Sixteen Going on Seventeen

Another morning at KidPak!  We positioned our away time so we wouldn't miss a KidPak service this morning - I had things laid out for some games and fun and a really good message about using time wisely.  Camille did a fantastic job delivering the message with some great illustrations.  Maddie and Jeremiah were taking photos this morning, both training with the camera and both delivering a lot of great quality images that we put on the official church site.  Here are just a few of the photos Maddie took this morning at church, and a few backstage photos from my office that didn't get posted.

It was a really good morning, actually, and a later one too.  I was recording some material for the Forward Conference afterwards, but we got home later on and had ourselves a magnificent Chinese food feast that Mom had prepared.  There were soups, flavored chickens, egg rolls and even California rolls too.  It was a huge meal, which was perfect because we didn't really do breakfast this morning!

Later on, we left the house to go get ice cream at the grocery store, because our ice cream supply was perilously low.  It was just a fun trip, actually, just to get out of the house and go for a ride.  We had root beer floats when we got home, although Mom made herself an amazing banana split that was really great.

We closed out today with a viewing of "Avatar," which Maddie had not seen before.  It's one of the movies that sold us our television set so many years ago.  They'd be playing that movie in the electronics store there on all these television sets, and we needed a flatscreen to go on our wall here in the new house.  We watched this one tonight because the sequel is on streaming services now, and we'll probably watch that second movie soon enough.

Anyway, it was a quiet Sunday.  Maddie was playing games on her phone and just chilling for the afternoon.  We closed out the day reading about our characters finally exiting "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe," and moving along in the story.  Maddie enjoyed hearing from Marvin again - he's definitely one of the best characters in the series, but then again, all of them are.  It's a fun book series, and I'm guessing we'll keep going after we're done with this one.

We said our prayers tonight, and closed out the day singing "Sixteen Going on Seventeen."  We're finally there this week - Maddie is going on seventeen, and I try not to think about that too much.  I can't believe we're already here.  It is simultaneously feeling like just yesterday and also perhaps another life that we met her for the first time.  In other words, having a daughter about to turn seventeen is pretty surreal.  No matter what, we've got that song stuck in our heads this week.  Maddie heard it live at "Sound of Music" last year, a perfect set up leading into this year.  And now reading this again, that song might get stuck in someone's head once again...