Just a thought

"Busyness is not Godliness. God is not impressed with your production capacity as much as He is concerned that the product of your home--your own children--be chiseled and molded and perfected to the best of your ability. You may tire of this mundane task, but the Lord admonishes you not to grow weary and promises to supply the energy and strength as needed in this all-important task (Isaiah 40:28-31). God's strength is for what He plans for you to do--not stamina for everything you might want to do."

--Dorothy Patterson

McKenna is Soooo Big

McKenna is a big girl and she knows it!

Yesterday was a BIG day for her. She started to choose to take steps instead of crawling. This is mainly thanks to Miss Abigail who worked on walking all day with McKenna. Abby uses this high pitched little voice and I heard her saying "Come here Kenna" all day.

And here she is walking and drinking at the same time! What a big girl.
Here she is going down the stairs by herself! She's been doing this since the beginning of March.

And I had to include this random picture of her with a bow in her hair because the bow only stays in for seconds, so it's a rare picture!

It's Teacher Appreciation Week

Just wanted to remind all of you with kiddos in school that this week is Teacher Appreciation Week! As a former teacher I've gotten a few mugs in my day! So do you guys have any creative ideas for the teachers in your lives?? I always loved getting letters from my students telling me their favorite things that they learned or their favorite memories from that year. I also loved getting gift cards to bookstores. Leave a comment if you've got a cute idea!

P.S. If you are a teacher and you're reading this, I've heard that Chick-fil-A (participating ones) is giving away free chicken strips to teachers this Tuesday.

Big News!

Well, this news probably isn't going to change your life, but it's changing mine and my emotions are a bit of a rollercoaster everytime I let myself dwell on this for too long. I'm sure I'll be crying by the end of this post, so bare with me. I should also probably immediately say that:

1. We DID NOT sell our house.

2. I am NOT having a baby.

Now that we've cleared that up let's move on...

One random day last week, Bobby the Bear showed up at our house. It was the strangest thing. Em was doing homework after school. McKenna was playing in the living room while Christian was watching TV. There was a knock on the front window and Bobby was there.

Now if you're an avid blog reader and pay attention to all the little details of our lives you know that Bobby the Bear lives a long way away and he has never just shown up at our house unannounced. This was a first.
Usually Bobby shows up here ^ at PopPop and Grandmom's house two hours away. But last week he traveled to see us on a very important and secret mission.


Thankfully PopPop and Grandmom came along with Bobby and Emma began to wrestle PopPop to the ground immmediately and you'll notice the McKenna wasn't far behind.

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I know, you're still wondering what the big news is aren't you? It's coming!

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McKenna was happy to play babies with Grandmom.



And Emma was thrilled to see her grandparents until Grandmom starting drilling Emma on her math facts (one of Emma's great hates in this world but definitely one of her weaknesses).

Okay...back to Bobby! This ^ is Bobby's home, my childhood home. This picture was taken in the early 80s. That's my brother and I on the front steps. My parents have lived in this home for over 35 years.

They bought the house, not because they loved it, but because they loved the 8 acre yard. This picture was taken in the 70s before they started major construction on the house. They took this yucky little house that was built in the 1800s and turned it into.....this beautiful home where I grew up. I love this house. I love every tree in the yard. I know where every rock is on the 5 acres that need to be mowed because I've mowed them so many times myself. I love to bring my children here to explore the woods and learn more about God's creation.

It's a fun, fun place. But it's also a tremendous amount of work. I know my parent's would love to sit on the front porch or their back porch or their beautiful new deck and just enjoy their home, but that doesn't happen too often. They usually have too much work to do.

