Amy Scott's Thoughts

Giving God our garbage!

Today was the grand finale of Sky Family VBA! It’s hard to believe that four days of VBA are now over. They went so fast! Each night was awesome and tonight did not disappoint. Because 7:00pm is when our regular church services happen on Wednesday, we decided to wrap VBA with all the kids and adults – not just the ones that signed up for VBA. We abbreviated the night so we could fit the whole program into just over an hour. We started off by reviewing what we’d learned and watched a slideshow full of fun pictures from the week. After that, we sang 5 of our favorite song (with motions of course). I know this part probably stretched the adults the most, but I think it’s important for kids to learn worship from their parents. The Bible says we need to have faith like a child, so why not dance like one? We moved in our powerful Bible lesson. This story is really why we do VBA! We talked about the cross and salvation. To illustrate, we hung pieces of garbage bags on the cross. We talked about how God takes our garbage and forgives our sins. Once we place the garbage on the cross, we grabbed glow sticks and cracked them to symbolize that God’s light now shines in us. We moved from the Bible lesson into a craft and snack. It was wonderful to come together as families and as a church family to remember the heart of the story – the reason we do what do. It’s all about Jesus! I’m praying a lot of young hearts made a firm commitment to follow him tonight – no matter what we’re going to trust God!

God’s light in us!

Now in less than 9 hours, Jeremy and I will be on another adventure. We’re packing up the car tonight and planning to hit the road around 6:00am tomorrow! That means being up at 4:30am for me… Oh my… Right after VBA, what was I thinking? I know… “Must get out of the state… must travel… must go…” It’s going to be great to spend 5 days with my hubby! We’ll drive all day tomorrow and get into the Bay area that evening. We’ll see the sights and where Jeremy used to live. Saturday evening, we’ll drive up to the Redwood Forests and pitch a tent for a couple of days. Monday will another driving day as we head home and reunite with our little dog, who is sadly not joining us. We love Toby and always miss him, but I don’t think the hotel will be happy if we left him barking there while we sight see! Even now as we get stuff ready to go, Toby is freaking out. He knows we’re up to something and he doesn’t like it. Toby’s motto would be “Stay with the routine!” He really hates when we throw off his schedule. Oh well… I keep reminding myself that my life doesn’t revolve around this dog. Jeremy and I haven’t been a road trip just the two of us. In fact, we haven’t been a trip just two of us in long while… Probably Nashville in 2008 and even that was to visit a friend. Trips with family and friends are great, but I’m really looking forward to this adventure with Jeremy. It’s going to be worth the drive, I’m sure! Here’s to new memories and more summer fun!

See ya when I return!

Oh, multi-tasking! How I dislike you! You bring such stress to my life. My thoughts run together and bounce from one topic to the next! Welcome to my week!

Flying at SKY Family VBA!

Sunday started our first ever week of Family Vacation Bible Adventure! This year we’re doing something totally different by having parents attend VBA alongside the kids. We’ve reformatted things so that parents can be ones having the spiritual conversations with their kids. It’s hard to break the mindset that parent’s bring their kids to church and it’s up to the church to make their kids into good Christians. We want to empower parents to be the spiritual leaders of their families and see that faith starts at home. What we do as a church will never compare to what they do daily in their households. The purpose of this new VBA format is to show families how fun it can be to do faith-based things together. Hopefully after this week, parents will feel more comfortable with having faith conversations at home. It’s been fun to do things in a new way. Having the parents around really adds a whole new level energy to the week. We’re still doing all the classic VBA elements, but with a twist!

When VBA rolls around it seems like it’s the only thing on Jeremy and I’s mind. However, this year, we have a few other things competing for our time and attention. Like I mentioned yesterday, we now have a niece, Brinley, who arrived yesterday. We’ve all been anticipating her arrival for the last week.  It was a mystery to us what day she’d actually appear, but yesterday was the day. We’re so excited, but we’re sad that we don’t get to meet her for a few weeks.  This is my first niece, so the excitement level is off the charts!

Yesterday, I had a doctor’s appointment right smack-dab in the middle of my day. Nothing big – no worries, but still, I hate going to the doctor. Anything medical freaks me out and makes my blood pressure spike. Oh goodie! So I had to race from work, to home, to the doctors, to home and back to church for VBA. I felt like I was willing the car to move faster while still going the speed limit. I made it everywhere I needed to on time, but it was close. I kept flying in right at the last second!

When Jeremy and I came home to let Toby out of the crate for lunch, we noticed that he was in the window as we drove past our house. We lock Toby in a crate each morning when we leave, so you can imagine our shock when we saw him roaming the house! As we get ready to leave in the morning, Toby runs into his crate. There he sits and waits for us to give him a treat and lock him in. Jeremy realized that we had left without locking him in. Oops! Now Toby is the kind of dog that doesn’t do well with free time in the house. His nature is always be with people, so when he is home alone he doesn’t stop moving. He is always looking for the people and freaking out because they are no where to be found. As a result of the stress, we had a couple of accidents waiting for us. Yes, it might seem weird, but our dog loves the structure of the crate. I can’t believe we forgot to lock him in when we left! Oh well – one of the side effects of VBA brain!

