Pachycephalosaurus

I took this picture for Mom.  After service, we were out there in the lobby, and the kids were coming up to the baby dinosaur, which turned out so great.  Even some adults were trying to figure out how we did it, and some of the kids could be heard asking, "Is it real?"
 

Here's a good bit of our cast outside in the lobby, greeting kids.  Ezra there to the right is wearing a shirt we got at the thrift store yesterday.  We shredded it today, because he came in during the script saying he was mauled!  Not by raptors or a T-rex though.  No, he was attacked by preschoolers!

Those shirts look nice, don't they?  Daniel, holding the baby dinosaur, made those for us and they are super popular.  Others are wanting them too, in fact.  As for the service, it went well!

This is a picture of the game segment today, where kids were encouraged to "use your head."  That was the theme of the day, and yes, there's Josh there in an inflatable raptor costume.  Just wait until we get that real raptor on the set next week...!

The skit went well.  Maddie had a few lines to learn, and she did well as always.  So did the rest of the cast, including Nerdo, who came back with thunder, or at least the kind of thunder you'd expect from him. Ahem.  

And as for our pachycephalosaurus?  He showed up in the message, and in this video Josh created.  The dinosaur demolished Josh's SUV, or at least did some substantial damage with its head, as you can see here:

The message today was "Use your head," which went with the theme of the pachycephalosaurus, a dinosaur with a four-inch thick skull that used to charge into things.  Or other dinosaurs.  We were thinking of people charging in or saying certain things without "using their head."  The whole idea of "butting heads" also comes to mind, of course.  We sort of took that and ran with it, and I'm pretty proud of how obscure our message themes can get.  I mean, how many other ministries have a message dedicated to a pachycephalosaurs?  I would say none.  I'm fairly sure of that at this point.  Who knows about the future.

Anyway, we got home, and Maddie had a lot of studying and homework to do, so she was on that pretty quickly, as well as a shower.  I was taking a nap, having not slept well yesterday.  Mom has been painting the deck and porch, and later on I was out there battling joro spiders again.  They're everywhere.  We're making plans for our back yard for a fire pit, and some places for gardens.  It's a work in progress, and it will be nice.  

We watched tonight's church service online, and it was great having it up there on our big television, rather than a little laptop.  The signal and video were just fine, and the service itself was good to see.

Tonight, we read again from Kingdom Keepers, and then we prayed.  Hurricane Ida hit Lousiana as a category four, and we're in that period of time where information is not instant, as hurricanes are huge and it takes a while to hear how things are doing in the affected area.  The lack of power and communication and transportation doesn't help either, so it may be a while before we hear how bad it is there.  It's also going to affect us here locally, of course.  There will be weather here, but economically there will be an impact as well.  Tonight we were praying for those affected in the area, and then after that... we were asleep.