Hurling Bananas

Here are some of our girls from KidPak from the stage this weekend, having a great time wandering around in their Bible costumes.  They've been having such a great series, enjoying each other's company backstage, and of course performing on stage.

This week, there wasn't as much of a role for them on stage, other than being there to support the other actors in their performances.  They were largely reacting to the scene that was taking place before them, which of course was Jesus healing a mute and deaf man.  Our message was about "having ears to hear," and it went very well this morning.  These last eight weeks of "Miracles" have been so fantastic!

Afterwards, the girls were wanting to go out and greet, which they did, saying hi to people as they entered the church and KidPak area.  But soon after that, we all went to the activity room, which you can see above.  Some of the girls were on the rock wall with their Bible costume, and some were even playing a game of pool!

It was a fun morning, and we all learned to listen to what God is saying over what the world tells us.  In other words, we were learning to "have ears to hear."

Madison doesn't know this next part, and she can't see this image above.  But you can see who is back for Summer Xtreme this year in a small cameo.  It's the Super Seven!  Five of them were here, and two others will return on Tuesday as well, and it's not a huge part, but it will still brings smiles to everyone's faces to see them again.

Yes, even Shadowhawk.  It was atrociously hot outside, but these actors and volunteers were all real troopers, enduring it all and having a great time while doing it.  We've got great plans for Summer Xtreme, and today involved a good deal of filming our mascot characters, who we finally got to see inflated and in action.

We had the "Tribes" characters of Eagles, Sharks, Sabretooths, Rhinos and Raptors, and they look amazing with their logos, and on the movie we had planned to do (that movie is being pushed back to next year to give Josh more time to finish it).  So for a comical video, we thought it would be funny to have inflatable versions of these characters, each doing relay races or something like that.  So Mommy and Daddy ordered these inflatables, and you can see what they look like above.

Look out!  There's a T-rex from Jurassic Park loose in the playground!  We had a "raptor" costume, but it turns out the costume only fits smaller-sized people. So we'll save that one for our "Lost World" series.  In the meantime, the T-rex and the others look great.  Even the cat:

There's an inflatable hippo, inflatable rhino, inflatable giraffe... there's just about any creature you an imagine that's got an inflatable version created.  But no cats?  No leopards, no panthers, no tigers, no ligers, no lions, no pumas, no cheetahs, no wildcats, no sabertooth tigers... what's up with that?  So above, you can see how we ordered an inflatable sloth. Yes, there's one of those.  Anyway, we printed out ears and a nose... and there.  Instant inflatable cat.  Crazy they had no original version of these.  

Today's filming was so bizarre!  We had characters from the past integrating with these current inflatable characters, along with other ones as well, and you wound up with imagery like this:

Possibly the highlight of it all was the banana toss.  That's why these characters above look so concerned.  They were hiding against a wall there to avoid getting hit by bananas, and a banana laser.  Yes, we had lots of bananas.  We had lots of bananas today.  We had over a hundred bananas.  And we had a whole bunch of us throwing them at these inflatable characters.  Not to give away too much of it, but a ridiculous moment comes when a super villain type of character begins hurling hundreds of bananas at our heroes.  He must be stopped!

But in the meantime, we all lined up behind the camera and on the count of three, all of us were throwing dozens and dozens of bananas as fast as we could at all of these fleeing inflatable characters.   Summer Xtreme:  it is unreal some of the random things we do for this sort of event!

Anyway, we got a lot done, and people had a great time doing it.  Madison was at home, because we didn't want her to know too much of what was going on, opting to let it all be a surprise for her when she goes to her last Summer Xtreme as a student.

Tonight we watched a few episodes of Gravity Falls, but sleep came easy for us after that.  It was a fun, full day.  It was pretty hot, but friendships and fun kept things moving forward with purpose.  It's going to be a great Summer Xtreme!