World of Wonder

The bugs were on stage today with a great new series, "World of Wonder," where we're visiting Genesis and the story of creation with a bug-theme all throughout January. 

It was a fun morning!  You can see above at the top some of our characters for the skit, including a familiar fly.  We've got a butterfly, a praying mantis, a ladybug, a bee, a stinkbug, and a housefly (that's me)!  Mom got all the costumes together, and the cast was just wonderful in making this skit such a fun thing for the kids.  Plus, it really communicated the message of creation, how we're all created with purpose.  Maddie took a bunch of pictures, and those are just a few of the ones put on the church site.

 The books have some great bug characters, and some fun little activities along the way too, like these below.  That first one is a maze I drew up that turned out pretty fun:

And this is fun - it's a place where you look up scriptures to reveal the various mentions of insects in the Bible.

And of course our praying mantis gets a mention with these scriptures about prayer!

And I love this activity here, one that mentions grasshoppers as they're talked about in Numbers 13.  So yeah, it was a buggy morning - but everything worked out perfectly and fun, a great start to KidPak in 2026.  Also, a start to our yearly church fast - tonight I was at the prayer service with many, many other people, all of us focused on getting closer with God this year.  Along those lines, Mom and I watched for the first time the animated movie "King of Kings."  We learned something about Charles Dickens tonight while watching this, and enjoyed the movie - it's pretty much a straight telling of the gospel story, but it integrates the narrator and his son into the story, and it's done very well.  

Maddie was over at Nate's this afternoon - the two were watching "Wicked," presumably so they can watch the second movie next.  This afternoon I was on the treadmill, adding another few miles to the virtual path through the Forbidden City.  I've got a little less than five miles to go there until I'm done.  While I walk along, I've been watching a really good Studio Ghibli movie, "The Wind Rises."  Not quite done yet, but I just love the animation and pacing of these movies.  So good!  

Tonight we read more from our Monk mystery, and after that it was time for prayers and bedtime.  Maddie's got to get up earlier tomorrow for college.  Not too early, but it's the first day of classes for 2026.  Hopefully a good day and a good year.  

Time for some rest, hopefully.