Holidays Bring Smiles

Mrs. Claus, Merci and Grace enjoyed a day of sharing with our community. We gave a smile to all that we met. Whether it was Toys for Tots, Adult Daycare or visiting with folks from all of the local extended living and nursing homes in the area. The holidays are about sharing what you can with others. This is one of the best times of the year for us.

New Year and New Beginnings

Our clown group is very pleased to be able to share some new reading ideas with our community. We now have been invited to share a reading afternoon with members of the Thomas Edison Adult Reading club. These are folks have special challenges for their lives. Some of them can read on a 1st and 2nd grade reading level. So each month we load up some puppets, stories and our thinking caps and spend some time reading to them. The folks who can read some are given books which are reading approiate for them and they share time reading to the rest of the group. The most fun thing we have come up with is creative storybook writing at the end of the session. We have all of the group work together to create some characters and a story line. We follow the who, what, when, where and why's of writing. One of the ladies said that it means so much to her to be able to help do something worthwhile for others. Our friends Dawn and Jimmy sometimes draw pictures to go along with the stories. Then when we are done we come back the next month and read the final product. After that we hope to be able to continue taking these stories to other locations and share with those kids. Hopefully someday this will help create new reading friendships from many places. Our first story told a lesson about Pigs Who Followed a Stranger. Each of the group were given a Christmas present of their story to take home to their families for the holidays.

There are talented kids in this area!!!

I almost forgot to put on the computer pictures of our talented YWCA kids that we worked with this summer. They performed this show as part of a bigger show put on by the leaders of the Summer Haven program. There really are some very good little actors in these groups. We hope that some of them will try out for our up-coming kids talent search.

New Hope VBS Decatur

Decatur Indiana was the place we last visitied to do a VBS program. We have a 30 minute show on the fruits of the spirit which we perform for various groups. We had so much fun with this group of children. There were about 40 kids and several adults present. They were good sports and we enjoyed do the chicken dance with them after our program.

Miss Kitty joines our us as a regular member of the troupe

We have from time to time extra helpers for our clown troupe. Last weekend we were so pleased when one of these extra helpers decided that she would like to become a regular memeber of our group. Amber has helped us out a few times before and she volunteered to go with us to a VBS. Her character is Miss Kitty. This high school student has a talent for dancing and creating some very fun type of characters for us. The little kids just love her. Next month we will be starting a talent search for kids 8-12 years old to help us with some new projects. It is our hope to someday create a dvd with the help of the high school media group that may be aired on the local cable station. During this summer we have come across a lot of talent right here in this community. So keep watching and see what develops!

Rib Cook-off has some new friends!

This was the 2nd annual Rib Festival sponsored by our local Chamber of Commerce. We help them out from time to time. Usually we have helium balloons which we pass out but it was too windy to do this. So it was time to break out couple new characters to our group. Milton C. (Pork Chop) Pigglesmith and Cow-a-Belle came to the event with protest signs. The pig said to eat cows and the cow said not to listen to the pig. They had a very large crowd. You know that with the younger generation having cameras in their phones now we must have had at least a hundred photos of us taken.

After we tried the ribs we had to change the signs to rib converts. Most people think we have just too much fun. It is a nice way to spread a little good will for this community.

The Big Day Finally Has Arrived!!!

The Master Gardener class of 2006 is so happy that the big day has finally arrived. Louise has worked so hard for the past couple of years getting things organized for the Children's Garden.

Our class had to do their garden last but it was well worth the wait. The Land Of Petals and Feathers is now open. This is the garden talked about in our storybook which can be purchased

from our website. It turned out even better than we had originally thought. Since this is the first adventure of Merci and Grace it holds a special place in our hearts. We hope you will enjoy it.