Graduation Party

Maddie had yet another big day today, starting out with church of course, because it's Sunday.  We had our service at KidPak, and that was fun - I had a new skit with Nerdo as Samson, and would he be able to pull the sword from the stone?  I had gotten this fun idea from watching animated movie, "The Sword in the Stone" this week, and that was to have special lighting and music occur each time Nerdo touched the sword.  Of course, he does this repeatedly, and the lighting and music kept going back and forth over and over again - it was a fun moment that the kids loved, one that kept the sound and lighting team on their toes!

For the second service, we realized that the graduation announcements would happen after worship, during the service, and not at the beginning.  Translation:  Mom and I were there for the entire service.  We found our seats, and soon we were on our way.  Maddie had gone up there at 10am, and was all cued up for the process, lined up with all the other graduates along the side just after worship.  One by one, Pastor Lance called out the names of all the students in alphabetical order, and that's when Maddie went across to be congratulated by Pastor Franklin, Pastor Tucker and Pastor Jacob too!

And then Pastor Franklin led us all in a prayer with the students, speaking of how proud we all are of their accomplishment.  It was a really nice moment!  We had a good service today at KidPak, and enjoyed service upstairs as well.  And can you believe Maddie was hard at work, still taking pictures of our KidPak service as well?  Here are just a few of the photos she took this morning.

After service, we ran into Pastor Lance to snap a photo with him, and then we were soon on our way to Nate's house to pick him up.  After that, off to Sam's Club to pick up supplies for a graduation party!  We zoomed around picking up things to eat and drink from there, and felt ready for the party.  The four of us got home and got busy decorating, hanging up lights, vacuuming, hanging up decorations, putting food out and getting things ready for the big celebration.

Soon Maddie's friends she invited were here, and from there on it was super fun!  There was plenty of good food and lots of selfies there at the selfie-station.  Maddie got some polaroids too, of course.  And there were lots of card games, some exploring in the back yard, and some hilarious karaoke.  Maddie and her friends had a really wonderful time!  Here are some pictures from tonight's event, the big graduation party!

After all the friends left somewhere after 9pm, it was time to take Nate back home too.  First, he helped us clean up here, and then we drove there and said our goodbyes.  When Maddie got back we did some reading from our current Kingdom Keepers book, and then we said our prayers - time for some sleep.  Eventually!