Helping Pizza

 

It's been a while since we did a song-and-dance routine, but this one was a lot of fun.  I was feeling a bit silly on Tuesday or Wednesday and was thinking of a stand-alone song where we told a slightly similar story of Rebecca and Isaac, but we did it with the main characters being a hot dog, a slice of pizza and an ice cream cone.  Our series has these food characters on the booklet, so Mom got all these costumes last year, so why not?  The question of our skit would be who is it that can help our poor slice of pizza?  It was super fun and quirky, and on top of that, I asked Pastor Lance's young daughter to join us, and you can see she's having the time of her life!

The rest of the service was really great too, a service all about generosity and going the extra mile.  But the worship with the kids was really powerful, and it made for a great day.  I had a concentration/memory game that followed the "Better Together" theme, where kids matched up Bible characters, and by the end of it all, we just had a very strong morning at KidPak.  These are just a few of the pictures Maddie took today.

We got home, and it was a relaxing day the rest of the day, a "day of rest," which was somewhat like yesterday.  There was still some further cleaning up to do, but also on the agenda was this "webinar" that Mom and I attended, joining Perry Stone and Bill Cloud online for a few messages.

Mom had food ready for us this afternoon, and we enjoyed a good big lunch - Maddie had her pizza, but I had shrimp, and that was good.  We watched a few more Winter Games today, including a really great comeback for the US Women's Curling team against China, and then the Mens Ice Hockey team winning their match against Germany.  We've got some great players on that US team!

Tonight we read a bit more from "The Fifth Elephant," getting closer to the end of the book there.  The issue of the stolen dwarf bread is resolved, yes.  But Wolfgang is still out there, and despite already being bested, he'll probably be focused on coming back for a bit of revenge.  We'll see as we continue to read tomorrow!

We said our prayers tonight before bed, and got to sleep fairly quickly tonight.  It's been a nice weekend!

Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day!  Mom and Maddie woke up and found some goodies on the table, but so did I!  You can see quite a table full of stuff up there.  And yes, you can see some stuff from Buc-ee's there - there's Buc-ee with the Valentine's Day lollipop, along with a soap sponge from Buc-ee's.  And Maddie got the Buc-ee's rubber ducky, playing cards and some Buc-ee's spicy Cheez Puffs too.  

And check out the gifts I got!  Mr. Peanut is there, along with a Funko Pop of Mr. Peanut, and a big tray of peanuts there too!  You may be wondering about Clarice up there, and yes that's a gift for Mom.  She brought that up at Christmas time, wanting a plush Clarice to go with the Rudolph we have.  Clarice is there, as well as a copy of the movie "Hairspray" from the 1980's.  We haven't seen that one yet.

Anyway, lots of nice gifts today, plus flowers and cards - it's almost like Christmas, but with more hearts.  Oh, but look at the chocolate!

Looks like a big chocolate hockey puck!  Speaking of which, you can see that ice hockey game in the background there - we were definitely in the Olympic zone today watching all kinds of curling, ice hockey, speed skating, skiing, and skeleton racing too.  We got a few things done today, cleaning up the basement somewhat and moving some furniture about.  But it was a pretty quiet day throughout.

Tonight we watched "Eddie the Eagle" and afterwards watched the full big ski jump competition.  Lots of stuff to see!

Maddie had a nice day with Nate, her first Valentine's Day with Nate, and of course estate made it special.  He liked the gifts that she gave him, and she herself got some flowers, and some gifts including a pretty nifty weighted blanket.  That thing has some serious weight to it!  They spent the day together at his house, finishing off "Wonder Man" and just hanging out together, which was nice for Maddie.

It was a quiet Valentine's Day, but a nice one.  We closed out the day with reading from "The Fifth Elephant," and then after that it was time for prayers and some sleep.  We have a big morning at KidPak tomorrow, so it's time to get some rest. 

Sneak to Buc-ee's

Maddie had a great time at camp - here are a few more pictures from the retreat.  I picked her up around noon or so, and she spent the rest of the day resting and settling in again.  Mom had done a good job cleaning up and we did a few things around the house and her room in particular that worked out pretty well.  After dropping off Maddie off at home, I made a little trip west... 

So this was a spontaneous visit to Buc-ee's today, and by me only just because I wanted to get one thing:  a plush Valentine's Day Buc-ee the Beaver for Mom tomorrow.  Of course, while I was there, I just had to pick up a few other items as well, both for Mom and Maddie.

Of course, there was also the car wash there too, which was much-needed after all the recent road treatment for ice and snow.  I was happy to see a projection of a Valentine's Day Buc-ee there on the windshield at one point!

I got home again, and you'll have to see how things look tomorrow, but we're ready for Valentine's Day, I think.  We got Maddie some flowers as well, so I think it'll be a nice day tomorrow.  Tonight we wrapped up things with more Olympics, watching the US Women's Curling team defeat Canada with a real close game.  We saw a few other events as well, including half-pipe, snowboard racing, and a few other events.  We even watched some of the men's figure skating, but not all of it.

