My Birthday by the Hour

I want to thank my friend Jessie (Thank you, Jessie!) for recently posting an hour by hour recap of her day. My 35th birthday (yes, when I think about it, I'm feeling a bit old probably due to my age now declaring me a "high risk" pregnancy with my OB office!) was this past Sunday and so I thought it a great day to recap with a photo every hour. Here we go...


Up at 7:00am when I heard Chloe barking, i.e. "I need to go outside and potty!"


8:00am and Matthew surprised me with chocolate chip muffins for breakfast. FYI, don't insert wax candles into muffins just out of the oven. He had to carve the molten candles out of the muffins!


It's 9:00am and I'm still putting on my make-up for church. I'm supposed to be READY by now so I can get the kids finished up. Thanks, Matthew, for always pulling everything together when I'm running late!


At 10:00am, I'm in Sunday School with my wonderful Senior High girls. I am blessed to have been teaching teenage girls for the last 10 years. Teenagers experience so much more these days than when I was their age. My prayer is that I might make some sort of small impact on them so when they are in college a few years from now, they'll make better choices than I did.


11:00am (or a few minutes before) finds me in our church choir's practice room, warming up and praying before going into the sanctuary. The choir is a family to me as it's my weekly dose of adult interaction. Our church is blessed to be led musically by Pastor Butch.


Our church service is almost over at 12:00pm and I must say we are equally blessed by the Lord to have such a godly man as our senior paster. Yes, I get to hang out with Hank Williams every Sunday (that's really his name!).


1:00pm and we're eating lunch at La Paz, a Mexican restaurant in town. Ruth Ann treated us for my birthday to which I told her the phrase which normally applies to men is true for me these days, "The path to a man's (or my) heart is through his (my) stomach!"


We arrived home at 2:00pm and the truck became a playground to our energetic kids.


At 3:00pm, our family enjoyed birthday cake with my parents who stopped by for a short visit. Matthew, Philip and Braewyn made the delicious cake Saturday night. While I sat on the sidelines watching it all, I had to tell him at one moment, "When you bake with kids, you need to assume the worst might happen."


4:00pm came and I tried my best to squeeze a nap in. I had left Braewyn to play in her room with the command to let me sleep for 30 minutes. About 6 minutes after this picture was taken, I was woken up and not a happy Mommy! That's what unconditional love is all about, right?


At 5:00pm, when we would be leaving in 10 minutes for evening church, here is what I found in Braewyn's room. Thankfully, she did fall asleep but only after playing really hard in her room.


At 6:00pm, you'll find me on Sunday nights helping with Braewyn's Awana Cubbies class. It's a Bible verse memory club for 3- and 4-year-olds. Braewyn's face is under the arm of the girl in the pink shirt with her arm raised.


Cubbies is over at 7:00pm and it's time to clean up our room.


Dinner comes at 8:00pm on Sunday nights after we get home. Yeah, Mexican leftovers! Thanks, Ruth Ann, for two meals.


Bedtime at our house is 9:00pm (one of the perks of homeschooling is that the kids sleep until 7:00am or at least that's the goal). Even though I'm usually exhausted and ready to lay down myself, it's a sweet, sweet time of family devotions as we teach our children about our God.

A long day, but such blessings all along the way!

A Castle for My Birthday

Today is my birthday and I'll have another post about that tomorrow. Yesterday we began the festivities by going to lunch as a family. I wanted to pick a restaurant that would be fun for all of us but some place special too.

This past week, Philip and I have been reading about how the Gospel spread through Europe from 300AD to 1000AD through the teachings of Augustine in Italy, Patrick in Ireland and Boniface in Germany. Strong men of God who sacrificed much in telling others about Jesus. Philip's history book also touched on the fact that at this time, Europe was not made of large nations but rather of kingdoms in which all the town people lived in a castle governed by a lord. The special project actually suggested constructing a castle from Legos (the key to Philip's heart) or other building blocks and surrounding it by a moat if possible.

Here are some pics of what we constructed. What could be more fun than Legos and a bathtub full of water!



Building the Lego castle helped me realize what a great restaurant choice would be... California Dreaming! It would provide a chance to visit the next best thing to a real castle!






Don't fall off the drawbridge!

Randomness of Childhood

A few nights ago, we were putting the kids to bed in our normal fashion. Brushing teeth, reading a Bible story, saying prayers (Braewyn: "Thank you God for Grandma, Nana, Papa, Daddy, Mommy, my brother, my brother in my mommy's tummy" -- does she know something we don't? Philip: "God bless the African children and let them believe in You." Future missionary?), and tucking them into beds. I went to leave Braewyn's room and simply said, "Sleep well, honey. I love you." To that Braewyn says, "I'm telling my doggy that aliens aren't real. She doesn't need to be scared." What?! Too many Ben 10 cartoons with Philip I suppose.

Driving to church for dinner Wednesday night, we passed a strip mall. Philip asked if the moose store had closed (it's a hunting / sporting goods store with a deer head on the sign). I said no, but the school supply / hobby store had closed. He said, "That's where we went to look to buy Andrew (his cool 9-year-old neighbor friend) a birthday present." I replied, "That's right, but then we found him one at a Kmart after the last family reunion." To which he replied, "There's smart and then there's Kmart smart." What?! I vaguely recall seeing a Kmart commercial on tv but that kid is a tag line junkie.

