An Official Cubby!

This Sunday was such a special day at The House of Halpin! Owen was to be awarded his Cubby vest at AWANAs! To earn the vest, the kids were required to recite the Cubbies key verse (I Jn 4:10), the Cubbie motto, and two verses from Romans (3:23 and 5:8). Owen accomplished all of this in his first two weeks at AWANAs! His teacher pulled me aside after class last week to tell me the exciting news and to invite our family to come watch the awards ceremony. We would not have missed it!

Jeremy brought Noah up to the church, and I stepped away from teaching my class of Bees so we could all witness this special day for O. Owen was so happy to see us as we slipped into the back of the room.

First the kids listened to a great story about David...

...and sang some praise and worship songs. The guy in the Cowboy's jersey is one of O's great teachers. (It was football night, so everyone was wearing sports paraphernalia.) It was so fun to observe O from a distance and watch him interact with the other kids and his teachers.

And then comes the so sad part of the story. O was next to last to receive his vest. I had our little digital camera (I didn't want to appear to be too obnoxious by bringing the telephoto lens!) set to record O in video form. They called his name. Everyone was cheering and clapping just for O. He jumped up with a HUGE grin, ran to the front of the room to be "vested"...and then my camera malfunctioned. I had been watching the scene unfold through the camera screen. When it went blank, I started frantically pushing buttons, trying to fix it or switch it to camera mode. By the time I had the camera back in working condition, the ceremony was over. I missed it. Completely. I am so sad. I know he wasn't graduating from high school or being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, but I'm still sad I missed it. And the tiny bit of video footage I did manage to get refuses to be posted. Oh well. There will be many more Cubbies award ceremonies to come when O earns patches to adorn his vest.

He was so, so proud to wear his vest the rest of the day and grinned enormously. I took this picture with Debbie, his other teacher, after class. Just look at that smile! Oh, I'm so proud of that kid!