Tonight we were back in Überwald again, reading from "The Fifth Elephant" at a point where we just want to keep on reading because the end of the story is approaching, and some final conflicts are approaching.  I'm sure Commander Vimes and company will come out on top, right?  We'll see!

Time for bed.  We get to sleep in tomorrow.  And it should be a pleasant day.  Time to get some sleep! 

Butter Together

Well, today's another day.  Something really bad happened yesterday, so we tried to cheer things up with a stop along our trip to Braselton to get costumes for the upcoming Daddy Daughter Dance for KidPak.  That should go well - I made some good material for that, and everyone is working hard to get that all arranged.  On the way, we stopped by Cracker Barrel to get something to eat.  During the fast, I was craving pancakes, so I finally got my first pancakes of 2026!  Although Mom couldn't eat much.  She hasn't been able to eat much today.  But it was still nice there, and of course we walked around the little store afterwards.  Check out this little one here, a nice compliment to our current church series, "Better Together," although with a fun food theme:

Keeping busy at home helps keep our minds busy too.  When we arrived, I was proofing the new baseball book.  Mom got some things done with cleaning up around the house.  There's this timeline poster of Maddie's life that she just made for her college that has a lot of friends on it, plus her birth and adoption and so on.  We're not on it though!

The Olympics continue, and tonight we were on the couch watching the women's curling event as we beat South Korea.  The judging in the ice dancing has more controversy, as the French judge over there made her bias a little less-than-subtle in order to lift her countrymen up to the podium, and that's sort of swirling around the figure skating world now.  But we were watching other things tonight, like half-pipe and speed skating.

The birds have been so numerous out there.  We've seen quite a few visitors as the weather seems to be getting more spring-like.  I've heard there's more cold on the way, but we'll see how that goes soon enough.  For now, let's enjoy this sunny weather.  Sure, the temperatures are more like "sunny in winter," but it feels nice compared to the recent frigid temperatures.

We made a trip to the thrift store to drop off a lot of stuff tonight, and even looked around a little.  And we picked up some frames and some vinyl albums too, just for fun.  No word from camp, but think it's going okay.  It's Friday when I'm typing this, and I just got this video of Maddie doing a presentation.  I think I'll end with that, and some pictures we got a few days later that look like it's going really well there:

Run Home Jack

We're doing this baseball series in March, and moving along with the booklet rather quickly here.  One maze that I sort of drew up was this one you see above, which combines baseball with another beloved theme:  pirates!  If you get this reference above, you're a bigger fan of the movie "Hook."  I'm amazed at what AI does perpetually, but this one was a lot of fun the way it created these coloring sheet images of Jack Banning up to bat and Smee ready to pitch a baseball in Neverland.  And of course, the two celebrating together at the end.  The maze I drew up.  It's a little squished there, but it works.  Speaking of AI, here are a few more things we did:

 

This was a matching game I created for a booklet for "Better Together," but this weekend we'll do a larger scale version of this on stage, a game of "Concentration" where contestants have to make the right matches.

One amusing things was a graphic idea we were discussing for "BOOT CAMP," a series we plan on doing in May. 

It's a simple design that Camille came up with, and not too bad, still Josh was asking if there was anything we could do to make it more exciting.  That's when I suggested, "Fireworks, a Abrams tank, a soaring American eagle, gold medals, the Statue of Liberty looking aggressive, Abraham Lincoln with a machine gun, large exploding foreign buildings in the background, and Lee Greenwood on the side part there."

And so here we go with AI again - Camille thought it would be funny to plug all that into AI, along with the original image to see what would come out:

'Merica!  

This can be a pretty fun tool!  In fact, we were working on a song today for the stage.  I wrote the lyrics up, and plugged it into our favorite AI song generator to see what would come up, and I think we may have something useful for the weekend.

Bailee was up there with Maddie at the retreat, and she said that Maddie was with a group of friends there and seemed to be settled in and having a good time, so that was great to hear.  Here are a few pictures that we got a little later on - looks like everyone is having a good time.

We got this really good cake today, a wheat-free torte from a bakery in Braselton especially made for one of our coworkers at the church.  It was so rich that she gave us this fairly substantial section of it to try out tonight, and oh my goodness.  It was so good.  It reminded me of pretty much my favorite desert from the Disney Cruise last year.  So delicious.  Mom and I were sharing some of that tonight, and we have plenty leftover for tomorrow night too!

I just have to stop eating these conversation hearts.  Valentine's Day brings these tempting treats along, and I keep eating them.  Why?  Because they're there!

Tonight, Mom and I were of course watching the Olympics tonight, the half-pipe qualifiers, freestyle ski moguls, and the entire men's team curling match between the US and Czechia.  That's so hard to get used to, the new name of an entire country.  I'm so old I remember calling it Czechoslovakia, and that took a while to stop saying.  In fact, I still call it that from time to time.  But now it's "Czechia."  The world is fluid place.  We beat Czechia, by the way.  It was a close game with a lot of misses on both sides, but our curlers came out on top at the end with a victory in their first team game.

Time for bed now.