Keep Your Eyes on the Soldiers

This week we are having a Vacation Bible School experience at our local park. Our church, along with 8 or so others are holding our joint Bible school at the park in hopes of attracting other children and families that might not have a church home. It's called Marketplace and simmilates what life might have been like at the time of Jesus. There are shops where the children can make things (like clay pots, jewelry, dreidels, etc.), there are tribal families where the children learn about Jewish traditions, there is Synagoge school where the children learn about Jewish traditions. And then there are the Roman Soldiers. When we were at home over the weekend we saw a float in the parade that had the three crosses and Roman Soldiers walking behind it. Jake then began to be leary of the soldiers as my mom made some comment about the soldiers killing Jesus. Jake took that statement into himself and is still leary about the soldiers to this day. Everytime they walked by he'd hide behind me and watch them the whole time. Things escalated a bit when we learned last night that Jesus had been arrested...now Jake is really aware of the presence of the soldiers around us. We'll see if the rain and severe heat holds off tonight whether Jake will ever take his eyes off the soldiers or not.

Am I This Old?

This weekend we are back home for the annual Celina Lake Festival...a weekend full of fun, fireworks and the Grand Parade. Throughout this weekend I have also had the pleasure of seeing a few people that I went to high school with. And boy have we changed. Now in my work with college students I begin to think of myself as one of them...a 20-something fun-filled person with lots of energy and few years. But when I look at some of the people that I remember from the good ol'days I can't help but be reminded when we were in our prime and youth. It's hard to picture some of the real jocks of the football team being overweight and balding...some of us with our gray/white hair coming in. I guess that's why The Boss wrote that song about Glory Days...

I Survived Tomb Raider the ride!

For the past two days, I have been in Cincinnati with our college students from church. We took a trip to Kings Island and what an adventure we had. I was talked into riding a few rides that I just, frankly, wasn't sure of but was assured I would be ok. The worst of these was the Tomb Rider ride....which included going upsidedown several times and hanging upsidedown for a little while...enough to have someone encourage me to open my eyes to see what was around me. See, the ride is base, of course, on the movies so you are in a "cave" and spinning around and around...you see stalagmites and then you are rotated again and are in a lava pit...the freakiest things about the ride were feeling your bottom come completely off of your seat and then seeing the folks around you with their hair above their heads. I kept thinking that I somehow was going to fall out of the safety harness. But all was well, or so I thought. I didn't realize that as we were on the ride I must've held exceeding tight to the harness...I was shaking as I got off and both of my wrists ached so bad. Today I woke up and my biceps on both arms ache and ache. Well, at least I can say I did it so I never have to ride it again. Lara Croft? I am NOT!

Fired Up for the Fourth

Over the weekend we got to see a great fireworks display in Cincinnati. The colors were brilliant and the music that went with them was wonderful. One thing that I did find ironic, though, was the company that put on the fireworks was for cleaner air. What's cleaner in the air than the sulfur smells of fireworks? Anyway, the show was wonderful.