Sweet funny kids. I wonder what kind of things this third baby will say in a few years.

Arts & Crafts

I wouldn't consider myself a very crafty person. I did enjoy scrapbooking before the days of blogging and Facebook. I'd really rather paint a room in my house before trying my hand at oilpainting. All that said, kids like arts and crafts and so I did want to incorporate that into our school year. The best part of helping Philip and Braewyn do crafts is seeing their personalities displayed through their artwork. It's amazing how two kids raised by the same parents in the same circumstances can be so different. Yes there is an age difference to consider but yet there is a difference in color preference and the ways things should be. First here are their scarecrows we made a few weeks ago. They each colored the pieces of the scarecrows themselves, Philip cut his pieces out, I cut Braewyn's, and then they each glued them on construction paper. Very cute finished projects and each unique. Philip likes things to look the way they should. Braewyn goes for eclectic and bold.



Walking through the children's hall of our church, I often get ideas from the preschool art on the walls. I really liked the idea of handprint fall trees so we gave it a try. Philip thought it was a dumb idea but I told him he wouldn't be saying that to an art teacher at public school. Braewyn tried to jump on Philip's bandwagon and whine about it too but then jumped into her work and went overboard. Not sure but I think her painting depicts burning fall leaves on the sides!



After Philip finished his handprint tree, he said, "Now I want to paint a picture from the book." What he was referring to is our Usborne Book of Famous Paintings. Once before I let him look through it, pick a painting and recreate it himself. This time he picked "Sunflowers" by Vincent Van Gogh. Braewyn is still in the modern art stage but thoroughly enjoys the experience. Here are my little artists at work.



Here is Van Gogh's work, Philip's underneath and finally Braewyn's pop art. Not bad for an unexperienced 5-year-old! He said three flowers were enough for his painting.

Philip's Decision for Christ

As a follower of Jesus Christ myself, I've been praying for my children to decide to accept Him as Lord and Savior of their lives since they were born. It's a joy to teach Philip and Braewyn how much Jesus loves them and all that He did while on earth and is still doing today from heaven and in the lives of Christians. I've thought for the last several months that Philip was possibly getting close to making a decision to give his life to Christ based on the questions he was asking and the comments he was making. I thank the Lord that we are blessed with a wonderful Bible-teaching church and have been also able to attend BSF (Philip's been attending every week since his 2nd birhtday).

Three weeks ago we were coming home and in the car. He began asking which of his friends would be going to heaven. He asked about Andrew and Daniel (9- and 6-year old boys next door). I said yes they would as they've asked Jesus to be their savior. He asked about their sister Anna. I said I hope she will make a decision to follow Christ when she's older but she's only 3 right now. Philip then said, "Mommy, in three days I'll ask Jesus into my heart." I said that was fine and whenever he was ready we could talk with Mrs. Ann, our children's ministry director.

Two days later, Philip said he still wanted to see Mrs. Ann the next day. I said that was fine and maybe we could find her at the church (it would be Friday), but that I did want him to know that he could pray to Jesus with me and Daddy. He thought about it for a minute and then said, "Let's just do that now!" It was such a special moment as I prayed with him and he repeated what I said, admitting his sin and asking Jesus for forgiveness. We then called Matthew at work to tell him the good news. I then took Chloe outside to go potty and when I came in, I couldn't find Philip. After looking downstairs and heading upstairs, I found him sitting on his bathroom counter, washing off his feet in the sink. I asked him if his feet were dirty from being outside earlier. He said, "I'm washing off my sin." Just precious the faith of a child. We talked about really being baptized at church and how it was a symbol of his decision to follow Christ. He said he'd like to get baptized when he is 7 (two years from now).

That Sunday, we encouraged him to tell Nana, Papa and Grandma and whomever else he wanted. He told his grandparents and one Sunday School teacher but was bashful about telling others, just pointing at me to tell people. We made an appointment to meet with Mrs. Ann that next Wednesday as I was looking forward to someone other than Matthew and I to talk with Philip and let him express what his decision meant. After our meeting, Ann said she definitely could see that Philip really understood what it meant to be a follower of Christ. She took us up to the baptismal area of the church so he could see where he would change clothes, the view from the baptismal pool, etc. He left there saying maybe when he was 6 he'd do it.

After some more discussion about how great a decision he had made and how excited our church family would be to see him baptized, we did offer the idea that maybe it would be great to schedule his baptism for the Sunday after Thanksgiving when his cousins Hannah and Madeline would be visiting. At first, he became so excited that he wanted to get baptized the soonest Sunday possible but I told him it would only be four weeks until our relatives came for the weekend. He was satisfied with waiting so everyone could be here.

It's such an exciting time in life to see Philip growing in his relationship with Christ and also a little worrisome for me thinking if I'm doing enough. People have told us to just keep doing what we're doing and I suppose they're right. So refreshing to receive a first-hand reminder that the Lord really only requires the faith of a child.

"Yet to all who did receive Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God— children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God." John 1:12-13