Jumping Jellyfish!

After three hours of sleep, Daddy got right back up again and we got things started at KidPak.  You can see Josh there - both of us are pretty wiped out by this point, but it's a great feeling knowing all that work paid off:  the kids really enjoyed it.  Madison got to see the service twice, and Mr. Juan did a great job as the voice of the shark.  He had quite a bit of menace to the morning, threatening our main characters and driving the ongoing series onward.  Meanwhile, our message about Dagon and the Philistines was effective with that bottom line:  have no other gods before the one true God.

     His name was Dagon, and he was just a statue – and a weird one at that. He had a human head and arms, but a great big fish tale instead of legs. A long time ago, the Philistines created this statue because that was the image of their god. They had fallen for this fish tale for many years, but Dagon was about to fall himself when put in the presence of the one true God!
     You see, the Philistines had captured the Ark of the Covenant from the Israelites. The Ark, of course, was the presence of God that was carried with the Israelites wherever they went. Now, it was in the Philistines’ hands – who left it in Dagon’s Temple right next to the fish god.
     There’s only one God, and we can never have anything larger in our lives than the one true God – and these Philistines found that out the hard way. They marched into their temple the next day and something was fishy: Dagon had fallen over, flat on the ground before the Ark of the Covenant. You’d think the Philistines would have gotten the big picture then and there – every knee shall bow before God.
     Yet they propped up their poor little fish god and put him back in place. What kind of god are you serving if you have to help him around? But once Dagon, the Mermaid Man, was put back into place, the same thing happened all over again: the statue fell over before the presence of God – this time breaking off Dagon’s head and hands.
     The Philistines tried to send it elsewhere in their land, but curse after curse rained down upon them until one day they decided they’d had enough. They strapped the Ark to a cart with some cows and pushed it off away from their country. Funny, even the Philistine’s cows knew who the real God was. They took that Ark right back to the Israelites where it belonged.
     It should have been clear to the Philistines who the real God was – in fact, anything else is just fishy.

We stopped to pose for a picture in between services, and it was nice because Mommy got to stop as well. We still have one more character to add, but the sea turtle won't appear until next week.  Our videos were absolutely great this morning too.  Lots of work went into these - just as much as what went into the shark video.

Here's Daddy doing a bit of deep sea diving when he discovered a statue that could be of Dagon.  The two have a conversation about not having any other gods, which sort of explains why this one statue was chunked to the bottom of the sea.  The other video was an idea that Daddy and Josh came up with:

Daddy's character was obsessed with the Quaker Oats Man, almost treating him like a god.  That's when the Quaker Oats Man pops into the kitchen from out of nowhere - think of Powdered Toast Man there - and has a conversation with the two guys at the table.  Yes, there is no other god but the real one.  And just as the lesson is learned, the same portal that delivered the Quaker Oats Man opens - and out comes the Land O' Lakes Lady.  She tells him that the Jolly Green Giant is in danger, and from here, the two must go quickly!  This is all a set-up for an 'Avengers'-style team-up that we're pretty stoked about:  a superhero team made up of the Quaker Oats Man, Land O' Lakes Lady, Jolly Green Giant - and maybe a few others:  Uncle Ben, Aunt Jemima, Lucky the Leprechaun, and the Morton Salt Girl.  There's plenty to choose from, and they can do battle against the likes of the Pillsbury Doughboy!  All in the name of making a point, of course...!

We got home mid-afternoon, and everything was just peachy!  Seriously, we all had a great morning at KidPak, but it was time for a quick bite to eat, and then a pretty hefty nap for Daddy, making up time for last night.  Mommy needed a little rest as well, but we were all up late afternoon for a few minor tasks.  One thing was finishing up piano practice.  Madison did just that, which has been easy so far.  Still, she needed a tiny bit of motivation to complete the task, which is where that Minecraft calendar came in handy.  She is on Day Seven of the calendar, with just eighteen days to go there.

We did not get to a movie tonight, as Mommy was getting busy setting things up for Labor Day tomorrow.  The family is coming over, so we will want to have everything set up and cooked and ready to go.  Looking forward to that - for one thing, we'll have our rest.

Tonight we played a video game, but a new one that we have had a while, and simply not tried out yet:  Toy Story Mania.  Madison and Daddy really liked this one, playing in non-stop for a while, trying to hit as many targets as possible.  The game is basically a recreation of the ride down at Disney's Hollywood Studios.  The ride itself is really, really basic:  you just go from screen to screen, shooting at various targets with a Toy Story theme.  The difference between the game we have and the ride is that we're doing this one at home.  And there's no one-hour wait, or a race to get a Fast Pass.  Seriously, this is the most popular ride in that park - or at least it was when we were there.  So we basically have the ride in our house now, minus a few bells and whistles.  We got so many achievements today playing the game - it was a lot of fun.

But as you can imagine, we were all a bit tired.  We retired for the night early, and went through the routine of bedtime:  prayers, Bible, brushing teeth, checking for bugs, and reading another chapter from the latest Never Girls book.  Note to self:  stay away from Mist Horses.