The Rise of Dr. Avalanche!

Today we featured the rise of Dr. Avalanche, a brand new character that we're introducing to KidPak.  Inspired by Jack Lemmon from "The Great Race," this character is so much fun to write, and of course there's his sidekick Nerdo there, who is just perfect for a teammate in this race up the mountain.

We had a great morning at KidPak, and as you can see above with at least five of the characters, their costumes came out fantastic.  Mom did a good job there!  The actors were really good in their roles, and the service on the whole was just wonderful.  

Madison was upstairs for the first service, enjoying the sermon from Pastor Franklin.  It is the start of the church fast today, and we're of course starting with that too.  Madison is fasting sweets, especially peppermints!  She says she has a problem with eating too many of those!  But she's also cutting back on screen time on her phone too, which is actually a pretty big sacrifice.  We had some cauliflower pizza today, and it wasn't too bad.  We're fasting meats and sweets, but there's a lot more time spent reading the Bible as well - today was spent looking at the book of Philemon, which is a super short book of the Bible that I always wanted to study a little more.  I mean, what's this small letter doing in the Bible?  We're finishing up with Judges tonight, although not reading those last two chapters.  I think we'll move on to the book of Esther.  Purim is coming up next month, so that would be good to read. 

Speaking of reading, we did cover another chapter of "Scoundrels" tonight, and already I remember how much I liked this book.  I'm not entirely sure what the deal with heists are, but I just have that in my thought process lately, with this book and the movie we watched tonight.  It was "The Italian Job," and I forgot how much I love this movie.  We're talking about the original one, of course, with the cliffhanger ending.  Literally.  It's a fun movie, and the small cars are just great to see in that car chase at the end.  We might see the updated version later on this week, although tomorrow I wanted to watch one of my favorite mountain climbing movies.

Movies seem to be a good thing to keep Nana distracted a bit, as she's back to the weepiness lately.  She's also having to be reminded to eat food.  Sometimes we get into the afternoon before we convince her to eat.  Other times it isn't so bad, as it just depends on the mood.  She was at church this morning, but only in KidPak to see the skits and to hear the message.  No matter - it's still the Word that goes out, and it doesn't not return void.  

Madison did do a bit of piano practice this evening, and she spent some more time drawing, although not another self-portrait.  It's great seeing her working on her art again, drawing and getting better with her skills with the pencils.  

It was a relaxing afternoon, leading to a nice evening together.  It's perfectly ugly outside, so we're glad to be indoors where it's warm, and there's a nice fire in the fireplace.  There's a lot of craziness going on out there right now.  We said our prayers again, and were off to sleep rather quickly.