And the Winner Is...

May has been a very busy month for the Bain household, as the lack of new blog entries attests. All through the year, we carefully balanace the kids' activities, trying to make sure that nothing conflicts and nothing exhausts (at least not completely.) In May, however, all bets are off. Every activity needs to have an end-of-year awards ceremony or demonstration, and those things, of course, require rehearsals and extra practices.

The upside of all this craziness is that we get to see what the kids have been working on all year. And, most importantly of all, we take PICTURES!

First up was Megan's Keepers at Home club. This is a Christian scouting-type program. The girls earn badges for different skills: baking, sewing, pet care, and so on, plus stars for service hours. Megan is in the little girls' Pebbles group this year, and she earned 17 badges.

Next year, we're going to put together a boys' Contenders for the Faith group. Evan was especially excited about earning badges in "Pretenders."

Then, the kids had a gymnastics Fun Meet. Evan and Justin are with the preschoolers, and Nathan and Megan are beginners. The school age kids are not competing against the other kids, but they are scored based on their competency. All the kids had a good time (with one notable exception- see below).





And then, there was one more little one who thought the evening was entirely too much sitting and NOT getting to play on all of the wonderful equipment:

Finally, we had AWANA awards and the AWANA pine car derby. Nathan and Megan worked very hard on their Scripture memorization. They both finished their books, reviewed all the verses, and finished one extra workbook apiece. Even the little boys participated in the derby. Evan took 2nd place for speed, Megan took 1st place for design for her Calico Kitty car, and Nathan took 2nd place for design for his Lego Racer car. Daddy worked hard to make sure that all the cars were weighted just right.