The Cahill's

This is a story about 3 children and their friends. The first is Lance the Brave, the next, Ivy the Thinker, and lastly, Flora the Good. This story will also have a terrible dragon, so beware!

 

Lance started out as an ordinary peasant, stomping grapes and making grape juice for a living.

Ivy and Flora milled wheat…

…and made it into bread.

One day Ivy lost her water balloon in a great big lake! Lance bravely jumped in to rescue the balloon and make his sister happy. This act of valor was noticed by a passing knight who made Lance a squire on the spot!

Lance began to train in water balloon warfare with other boys. He also learned to care for his horse, preserve food, joust and hunt for treasure.

Lance received a helmet and other pieces of armor which are not pictured along with his other training because the camera wasn’t working those days.

His sisters missed him while he was gone. Ivy had a good idea! Flora the Good would make him some bread and visit him!

Flora arrived just in time to watch her brother train with a catapult. This looked like so much fun!

Back at home Flora told Ivy all about what she had seen. Ivy the Thinker made a small castle and catapult so they could practice storming the castle, just like their brave brother.

Finally it was time for Lance to be knighted. His sisters and their friends were invited to the ceremonies. But on the way….      

….they were captured by a terrible dragon!!!!

Lance and all the other squires heard the cries of the fair maidens and rushed to their rescue. The dragon was demolished in 2.9 seconds! The dragon gathered itself together for another fight but was again defeated by the fearless boys.

The great victory was celebrated with much feasting and grape juice. Flora downs more than her share of the juice. Lance is dubbed “Sir Lance, the Brave” for his good deeds. Ivy the Thinker raises a toast to Castle Camp and they all live happily ever after as they travel to new realms!

The End.

Yes, I know it’s been a while since these pictures happened, but we had such fun I wanted to share it. This post will be a bit long, but I’m trying to play catch up so bear with me. Thanks!

We did a mix of activities. The lighthearted and fun (albeit very messy) egg dying was quite a hit. Ivy and Flora were quite artistic with the sponges. However, the dye for sponge painting was quite a bit stronger then that of the egg dunking.

Flora came out looking like an Easter egg herself!

Lance preferred the dunking method (perhaps he had more patience?) and stuck with the green dye the entire time.

 

Apparently this dye is pretty strong too under prolonged contact. Lance shows us his “scary” hands! This coloring remained for several days.

We also enjoyed an egg hunt at a nearby church. Ivy was the first to figure out what was inside the eggs.

Lance was much more selective in his hunting and found the bigger ones to be to his liking.

 

Here’s the happy hunters! We thought we would miss the hunt due to Eden’s birth but since she came early we were able to enjoy the festivities.

 

In the weeks preceding Easter we did little projects that corresponded with the Resurrection eggs. Brian read a book each evening that followed the events of the Easter story as seen by a little boy and also went along with the Resurrection eggs. The kids loved it!

Using a dice to count and cross off palm branches for the triumphal entry. (minimal success with the counting)

We also played with 30 pieces of sliver (pennies). Several weeks later we over heard Ivy say excitedly to Lance “Judas, you want to betray Jesus?! And Lance responded with an enthusiastic “yes!”

Made a crown of thorns with playdough and toothpicks. The kids enjoyed putting this on my head and talked about crucifying me. This had me somewhat worried about teaching such awful truths at such a young age. Reading this post encouraged me that God picked the elements of the story and I’m just responsible to pass it on.

To illustrate how sin makes us yucky I taped clear wrap over a picture of a girl and boy. Each child scribbled “yucky” colors over their person as we talked about bad things we had done.

Using a rag dipped in water dyed red, we let the blood of Jesus wash our sins away.

This activity was very fun and repeated many times. Not sure if that was theologically correct put I hear repetition drives home a point.

 

We made these cute little resurrection rolls. A marshmallow represented Jesus and they rolled it in butter and cinnamon (oil and spices) then wrapped in a crescent roll (sealing it in the tomb).

The rolls were baked and when Ivy bit into hers she discovered that the marshmallow was gone!

We also had a cross cake (tradition from my family) and if you have cake, you might as well have candles, right?

Our last learning experience was an “Easter Path” put up by a nearby church. This had different stations with activities to do as a family. We’ve done this before and really enjoyed the experience.(sorry about photo quality, they were taken on Brian’s phone)

Waving palm branches and expressing thanks.

Daddy washing feet.

Nailing our sins on the cross.

     

In the tomb.

Pinning a flower on the empty cross – Jesus is alive!

Since you’ve now been in suspense the last two weeks, I’ll attempt to finish out the pictures from Camp Grammy.

The Gear:

Our beautiful Flora models the official camp t-shirt.

All the kids have one, I just couldn’t get them to stand still.

 

Eden’s “Auntie” wanted to make sure everyone matched and thoughtfully bought this outfit.

The food:

Safari-scape – animal chicken nuggets, cheese stick tree and cheese sun. Tragically, a volcano erupted and covered the animals in lava (ketchup).

Animal pancakes – monkey face, elephant and giraffe. I’ll let you decide which pancake looks like which animal.

Monkey sandwiches and bananas – this calls for monkey faces too!

And popcorn. Yes, not particularly animal themed, but it fed a dozen small people and was quite popular.

The Animals:

It can’t be an African safari without seeing some wildlife!

A “vicious” ‘possum was trapped and later released to the wild (to serve as target practice for Uncle Dude – conservation is only for endangered species I guess.)

“Poison dart frogs” were in abundance and Lance became quite adept at catching them. Ivy liked them too but didn’t have a good record with being careful because when she begged Lance for one of his, he handed it to her with the admonition “don’t dead him”. (again the conservation issue, maybe that should be next year’s theme?)

An unsuccessful attempt to find “monkey vines” was redeemed by a rare sighting of a wild hare. By quick wit and even quicker legs, this little rabbit escaped with its life. The kittens (not pictured) also managed to make it through the week alive (survival of the fittest?) and have now been thoroughly gentled for future owners.

This post has now become long so I’ll finish in another post tomorrow….stayed tuned!!