pictures from our little day trip! I took a lot more pictures, but they are on Danesha's camera because I left my camera on the van. These are not of the best quality because I took them on my blackberry.

Andrew, Gabe, and Love entertaining themselves on the van! 

My group of boys, Colby, Nak, and Love, in front of the alligators.

A group picture- not the best, but the closest we got! 

Last Pictures from Centri- Kid 2010

These are the last of the pictures I took at Centri-Kid, but first, a few words about the week.


It was a bittersweet ending! I LOVED LOVED LOVED camp! More so than I ever remembering liking camp as a youth! For me, this was the best week of camp I have ever experienced! I sure hope the kids feel the same way I do. With that said, I am tired! The kids were tired. It was time to come back to reality- and squeeze in a little sleep! I will miss camp this week, and miss the staffers that our kids really got attached to!


I thought about camp today as I drove from Clinton to Natchez to Baton Rouge to Natchez to Woodville. This camp awed me. I have been apart of Junior Camp (a camp we used to put on for our kids at Parkway, but put a pause on it a few years ago) since I was in first grade, either as a camper, a visitor, or a leader. I love junior camp. It was a sad day for me when the decision was made to put a pause on camp, but I knew it was absolutely the best decision for many reasons. I was very sceptable about going to another camp. I didn't want to send our kids to a camp where the focus was going to be on track times and recreation. I wanted our kids to go to a camp where the Gospel was the focus. Our kids went to Centri- Kid last year, but I was unable to attend,so I still did not have a good picture of Centri- Kid. I will say, after going this year, and being apart of camp, I was awed every day. The camp pastor has talents for teaching the Gospel that are unexplainable. He crunched toes, had them laughing, and had them begging for more of the word in every service. He was not afraid to approach topics with the kids that are rarely discussed with adults. He was able to take these topics, Spiritual Gifts for example, and convey them on child's level without sacrificing any depth. It was truly an awesome experience to be apart of. The worship leader's main focus was worship- not rock band like you tend to see at some camps. He took time to explain the lyrics of the songs to the kids and then explained how they related to the message. He used the worship services as a classroom to teach the campers what worship was, how to be reverant during worship, how to worship,etc. That was also an awesome experience. By the end of the day, the kids had no doubts about what the message of the day was. It was conveyed to them in everything they did - bible study, rec, track times, worship, morning meeting, and the late night party. I give props to the CK3 staff and leaders for a job well done. It was truly a life changing week for everyone in attendance.


This week also gave me a lot of ideas. I have been struggling with several things and trying to figure out how to get different ideas to work and several ideas and plans were developed this week--these things will be discussed later.


Now on to the group... We took 18 AWESOME kids to camp! They were wonderful!! I am so excited to have been able to spend a week with them! I also had 3 WONDERFULLY AMAZING adults with me! Without the three of them, we would have all been in trouble this week. They held us together and really helped out!


Now onto the pictures!!


Well after all of that, the computer will not allow me to upload the pictures today... here is a link to my facebook album that has all of the picures from camp... the news one are towards the end. Here is a group picture!!

***facebook isn't cooperating either- here is the video i made that contains all of the pictures from camp. the songs are songs we sang at camp!!

Please click on the link below and it will take you to the video!

http://www.onetruemedia.com/shared?p=b2bef99d5f45a195967767&skin_id=701&utm_source=otm&utm_medium=text_url

We have signed up for Centri- Kid 2011!!! It will be July 18-22 at Milsaps College in Jackson, MS!! We are very excited about this!! We have be having informational meeting in August to sign- up and get deposits! You will not want to miss Centri- Kid 2011! The theme will be God Provides! We will be doing fundraisers again, so be on the look out for information for Centri- Kid 2011

OMC!!!!!!!!

Today was OMC!! It is extremely complicated to explain, so I am not going to try to put it into words. Here are a few pictures I was able to capture!

The calm before the storm!!! - with yellow in the back!

Green Team!

Red Team!! 

Blue Team!!

Natalie and Allyson completing a task!! 

Dillon and Daniel completing a task!

Mrs. Danielle helping Hannah and Erin complete a task!

Corryn and her yellow leader!

Allyson getting help on a task! 

Mrs. Danielle trading shoes with Allison for a task! 

Mattie Paige pausing for a picture!

Andrew Cole darting across the field trying to beat the clock!

Sammy reading her next task! 

Owen and Daniel working together on a task!

Anna getting her next task! 

ORGANIZED MASS CHAOS

The "No Fly Zone"

Allison and Erin working together!

Natalie completing a task for Mrs. Danielle!

Allyson and Natalie trading shoes for their last task!!

This was my first OMC, and it was soooooo much fun!! We bought the game, so we will be figuring out how to use it soon!!! 

Centri- Kid Day 3

Tuesday was all about the girls, so if you're a mother of a boy- sorry. All I have is girly pictures today!!

Some of the girls gave their babies back today- they decided mothering was NOT for them. Others are still sticking it out. Some, like Allyson Cole, decided she didn't like her baby, so she got a new one : ) These babies have been a trip!!

Here are a few pictures from our free time. We went to girly time, where they braid hair, paint faces, and paint nails. The girls really like this! Then we went to the coffee shop and played a few lawn games!!

Natalie getting a web put into her hair!!

Some of the Parkway girls at girly time. 

Erin getting her nails painted!

Natalie getting her face painted! 

Playing the karate chop game in front of Jazzmine's.

Hanging out during "hang time."

Erin enjoying a smoothie! 

I am going to post a separate blog for OMC in a little while! 

Bon Appetit!