Lessons learned in less than 24 hours...

Well helping with the church pre-school last night was filled with fun, and a few lessons. We talked about the story of Noah, the ark, the animals, rain, flood, and how a rainbow is God's way of reminding us of his promise to never flood the earth like that again. So that lead directly into our art project of the night... rainbows! We had photocopied a bunch of black-line rainbows onto construction paper, and gave the kids (16 of them, ages 3 to 6, and did I mention there were only 2 teachers?) colorful tissue paper squares, and glue sticks. The idea was that they could "color" their rainbow by coating it with the glue stick then covering it with the little color squares... that part went ok once we explained it was much easier to apply the glue to the rainbow instead of applying the glue to the tissue. Then came the fun part... cotton ball clouds! I won't go into much detail, but this was my 1st lesson:

#1 chubby kids fingers + glue-stick + cotton balls = a line at the sink 16 kids long, and little tufts of cotton everywhere. I even found some on my pants at home 2 hours later.

The kids were an absolute blast though. I love the years between 3 & 6. They're still so eager to please you and be a "big-helper". I wish that feeling never ended... as in the case of my 18 yr. old nephew... long story short he dropped out of high-school, got kicked out of his parents house, has horrible friends, can't get a driver's license (medical reason), and can't hold a job... so my husband and I made the decision about 1 yr. ago to let him stay with us and we'd help him get back on his feet. He took major advantage of us, lied, let his friends steal, etc etc. We kicked him out about 6 months ago. Now he came back 4 days ago begging and pleading for us to take him back. We talked about it for a long time. S & I prayed about it, had lengthy discussions about forgiveness, then we talked to Nephew & set ground rules (NO friends over unless S or myself is there, curfew, etc). Well he did great for 3 days. We had plans to go add a cell phone to our plan for him, and take him down to dmv to get an ID card so he could at least apply for jobs. Yesterday as I was leaving for church I could tell something was up... but I didn't say anything. Sure enough, I come home, he is gone, there is a beer bottle cap on my counter, and a can of budlight in my freezer (why?). All 4 Wii remotes are out on the floor, the tv is on, and the front door is unlocked. UGH!! I'm pissed, and just waiting for him to come back... instead he calls around 9. Says he's at his Dad's (sure I believe THAT!) and he'd be back in the morning. It's almost 11am now and after talking to S, Nephew still hasn't shown up. I didn't act pissed on the phone last night, because I thought if I did he wouldn't ever come back. Well now I'm wishing I would have taken the chance to yell at him since he didn't come back anyways. Another lesson learned!

#2: Forgiving repeat offenders should be left up to God... apparently I am not a good judge.

#2.5: Never hold back in hopes of confronting someone face-to-face. If you have them on the phone Now is as good a time as any.