Toy Box 2

Our second Sunday with the Toy Box series was a big success, with a stellar message based on the classic phrase and song, "You've got a friend in me."  You can see the cast above, the costuming that Mommy helped put together.  Madison is right there in the center as a sheep, and Daddy is even in this picture along with a few other Pizza Planet employees.  Everyone's here for this group shot, including Mr. Potato Head.  That costume and the one for Rex are both really great!

One of the gags of this skit was Nerdo repeatedly calling out, "Bonnie's coming!"  You can see he did that above, and all the toys immediately drop down, pretending to be inanimate toys again.  I got this idea from the fact that apparently in Disney - for a time, I hope - there was a thing you could do with the Toy Story characters, and that was this:  call out, "Andy's coming!"  Immediately, everyone drops to the ground, as you see above.  Or, at least they freeze in place.  I was picturing how annoying that must be for cast members when a certain kid won't stop calling it out.  And that's Nerdo here.  He was making it hard to like himself, but that is all related to the fact that he's a toy made for a practical joke store.

Of course, all the other characters decide to befriend him anyway, making for our bottom line.  You can see Madison and her other sheep friends doing their standard joke, using the word "baaaaad" about three or four times during the course of the skit.  Rex stands by, ready to worry about something here - Clint did a great job with his voice from the sound booth.

And on stage, Pastor Lance did a fantastic job with the message.  It was a great, exciting morning.  The kids couldn't contain themselves when they saw the costumes.  There was so much noise in the auditorium today, and long lines afterwards so people could pose with the characters.

We're only two weekends into this series, and already it's been a big success.  Mommy did such a wonderful job with the costumes, and the set is fantastic.  I really feel like we're doing it all justice.  We'll see what happens next week though - Mr. Potato Head has a story to tell, and we'll have to wait and see what happens next!

After service, the characters were out greeting, and as you can see below, after both services, people took group shot after group shot of all the characters hanging out in the lobby.

The videos, music and skit were good.  At one point, the three Pizza Planet employees came out - that was Daddy too - and we led a "Toy Story Trivia" game, one that the boys won in the first service, but the girls trounced the boys in the second service.  Who is the first Toy Story character you see in the first movie?

The answer again is Mr. Potato Head!  Speaking of which, check him out in the picture below, our standard goofy pose picture.

He's a Picasso!  Anyway, it was a great morning, and afterwards a great afternoon.  We rested this afternoon, after eating calzones and doing some piano work.  Daddy was writing some, and both Mommy and Madison had time for separate baths, and just some down time.  Tonight we popped in a movie Daddy just got in the mail as part of a rewards program.  I actually ordered "The Muppet Movie," beacause Madison had never seen it before.  And it's been years since I've seen it.  But it was still so good!  I could go on and on about the Muppets.  Rowlf is always my favorite, but I love Zoo too.  And Sweetums.  And Animal.  And Statler and Waldorf.  And ... oh, who am I kidding.  I love the Muppets.  Madison hadn't seen this movie yet, and it's been a long time since I'd seen it.  But I still know all the songs by heart, and afterwards, Madison found "The Rainbow Connection" on piano sheet music.  We might be entering a Muppet movie marathon here, maybe - I don't know.  I just wanted to see this one when I saw my rewards points could get for a small amount of points.

Anyway, it was a great day today.  After hide-and-seek, we read from teh devotional and the Star Wars book, and then after that we prayed and there were zerberts and the Imperial March humming to go with the deep red infuser there.  And the stinky insults too.  Like "Goodnight Luke Stenchwalker!"  And so on.  It was a great day, and a cool day today, with the temperatures dropping significantly.  It felt wonderful out there today!  We're supposed to get rain tonight, but we'll see.  Either way, things seem to be nice out there now, and tomorrow is shaping up to be a great day too!