So Bobby came for a visit because he's looking for a new home close to our house. Grandmom and PopPop just put their house on the market and they are planning to move to our area, if their house sells. So we're not the only one's with our house on the market, my parent's have their house on the market too, and my brother Tim's rental is on the market too. Whew...I hope we all don't have to move at once. You might think that I'm thrilled to pieces that my parent's will be living close by and honestly I haven't gotten there yet. I'm still just sad that they're selling their house. I know it's the right choice for them, no doubt, but it's sad. So lots of changes are going on in our family. Even more that I'll blog about at another time. I'm not so good with change. I just like for things to stay the same, so having a little boy who's going to turn four soon, and my parent's selling my childhood home and a bunch of other stuff is making me rather emotional these days.

Teaching the Fruit of the Spirit

So here's the deal: Psalms 119:11 says, "I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you." I think that means that when you memorize scripture (or hide it in your heart) that it helps you not to sin. Makes sense to me! As I've mentioned before we are dealing with some specific sin issues in our family, so we are starting a new project this coming week. We're going to memorize some scripture. We've done it before, but I haven't been consistent with it and I haven't worked on making it fun. But this week I've got a plan!! I'm going to tell you about our plan in this post so you can join us if you want to!

I bought this cheap little recipe card box at Walmart for Christian. This is going to be his new scripture card box and it's going to sit on our kitchen table. On Monday he's going to decorate it and make it look cool.Inside will be an index card of each scripture we've memorized and a card for the verse we're working on at that time. This is the card for Genesis 1:1. Every time he says this verse at the dinner table I will put a sticker on the back of the card. He should be saying the scripture at all three meals during the day, so he should be getting at least 3 stickers a day.

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This week we are going to memorize Galations 5:22 &23 "But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control."

Monday:

1. Activity =Decorate scripture memory box. Explain how the box is going to work.
2. Read Galations 5:22&23

3. Activity =Color this picture of a tree and draw different fruits on the tree. Discuss how "good/healthy trees bare fruit."

4. Game= (preparation- print out pictures and put tape on the back of them)

Have each of the children pretend to be a tree. They should be standing with their arms out like branches. Explain that God wants us to grow fruit just like a fruit tree but the fruit we grow is going to be a little different. List the fruits of the spirit. Ask them what kind of fruit they could grow and then begin to cover them with pictures of them doing that particular fruit. For example;

Kindness -sharing your toys

Goodness - by helping mommy in the kitchen (or cleaning up toys, etc)

Gentleness - by being kind and helping your little sister

Patience - By not fussing in the car

Love - giving hugs and using kind words

I'm going to print these pictures and a bunch more to tangibly show them how they should be acting when they are growing the fruits of the spirit!! Then I'm going to tape these pictures all over them, as they're pretending to be trees, to show them the kind of "fruit" they should grow! I think they'll think it's funny, but it will also be memorable and I think it will stick with them for awhile.

4. Time to put it into practice! Joy - Have each child think of one thing that could do for another child (Ex: Something Nate could do for Abby...) to make them happy! (They could share something special, make them some sort of surprise, etc).

Tuesday:

1. Activity= We'll complete this project from http://www.christianpreschoolprintables.com/

2. Read Galations 5:22&23

3. Time to put it into practice! Goodness - Ask the children to do a job around the house and explain that there is NO reward. It should be done with a happy heart!

Wednesday:

1. Activity=We're going to make fruit paintings using apples cut in half as stamps and bananas as our brushes.

2. Read Galations 5:22&23

3. Time to put it into practice!! Self-Control - Sit a tasty treat out on the table and tell the children they can't have it until Emma gets home from school! Yikes! That's going to be a hard one! If they whine or ask about it then they aren't showing self control.

Thursday:

1. Activity - Complete this Fruit of the Spirit maze (or crossword puzzle for older kids)

2. Activity - Make this Fruit of the Spirit mini book.

3. Read Galations 5:22&23

4. Time to put it into practice!! Love - Have each of the children say what they love about each other! Have them make cards for someone they love as a surprise!

