Big Faith Steps

 

When I was young (I don't remember my exact age), I was sitting in church with my parents, and it was a communion Sunday.  I was getting pretty hungry as it was almost lunchtime, and sometimes my mom would share the juice and bread with me from communion, so I was pretty excited as the plates were passed from row to row, moving ever closer to where we sat near the back of the church.  But then, shockingly, my mother did not share!

Later, after lunch, Mom came into my room and talked with me about what communion represented.  That people who have made the choice to accept God's love for them, and believe that Jesus died for them, to save them, can take communion, as a way to remember what Jesus has done.  I decided then and there that I believed Jesus is who he said he is, and I wanted to have him always with me, my forever friend.

Fast forward twenty years...

Aria was three, sitting at the dinner table one evening when she prayed and asked Jesus to be her forever friend, always with her, and asked for him to forgive her sins.  It was such an incredible thing to be able to lead our own child through the steps of believing that Jesus had died for her, and accepting him as her savior, especially since Jeremy and I have had the privilege of talking through this decision with several children, and youth about this before.  It has been so incredible to see Aria grow in her faith and purity as she delights herself in her Best Friend, and his incredible love for her!

So the huge event this past summer was that Aria got to take communion for the first time!  Usually Aria goes to VAC Kids during the service, so she doesn't normally have opportunity to take communion.  But in the summer its a different story.  So, I was thinking she would get to take communion at the beginning of July, but we had just arrived home from Calgary that day, and so by the time we got to church on Saturday night Aria was pretty tired.  About halfway through the preach, she fell asleep!  So, I let her nap.

Our next communion service was at the beginning of August, and in a rare event for our family, Jeremy, Aria and I sat together... for an ENTIRE SERVICE!  

 Wow.  

That alone is blog-worthy!  But, it was also a special moment for us to be able to talk through communion with our little girl and about the significance of participating in the sacrament as a follower of Jesus.  Its sometimes difficult for kids to grasp  the metaphor of communion: Am I actually drinking Jesus blood?  I think the key teachable moment for kids comes in Jesus' command to "Do this in remembrance of me" (Luke 22; 1 Corinthians 11).  We make a pattern of remembrance in the life of our church to reflect on what Christ has done and is continuing to do for the Body, as a community!  

It is a moment of affinity and unity.  

Together.

I think that is why celebrating this with Aria and Jeremy, together, both parents with our child, made this such a significant moment for me.  Not just because my daughter is making these faith steps, but that we are getting to do them together.  And that her faith is coming alongside ours.  Not only am I her mom, but her sister, equally adopted and loved by our Father.  Blows my mind!

What a great God we serve.  To be called His children.

  

Here's a tidbit about celebrating communion taken from my favorite children's Bible:

 Then Jesus picked up some bread and broke it.  He gave it to his friends.  He picked up a cup of wine and thanked God for it.  He poured it out and shared it.
"My body is like this bread.  It will break,"Jesus told them.  "This cup of wine is like my blood.  It will pour out."
"But this is how God will rescue the whole world.  My life will break and God's broken world will mend.  My heart will tear apart - and your hearts will heal.  Just as the passover lamb died, so now I will die instead of you.  My blood will wash away all of your sins.  And you'll be clean on the inside - in your hearts."
"So whenever you eat and drink, remember," Jesus said, "I've rescued you!"

- the Jesus Storybook Bible by Sally Lloyd-Jones

We're Going to Disney World!!!

That's right!  We're heading to Disney World!  The last week of countdown is on and we are all super excited for this grand adventure!  We've been planning this trip since the summer, and now it is less than a week away!  We kept it a secret from the kids until Christmas, and had them do a big scavenger hunt to discover what their surprise present was.  

Here's what we did:

Being that I have a 5 and a 3 year old, reading is definitely not their forte.

So, I had to come up with a way that they could figure out the message 

without us actually saying it to them...

I took several pictures of things from around our home that spelled out a secret message.  

Then placed a picture at each clue that would lead them to the next clue, 

ending with them returning to the living room, where they would put all the clues into order 

(I numbered them on the back, so they put them in order by number and then flipped them over) 

to reveal the message!

Here's the clues:

The Wii from the living room... 

A picture in Aria's room...

A page from a book (a helicopter was the closest thing I could find to an airplane in our house!)...

The clock in the kitchen...

The "C" from Roscoe's name in his room...