San Francisco here we come!

Finally, we leave Thursday morning for our road trip to San Francisco! I’ve been trying to clean the house, get laundry done, clean out the fridge and pantry, find a Toby sitter and pack for our trip. All while being home limited hours due to VBA. It’s nuts! My brain keeps hoping from thing to thing… Get house ready, make sure everything is in place for our Toby sitters, make sure VBA stuff is taken care… It’s like mental ping-pong! I’m super excited for our trip, but the reality of it really hasn’t hit yet. VBA is too important to let my mind slip and forget something related to this highlight of our children’s ministry summer.

And now, I’ve used up my allotted free time for blogging! Back to the mental to-do list! If I don’t keep moving, I might fall over completely and that wouldn’t be good! It’s all worth it! Vacation is on the horizon!

Getting Ready for Sky!

This is a super fun week! It seems like there is something to party about each day! What’s not to like about that? The partying started this Sunday and Monday with VBA decorating parties (Vacation Bible Adventure). We’ve been transforming our building to gain momentum of our week of Sky VBA! It’s hard to believe that it will be here in a week and a half. Decorating in advance, especially before the registration deadline, is a  great way to get VBA in front of people and get them excited for it. However, these parties involved work and happened at work. While they were good, they were certainly not the highlight of the party themed week!

Celebrating our freedom!

Yesterday was Independence Day and it was great to celebrate in a very laid back way. I slept in. I read outside while Jeremy played in the yard (really his berry patch and garden). I came in and made a ton of waffles that didn’t turn out so well. I used a different kind of batter and it just wasn’t the same results. After my mid-morning meal, Jeremy, Toby and I took off into nature to go check on Jeremy’s trail camera. It wasn’t a long walk, but it was nice to walk off some of the waffle I ate. Later that afternoon, we went over my parent’s house to lounge around outside in the sun and barbeque! Very good day! Jeremy and I decided not buy fireworks this year so we could save for our upcoming trip to San Francisco and the Redwood Forest. We happily watched our neighbors show while roasting s’mores over our own fire. Nice! The only downside to the day was the fact that our Toby dog is scared of fireworks.  I eventually joined him in our closet for the last of the noise. He just needed a buddy to calm and protect him. Poor pup!

The partying just keeps on going! Today is my dad’s birthday, so Jeremy and I will join him later this afternoon to go see The Amazing Spiderman. We’ll have dinner at Chipotle and frozen yogurt for dessert! This is a classic Vitzthum family dinner! I can’t wait! It’s so beautiful outside and I’m looking forward to spending the rest of my day with family. It will be a good time celebrating another year of my awesome Dad!

Celebrating 6 Years! 7.8.06

Tomorrow, Jeremy and I are heading down to the Portland area to celebrate our anniversary. It’s a couple days early, but we figured it worked best for our schedule and why not celebrate “us” on multiple days! We love the Woodburn Factory Stores so we plan on doing some shopping and eating some yummy food. Jeremy is a shop for clothes once a year kind of guy, so the last time we did this was our anniversary last year! It’s always fun to get away with him and spend the whole day together.

As of now, Saturday holds no party plans, but that’s okay. I really need to clean my bathrooms… maybe I can make some kind of game in my head about how cleaning bathrooms can be like a party… I’m just not sure I can spin it that far… Oh well! Sunday is Jeremy and I’s actually anniversary. We have no current plans, but I’m sure it will be another amazing

day spent together getting to celebrate 6 years of marriage! It’s crazy how fast time flies… and yet, it feels like we’ve been together forever. Does that make sense?

So here’s to a week of celebrating! I plan on having a good time with those I love, eating a lot of good food and enjoying the sunshine! It doesn’t get better than this!

Okay, that title pretty much sums up my day yesterday! It certainly was a whirlwind of fun activities and strange experiences!

The Whole Zoo Group!

We left “almost” on time for the Oregon Zoo. My van only had 4 people in it… which has a funny story behind it! I kept saying we’re the Fab Five and the one student in the vehicle felt the need to keep her mouth shut. She didn’t have the heart to tell me we had only 4 people in our van. Upon further reflection, I was saying this in light of the fact that Jesus is always with us. So yes, counting Jesus, were the Fab Five! On the ride down we played the alphabet game as a group (trying to find a word that starts with each letter of the alphabet on signs and cars). Once we got to the Vancouver area, we noticed signs saying the draw bridge was up. As a result the freeway turned into a parking lot. The craziest part, was the leaders from our church vehicles started to get out and talk… ON THE FREEWAY! I was freaking out in the front seat of a church van. There was no way I was getting out onto the freeway, even if it was a parking lot. The guys were examining something that was going wrong with our shuttle’s muffler. So I guess that makes it okay. The kids in the shuttle thought for sure that they were parked next to Justin Bieber. One of the leaders got and asked to take picture with the person (who turned out to be a lady) just so the kids who think it was really him. After they all figured out it was a women, they called her Justine Bieber for the rest of the day. Too weird! Even more strange, she ended up at the Zoo just like us! So we saw a lot of “Justine”.

