Back to School Prayer Service

It's Sunday morning, which means it's time for the latest upload of some highlights of Maddie's photography from service.  As you can see above, she got some great pictures.  Here are a few more:

This morning was our yearly "Back to School Prayer Service," where we lined the kids up and had them go upstairs to walk through the sanctuary in line to be personally prayed over by Pastor Franklin and the pastoral staff up there.  It's a long, long, line!  We usually have an abbreviated service, one that explains things a bit, and then we walk through the line, going straight to the classrooms afterwards.  It's a good morning!

Today was a good day.  We were resting the remainder of the day, eating hot dogs and summer food, and of course watching the Olympics.  We've been prepping for the new "Toy Box" series too, getting costumes, getting together images and scriptures.  I've been proofing and getting these booklets ready to go for next weekend.  We'll have an eight-message booklet, plus a month-long devotional as well, all themed to "Toy Story."  It's looking good, and yes, I'm actually pretty excited about watching some of these "Toy Story" movies, specials and shorts again.  Yeah, I'm probably going to be playing some of the "Toy Story" video games as well, although right now Maddie and I are still marching forward through the frozen Donkey Kong Island so that we can find out the source of all the cold.  The levels are challenging, but we're making it!

We saw some great stuff with the Olympics.  This weekend we got to see that incredible Men's 100m race, the one with the photo finish.  And we love that Djokovic got his gold medal after five Olympic tries.  Strange to call him an underdog, but that's the way it was, and the match was a long, hard battle that he came out on top of, to much emotion and rejoicing.  And what about the American victories in the pool, finally getting that one gold medal to edge out the Aussies in the gold medal tally for swimming competitions.  The Chinese are really doing amazing things in the pool too, so I suspect it will be a three-way battle there in some respects.  Although this new French star looks unstoppable, and likely to be winning quite a bit in the future.  We were watching the more obscure sports too, high jump and skeet shooting too, plus equestrian.  I saw these in person when going to the Olympics in Atlanta.  It was my vacation time, going down each day to visit a different sport.  I remember getting to the rowing venue's box office right when it opened super early, and buying tickets right there and then for whatever it was that showed up.  When I found out about the men's final for swimming relay, I got those tickets for my dad - maybe the best gift I ever got him.  I remember he said people were offering he and Mom thousands of dollars for their tickets.  I know how much he loved the swim meet games, and he was there in person at the Olympics to see it for himself.  And of course, the US Team won there too.  Over the course of a few weeks, I saw the equestrian finals, rowing, soccer, high jump, 100m racing, javelin, basketball, baseball, and some of the symphony programs they had playing at the Arts Center.  I remember eating at the Sundial, looking out over the Atlanta cityscape, looking down at all the people from that high point while looking at the various venues all lit up, with the sports blimps floating overhead.  It was a happy time.  We were so blessed to see all that in person.  And a few weeks later, I went back to the Paralympics too.  It was all pretty awesome.

Okay, anyway, tonight we did have to go to bed earlier.  Or at least on time!  Maddie's got school tomorrow.  Nine months to go until she graduates.  And then after that... well, that's one extra thing we were working on today, a bit of a celebration that's got us all looking forward to something in the near future.  Until then, it was time to read tonight, and then prayers, and then some sleep.