Weekending it

Originally the plans for this past weekend included our much delayed Sandy Hook (NJ) beach trip since it seemed the weather was looking good.  Then Dan remembered he had made a previous commitment in Queens so we postponed the trip, again.  It's always important for plans to fall through, least I start thinking I actually have control over my life.

Then at noon, around when Dan was about to leave, his commitment got cancelled and the day opened wide up.  It was too late to make the beach trip since the ferry to the beach only runs certain times and we wanted to make it an all day trip and not an afternoon considering it would be two hours in transit and the cost of the ferry.  In retrospect we spent the Saturday the way we needed to...relaxing.

We took our leftover Friday night pizza and Ticket to Ride game to the park for an afternoon picnic.  It was perfect sunny weather with a light breeze and cool in the shade.  We went to our old special spot on the hill at Owl's Head overlooking the water.  We came here a lot in the last two years since my old apartment was just a block away.

We gulped up some sunnies and played Ticket to Ride.

On the walk home we grabbed Italian ices from a local stand we discovered last week.  We devoured the treats before I snapped a picture.  The rest of the afternoon we rested and watched Friends.  I had put dinner in the crockpot in the morning so it was an easy night.

On Sunday it was the first day of the Crossroads Soccer/Arts camp.  This is our first year running this event which is every Sunday now through August.  It is an effort to invite other families outside of the regular church group and to give some of our Children's Ministry volunteers a break from teaching Sunday school every week.  We had 18 kids.  18.  Now that might not seem like a lot but Dan and I were the only adults running the show and a handful of teenagers helping out.  I was in charge of the art camp and in a word, it was chaos.

I had everything set-up nicely.  This is how small urban churches make use of rented space.

We had the craft tables in the stairwell.

Initially the plan was to have all the 4-6 year olds (my usual pre-k/kinder class) play soccer for a bit and then do a craft.  The elementary kids had a choice of playing soccer the whole time or doing crafts the whole time. 

We did not anticipate that seven out of ten of the elementary kids would pick to craft the whole time.  As you can tell by the pictures there was not enough space for seven elementary kids plus the six pre-k kids. 

So we improvised on the fly and set-up a table out in the gym area for the pre-kers to just color and eat snacks.  The complicated craft ended up being just for the elementary kids.  I had them make an adaptation of the fire breathing dragons that I found on Andrea's blog.  Surprisingly, the older kids really like it. 

Overall, it went fairly well.  All the kids are excited for next week.

After church we enjoyed lunch with a group of people from church and we ran into two of my old friends that used to go to our church.  Always a happy/hard feeling to see them.  We vegged in the dark and cool refuge of the bedroom for the rest of the day.

It's a three day work week for us!  Woot woot! We are headed to Chicago on Thursday and the countdown is ON!