The Mickey ornament that I made (but no one could figure out that it was Mickey's torso.  

I think its cute, and I found the idea here)...

I circled the "in" from King on Jer's dart board in the basement 

(Aria figured it out way faster than I thought she would)...

The calender flipped to January that I staged in the kitchen...

I'm not sure who was more excited: 

the kids or the crowd of family and friends 

running around the house chasing them as they solved the puzzles!  

It worked out so well.  

I'm still waiting for the video footage from a couple of the "aunties", so I'll post that later!

  

It was funny, because after they solved the puzzle, I don't know if Aria totally "got it".  

I mean it is a pretty crazy concept to think that we'll be traveling all the way 

down to Orlando to hang out at WDW for a week!  

And with Grandma and Papa, the cousins and their parents!

After the kids solved the puzzle there were some surprise gifts under the tree.  

We had bought a Mickey and Minny stuffy for each of the kids, 

and I had made a countdown calendar, and an "I Spy" game for the trip.  

The countdown calendar has brought me much sanity, because I was tired of counting everyday to answer the question of "how many days until Christmas?".  

And this has made it so that Aria can always see how many days are left!

I had made some travel "I Spy" games for Aria and Roscoe, 

but I also made some for their two cousins that are coming on the trip.  

Before Christmas, when we were putting together the package to send to the cousins,  

I had to explain that the cousins were going to WDW in January.  

And Aria said "Oh, that's nice.  Some day we'll go when we're older."  

And I was thinking "Yeah, like a only a month older!"  

Aria and Roscoe are VERY excited to see their cousins.

I knew the reality of the trip had settled in on Aria when she came to me later on Christmas day and said, "Mommy.  This is the BEST gift you and Daddy have EVER given us!"  And she was a little choked up, which made me a little choked up!

So that's it!  The count down is almost over!

Check out my Disney Trip Pinterest Board for more ideas!

September Catch-up: A month in Review

I can't believe its been a month since I last posted!  We've had a full month of launching youth and children's ministries at our church, and a month of adjusting to having Aria in all day, every day kindergarten!

We had a really HOT September... probably on account of summer not really starting until August... so we thought up some fun water activities with help from Pinterest, and some other creative moms!

One of our new favorite outdoor toys are these sponge balls!  They are super easy to make and tonnes of fun to play with.  I bought a pack of all-purpose sponges from the dollar store and used some zip-ties that I already had at home.

 

 Its as simple as cutting the sponges into three, alternating colors with another sponge (6 pieces total) and then using the zip-tie to cinch them as tightly as you can together.

 You can use different textures of sponges too to create even cooler looking sponge balls.  We like to use them in lieu of water balloons (way less mess to clean up! And they're re-usable) for water fights or water balloon tosses, or just for playing in the pool!

 We also found a great new friend in our backyard when we were moving some rocks...

 We were moving rocks so that we could set up our fabulous new swing set!  The kids have loved having their own "park" in their backyard.  August was SO crazy hot, I found I was often driving to the park, because it was too far to walk in the heat.  But, next summer, we'll be able to keep cool and have fun swinging in our own backyard in the 30 degree weather!

 Another fun activity we did to beat the heat was to freeze some toys and water in a bucket, and then hammer away to free the toys.

 I gave the kids a couple different kinds of hammers and tools to use so that they could experiment and figure out what kind worked the best.

 Aria preferred Daddy's hammer, while Roscoe liked his plastic hammer from his workshop playset.

 I tried to insist on the kids wearing their sunglasses to protect their eyes...

 But I guess Roscoe thought it made it difficult to see what he was doing.

 My suggestion if you want to try this yourself is to use toys that if broken won't cause upset children!  Some of the tails came off in the ice, and a few lost their feet or paws.  But, it kept the kids happy and entertained for a good 20-30 minutes!

First Day of Kindergarten!

Today was Aria's very first day of school!

Its a bit strange to think that every day she'll be spending most of her time NOT with me, when for the past five and a half years she has been with me almost constantly.

What will she do all day when she's at school?

Maybe a little more concerning, is what will I do?

We are so blessed to have some fabulous friends with daughters also entering Kindergarten this year, and all these friends are going to be in class with her!  How exciting!

Here's a couple photos we took to commemorate this special day... 

 SO sad that this one is out of focus!  I may have to re-stage it and try again!

