Summer brings to mind relaxation and fun, a break from the every day chores of life. No school, vacations, swimming - nothing but fun in the sun!
My summer, however, begins with Vacation Bible School. My sister and I have co-directed our church's VBS for the past two years. We both absolutely love VBS. I loved it as a child and I love it still as an adult. I love the themes, the crafts, the songs, the games, but most of all I love seeing kids learn about Jesus. It's the most fun and exhausting week of the year! But for us, VBS starts earlier than that week. Planning began almost as soon as last year's was over and in January we begin monthly meetings with the other directors. The week before VBS is spent making props and sets for the platform, making sure room assignments are ready, having final meetings, stuffing bags for the leaders and basically just getting everything in order for Vacation Bible School to happen. Then the week finally arrives and we get to have fun - most of the time! We get to wander around and see everyone's hard work pay off. We get to have kids run up and hug us or give us a high five. Best of all, we get to see children give their lives to God! That is truly what makes everything worth it. We finish the week with a program for their parents and a carnival where we both spent some time in the dunk tank and got attacked by water balloons as we ran an obstacle course. The kids loved it!
VBS is busy enough, but our church also has a musical bootcamp that runs through the week of VBS and the week after for the middle and high school kids. The kids spend two weeks learning music, choreography and drama to perform for their families, but also get to choose other electives like sign language, woodworking, kung fu, art and knitting. It's a fantastic program and the kids have a blast! This year, both Ashley and I taught an elective. Ashley taught sign language and I taught knitting. We were also both music mentors which means we sit in the choir with the kids and sing with them so they can hear what the music is supposed to sound like. It was a lot of work, but so much fun. It made for two exhausting weeks though. In fact, I didn't even make it through the second week. The second week, my son got sick on Sunday, my daughter got pink eye on Tuesday, I got the stomach flu on Wednesday and Thursday and my other daughter was sick on Friday. I think we were all a little run down by this point.
This week, my kids still have some events going on, but I'm not helping in any of them which is such a relief. I still don't get to have those lazy summer days, but nothing is urgent this week. I need to work on my house (several weeks of running constantly has created a landfill in our home) and I am taking time to get back to my writing! I've missed it so much! I'm so glad to be able to get back to Kate, Georgia, Brooke and Isabelle! I almost hate to set another deadline for myself because I've already miss so many, but I'm hoping that I'll have book four done by mid July at the absolute latest. I'm hoping that now that things are settling down a bit, that I'll be able to have some extended times of quiet to sit and write to my heart's content.
I hope that your summer is filled with activities like these, but also with moments of quiet and relaxation. Take time to read a book, watch a movie, do your favorite hobby, relax at the pool - whatever it is you like to do to unwind. If you haven't read the first three books in the KW Consulting series, go check them out! Then you'll be ready for book four when it comes out in September. You can find them by clicking the links below.
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