After a quick bathroom stop, we made it to the zoo. Just a little bit later than we had expected. From there it was make a plan and meet up in an hour for lunch. My sister and I led a group of 5 girls and we had a blast. There were moments where I was laughing so hard! For example, after lunch we headed to Africa. The girls asked us how we would get there and I said by plane.  That is the only way to get to Africa. As we started to walk, I made a comment that April was the pilot and on the girls was her co-pilot since they were up front. The next girl said she was in first class, me and two other girls behind her claimed we were in coach and the one girl behind us said that she must be in the bathroom because she was it the back of the plane! I also died! It was so funny!

Changing a flat tire!

The sunny hours at the zoo turned into a cloudy late afternoon as we left and headed home. A little sunburned and a little tired, we arrived back at Bethel Church. My brothter-in-law, Andrew, met us there so the four of us could go to dinner. But first, we had an issue of a flat tire from the day before that needed to be dealt with. I walked April and Andrew back to the car to show them the tire and before long the three of us were changing the tire. I should mention that none of us had ever removed a tire or placed a spare tire on a car before. We found the equipment in the trunk, which I was happy to learn that all stuff was located back there! Once we had the tools, we need to the know how. Being tech savvy, I pulled up YouTube on my phone and started to watch videos about changing tires. The video helped a little, but we decided we needed the owner’s manual. Once the manual was out, we got down to business! We had the tire changed by the time Jeremy got done seeing all the kids off from the zoo trip!

We left the church in a caravan to take the car to our local tire place.  The car was left in the care of trusty professionals and we headed of to Peking House for dinner. Taking kids around the zoo sure builds an appetite and we were starving! I think this might be our third time of getting Chinese food after the zoo trip, so it’s starting to become a tradition. It was a very tasty way to end a crazy, weird, educational, busy day!

It’s official been “Summer” for a week… even though the weather in Washington State seems to disagree! It’s been a rainy and cold month of June. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. I have lived here my whole life. Summer really is July-September for us if you’re going off of the weather. However, at this moment the sun is shining and I can see blue sky. It makes me my heart happy!

Now summer is usually a time where people slow down, rest, sip lemonade… but not for me. Summer is one of our busiest seasons in children’s ministry. The kids are out of school and parents want activities to keep their kiddos active and engaged. A lot of fun stuff happens at the church during the summer, but as an administrative assistant, most of these fun activities come with permission slips, registration deadlines, reminder emails, reminder postcards, etc. Events don’t just throw themselves together. It gets busy around the office!

This Sunday was our first official registration deadline. We’re going to the Oregon Zoo tomorrow. This is always a fun, full day with the kids. We leave the church around at 8:00am and usually get back around 5:00pm (depends on Portland traffic which in some years has been bad – like detour around the state bad). The Zoo Trip is one of my favorite activities because of how relational it is. There is something special about spending the entire day out and about doing an activity with the kids. You get to learn a lot about the kids by spending time with them outside of the church walls. Lots of laughter and smiles happen at the zoo. As well as comments like, “I’m hungry” and “My feet hurt”, but I try not focus on those as much.

The rest of the summer seems completely full before it even started! The 4th of July, my Dad’s birthday, Jeremy and I’s anniversary, Family VBA, a road trip to San Francisio & the Redwoods, a new niece or nephew, kid’s camp, a leadership conference, a 5th grade graduation trip to the Mariner’s game, and a camping trip! I won’t be bored this summer! That’s for sure! It’s important for to remember that while all these are good things, I’m still going to need those down moments. I need a relaxed day here or there. Having slow, quiet times don’t just happen. They are intentional created.

A big bonus to this summer is Jeremy and I are actually going to take a trip! Most of the time I treat the summer as work only. It’s hard in between all of the events to find a time to get away. However, my hubby surprised me with the random idea of maybe going on a short road trip. I’m always game to go some place I’ve never been before, so we finally settled on the San Francisco area. Jeremy grew up outside of the city and I’m excited to see some places from his childhood. We’ll be driving home through the Redwood Forests, so we decided to camp for a few days there. I can’t think of any place cooler to camp than the Redwoods.  Most summers we get a weekend camping trip in, but this summer we get a 5 day road trip in July and a weekend camping trip in August. I feel like one blessed lady! I can hardly wait to pack up and go!

I know that the summer of 2012 is going to hold a lot of great memories and I’m excited to start making them!