 

A little meltdown because the sun was burning her eyes.  What a face!

Here's some back to school photo ideas I found through Pinterest.  I would have loved to have done the chalkboard idea, but sadly, do not have a little chalkboard.  The paper idea worked well for us, and maybe I'll get Aria to decorate it and then include it in her Kindergarten scrapbook.

1.  Inchmark had a super easy to do photo idea.  This was the idea I used to do Aria's photos, combined with the one below...

2.  Chickabug has some free printables to do these great photos. I like the idea of consistency and adding in the teacher's name from year to year, so I opted to make my own signs.

 

3.  Zoot had a great way of recording all your child's favorites for the year right on the photo.  A great insight into who your child is in that year of school.  I just remember filling out my "School Days" portfolio (the blue book with pockets for each year of school) with things like who my friends were, what I achieved that year and what I wanted to be when I grew up...

 

4.  Sugar Bee Crafts has a tutorial on making a chalkboard sign tutorial.  I didn't know there was chalkboard spray paint.  I may need to go and check that out!

 

5.  Ashlee Raubach Photography did a photo shoot for her son's preschool class!  SO CUTE!  We did something like this for a family photo shoot last week, and we're super excited to see the pictures!  This would be fun to do at a birthday party or with your child's closest friends.

Summer Snapshots

Here's a couple pics from the end of June!

We were spending lots of time outside because it finally was warm enough.  I have discovered a lovely thing... my kids will play quite happily together for long periods of time if I set up the little pool and a sprinkler!  I have enjoyed a few relaxing afternoons dozing, working, reading, playing with my new iphone on the deck while they have fun in the water.

Roscoe loves his dog Ryley.  Ryley's not so sure most of the time what he thinks of Roscoe's love and attention.

One particularly warm day I brought out some tempera paint and we found some shade in the backyard to paint some rocks for our garden.  Now I just need to find some sealant spray to weatherproof the paint... I know I have some somewhere in my house....

 

 I quite enjoyed having the kids paint outside.  It didn't matter how messy it got, and was super easy to clean up!  Yay for summer!

Roscoe loving the alligator pool I bought on clearance at the end of last summer!

A Late Celebration of the Royal Wedding

As mentioned before, I was away at Orange Conference in Atlanta last week, and wasn't able to watch the wedding!  I wouldn't have been a die-hard like some out there, getting up at the crack of dawn to watch it live, but I would have liked to have sat down and watched a replay of it as a whole, rather than in the snippets that I was able to catch whenever we happened past a television.  Did you notice how it seemed to be on every single channel???  I was so encouraged to see the world stop and cheer on a marriage, in a time where divorce affects us all to some degree and it seems like the question we ask regarding the likelihood of a marriage lasting is not "if" but "when".  I know for my husband and I we have always said that "divorce" is not a word in our vocabulary.  It is not an option.  We made covenant promises to one another that I don't ever plan on breaking.  But, I digress...

So, on Monday, once I was safely home, we set up a tea party in the living room for Aria and Roscoe so that we could watch the Royal Wedding.  Aria made a fancy hat to wear.

Notice the glass slipper and jewelery taped to it?  And the big pink bow was a leftover from her birthday a couple weeks ago!

Roscoe lasted all of 10 minutes into the PVR recording of the wedding.

Here's something I wished I knew about before, so I could've made it for our tea party.  Prince William's favorite cake is a chocolate cookie cake.  Davison Orchards, a local attraction was offering it last weekend at their season opening, and they've kindly put the recipe on the their website.  I'm definitely going to have to try this recipe, especially if it is fit for a Royal Wedding!

Jesus Loves Me

Yesterday, in the midst of coloring, Aria went to her room, grabbed her Bible, a new piece of paper, and then colored this picture.  She said she needed her Bible so she could know how to spell Jesus.
Me: "Why don't you draw a picture of Jesus to go with your words?"
Aria: "I can't, because he wears a glowing white robe, and I don't know how to do that."

We tried to think of some ways to draw that, and this is what she came up with.  We've been talking a lot about Jesus' death and resurrection these past two weeks, so I was so blessed by her self-initiated response to what we've been talking about.  That in her own 5-year old way she understands that Jesus loves her SO incredibly much that he has done everything possible to show her that love.  May you also be impacted by Jesus' love for you this Easter and respond to him in your own unique way... just like Aria did.


Happy Easter!