AWANA Year End Celebration

Last night was our final night of AWANA for this school year and therefore our end-of-year program. To help celebrate the accomplishments of our two clubbers, all the grandparents were present.
I was the Puggles leader for this year. Puggles are two and three year olds and we didn't think it would work very well to have them march in from the back of the church so we just sat on the front pew and waited for our time in the program. Some of them were freaked out enough just sitting there. Big church can be a very intimidating place when you're knee high to a grasshopper. Here Nathan is walking in with the other Cubbies. (My dad had my camera - thanks for snapping pics Poppo!)

After a brief welcome from the commander and video of the AWANA kids from this year it was time for the Puggles to receive their Participation Certificates. I went to the mic and announced the kids as the other leader handed them their paper.

This is Benjamin standing up at the front of the church to get his certificate. Sorry it is so blurry - this is one of the quirks of my new camera that I forget to tell people about. You can zoom to your heart's content (something crazy like 12X or so) but only 3X is optical zoom, meaning it still looks good. If you zoom 4x or more it's very grainy and blurry. See. Oh well.

Here is Nathan standing up at the front of the church to get his Cubbie Bear pin and a card with a lollipop attached and a coupon from Chick-fil-A. Cubbies learn a total of 32 verses for the year - I'm so proud of him. I wasn't there to see him get his stuff because I was still wrangling Puggles (some went and sat with parents and grandparents, some went to the nursery, some went the wrong way, etc.) so I'm glad Poppo got a few pics of him.

Here I am helping Nathan make his way to his seat.

Both boys did great sitting in the pew with all the grandparents and myself until the program was over. David ran sound - here he is with his Puggle afterwards...

and here's our family - one sound tech, one Puggle leader, one Cubbie, and one Puggle. Next year both boys will be Cubbies and I will most likely be a Cubbie helper.

To celebrate afterwards we went to Rick and Carolyn's for ice cream. I scream, you scream, we all scream...and so on and so forth.

Benjamin makes the rounds when it comes to helping everyone finish up their ice cream.

I like these close-ups of the boys - their eyes look amazing in the natural light.

To entertain themselves once the ice cream was gone the boys played with the booster seats. Here we have the little brother pulling his big brother along in the seat. I guess he didn't realize that he probably shouldn't be able to do that. He's quite the little strong man.

It was a great evening and a great end to a great year of AWANA. Now it's summertime - YEAH!