Friday:

1. Activity: (this is great for working on those preschool fine motor skills) Give each child a paper plate and a bunch of magazines. Using toddler scissors have them cut out pictures of fruit from the magazines and glue them onto their paper plate. They should have a picture of a tasty fruit salad when they're done.

2. Read Galations 5:22&23

3. Time to put it into practice!!! Peace - Set the timer for 20 minutes and put all the children in the same room. Tell the children to play peacefully together and explain your expectations of exactly what that should look and sound like!!

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Those are just a few of my ideas! You could add a fruit of the day to this lesson plan and work on the letter that goes with that fruit. For example; Monday you could eat Grapes and work on the letter "G." Tuesday could be Cherries and you could work on the letter "C" and so on! Let me know if you have other ideas of what I could do this week to make this fun (just don't suggest something too complicated...I've got to keep it simple or I won't end up doing it :)

P.S. Ever since I wrote this post the Wiggles song "Fruit Salad, Yummy, Yummy" has been going through my head. If you know the song, you know how annoyed I am!!!

Cute Conversation

Christian: "Mommy why are you stayin' married to Daddy so long?"
Me: "Well, I love Daddy and promised Daddy and God that I would stay married to him forever."
Christian: "But I don't want you to stay married to Daddy."
Me: "Why on earth don't you want Daddy and I to be married?"
Christian: "Because I want to marry you!" Awww!!
Me: "Well, mommies don't usually marry their little boys. So let's just be a family forever, okay?"
Christian: "Okay, but I still want to marry you."

He's doing to be mortified by that conversation when he's older, but I think it's so sweet that he wants to marry me!

Just Have to Document it!

McKenna's Official First Steps:

Saturday, April 26th

She took two steps towards me. She didn't realize she did it and I could not get her to repeat it and there were no witnesses.

Official First Steps for Real:

Wednesday, April 29th

McKenna grabbed Daddy's ear buds for his iPod off the desk and stood there on her own playing with them. She didn't realize she was standing on her own and when I put my hands out for McKenna to walk to me she did it. Daddy was standing there and saw the whole thing. We looked at each other is disbelief (I think we've been wondering if this girl was ever going to walk) and immediately plopped ourselves down on the floor to see if we could get her to do it again. We didn't dare take the ear buds out of her hands and she proceeded to walk back and forth between us for the next 20 minutes. She took about 4 or 5 steps on her own at a time. Christian heard us cheering and laughing and got out of bed to join us. Then McKenna started walking towards him because he had Thomas on his pjs (Thanks Jake & Nikki - who knew those pjs would help get McKenna walking) and she loves Thomas. It was so cute how she would tumble into Christian's arms when she got to him. Can you tell that I'm just a tad bit excited? I can't wait to see if she'll do it again tomorrow.

Recap...

As promised, here's McKenna looking cute on Sunday! Thanks Aunt Lindsey for the cute outfit! I love it!
My sweet boy is looking older and older every day.

I tried to get a nice picture of them together but McKenna was fascinated by the tree and all the bees buzzing around the flowers.

It was a HOT HOT weekend, but tons of fun with a water bottle in hand.

A giant tub of water is another great way to stay cool and perfect entertainment for a one year old.
Uncle Ryan set off our first fireworks of the season.

McKenna liked it at first and then it quickly went downhill from there. I have a feeling she will NOT be enjoying fireworks this summer.

But the cousins sure love them!

This is the duck pond where we headed when our house was being shown. McKenna LOVED seeing the ducks and barked like at dog at them the entire time we were there (She thinks every animal barks. Right now that's the only animal sound she can make.)

Yes, it does look like they could have fallen in at any moment :) But I kept my mouth shut and just let them be kids. We've fallen in this pond before and lived to tell about it ;) You can click here to read about that adventure.

Let's see: Christian's shorts are on inside out. Abby's wearing long sleeves and long pants in 85 degree weather b/c she ruined two other outfits in the mud we had going on yesterday. Nate is not even wearing pants. But we've got popsicles and are lovin' life!