Leaving Oz

We said goodbye to Oz today, and even more than that, we said goodbye to our good friend Calvin, who has been on stage with us since 2015.  He's been such a solid friend of KidPak, a reliable and talented sort who also happened to be a good friend of our family.  We will miss him tremendously.  You can see the Tin Man here, looking a little sad, and in fact about to rust!

The second service had a surprise built in where we changed the script around at the end without Calvin knowing it, and we honored him with a quick little slide show and a few quick words from the stage.  We had a great time with this Oz series, and it was time to say goodbye to it as well.  There was something sweet and kind about it, something almost magical.  The story of how it came to be is amazing, and for five weeks here, we had a wonderful time with these characters on stage, who all did so well.  You can see Maddie there as Ozma to the left.  We got pictures of her a few weeks ago, but not many today, as we were focused on Calvin largely.

Anyway, it was a great day, and now it's time to pack up and move on from the Yellow Brick Road to an entirely different place altogether next week.  That will come later.  But for now, I just wanted to express how grateful I was for this series.  It's been a gem.

We got home, and we had spaghetti that Mom made for us, and yes, after that, we were back to the church tonight for the FCY event tonight.  It was another "United" night, where all the campuses in the east got together at Gainesville for a super service and then following that a great time outside with waterslides and squirt guns and just getting soaked.  You can imagine how much Maddie loved it!  She was absolutely soaked again, the second time in a few days that she's been out there for water day.  Another one is coming up soon next week too!

After church, we were home resting, relaxing, and watching some Olympics, and a few episodes of Camp Cretaceous.  We're getting closer to our dinosaur series, and I can't believe it's going to really happen!  We said our prayers before bedtime, and we read a little bit too.  We got to sleep pretty quickly, because it was such a full day.