Little blessings

Miss A had a cold, and is now teething.  That means little/no sleep for mama.  The other day daddy had to leave VERY early for work.  I was sleeping on the couch in the living room so that I could be close to Miss A; she was sleeping in the baby swing.  I started hearing the pitter patter of little feet, fully expecting to be greeted by some sweet faces soon.  Instead I heard some whispering.  Then I heard Miss A give out a large cry followed by some quick hushing.  Then silence.  A couple of minutes later I heard the sweet sound of all of my children singing "Amazing Grace" trickling down the hallway from the girls' room.

They had sweetly conspired to try to let me get a bit more sleep.  Our baked oatmeal was even started in the oven!  My kids had gathered together to do the family Bible reading together.  What a sweet blessing!  After taking a couple of quick pictures I joined them.  Each of these sweet kids are truly a gift from God (yes, even the one that was keeping me from sleeping)!

He loved me first

The other day we were doing a video chat with daddy while he was out of town. After saying our "I love yous" and "good-byes" we hung up.

Then I heard Miss C say "I love him"

You love daddy?

"uh huh, 'cause he loved me first"

"he loved me first"

"we love him because he first loved us"

On and on she went like that. It was so sweet and cute. What blessed our hearts the most is that not only is she hiding God's word in her heart, but she is finding His word relevant in her life.  God has blessed her with a small picture of His love for her by providing for her a Daddy that reflects God's love for her.

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J.O.Y.

We've been having a few rough days around here; the fun and adrenalin of the move have worn off, we've been running errands, and we are all tired. We are all feeling the need to get back into a routine, but still have quite a bit of work ahead of us. We needed to be reminded of J.O.Y.

Jesus, Others, then Yourselves..... J.O.Y.

We talked about glorifying God and keeping his commandments; about God's grace through Jesus and needing the Holy Spirit to work in us. We talked about ways we can be showing love to others, and how some behaviors we have been seeing the past days (quite a bit) have not been loving. We talked about where we get the J.O.Y. rule.... God's word; specifically Matthew 22 36-39.

"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: "Love your neighbor as yourself.'

I sat the kids down at our school table and they colored a banner for us to hang on a wall and be reminded of this.

No, the irony of one of the kids coloring in "yourself" darker than "Jesus" or "others" was not lost on me.

When life gets busy it is easy for us to forget this (or even when life is not busy), when we forget life gets even harder. Sometimes the most important thing we can do as moms is to set all of the "important" things aside and refocus our children on what is most important... To bring J.O.Y. back into our homes!

A servant's heart

We try hard to help our children learn to have servant's hearts. We want them to love serving others, and the best place for that to start is in our home. Miss C seems to be getting the hang of this serving thing. She loves to help out in any way that she can, and has recently even been found to bring blankets to siblings when they are sitting in a chair, just incase they may need one!

The other day she saw a pile of napkins that were needing to be folded. She sat right down and got to work! She must have spent at least 5 minutes carefully shaking them out and arranging them. Eventually she seemed to realize that she just wasn't getting it quite right. We praised her for noticing that the napkins needed to be folded, for being willing to do the work, and for trying so hard. It will not be long before she CAN do this job!

How has she learned to serve and enjoy working? I think a big part of the answer is that she is watching her older siblings. They do quite a bit of work, and she wants to be just like them. They also serve her, and though she loves being served and cared for; I can see that she is learning from them to care of others.

*Of course she is still like any other child her age with plenty of fussy moments and she often does seem to think that the world revolves around her. She is not perfect you know! ;)

Life lessons

This weekend Peanut had an unfortunate encounter with one of our cats.

It seems that Peanut was left out of his cage.

The cat was just doing what cats do: hunt rodents.

Mr. M noticed that the cat had come down the stairs with Peanut in its mouth and gave chase. Miss E heard the cries for help and between the two of them they managed to rescue Peanut. However, it was too late. Though Peanut looked "ok" I could tell he was not. Mr. S and I sat and held him for a few minutes until he died. The kids took turns holding Peanut, and everyone had a good cry. Then they started talking about getting a new hamster. The big kids started asking if they could pool their money to get Mr. S a new hamster. We will give it some time (a couple of weeks?) and then let them do that if they are still interested.

This is an opportunity for learning life lessons about death, responsibility, and caring for others. This is the reason we got Peanut, though we didn't think the hard part of the lessons would be so quick in coming. Mr. S had been so diligent in caring for Peanut, making sure he had food and a clean cage (and even baths, oh my!). We had been so pleased with the care and responsibility he was taking.

Starting early

Today Miss E had the job of making zucchini bread for our lunch. Of course Miss J wanted to help, as usual. However, Miss C was a new addition to the job today! She was having blanket time near the table while I was doing some chores. She quickly lost interest in her blocks when she saw all off the action happening at the table. Miss E asked if she could join them?

Set up with a bowl, spoon, flour, a measuring cup, and some spices she was one very happy girl (notice the apron?)! It was so sweet to see her "helping" her sisters make lunch, and how she is learning so early to serve her family. Her little servant's heart is such a blessing to her whole family already! Miss C is always looking for things to help with and clean up, and then clapping after she does the job. Her big sisters are setting great examples for her, they are all such blessings to us!

Big brothers

Miss C is adored by her big brothers. They all ask to hold her all the time. This morning when I set her down on the floor during our Bible reading they all surrounded her in hopes that she would notice them (she does not disappoint, she loves them all dearly and gives them the biggest smiles!). Their daddy does such a good job teaching them to care for and protect girls.

What a lucky little girl to have three big brothers to love her and watch out for her!

*my other sweet girls are also very lucky to be loved by these wonderful young men!

A savings account!

Miss E got her first savings account this week! We split the kids' allowance into five categories each week and one is "investment" that they can not have until they are adults. Miss E's reached $100 a week or two ago so now she gets her very own bank account. She is very excited, and her brothers are looking forward to getting their own some time also.

*This picture was taken last week-end at the community center down the street. They were having some sort of Family/Troop morale thing. The kids had fun on the huge bouncy slide and checking out the animals there. Miss E is getting so tall and looking so much older recently. She sure is growing up!

ice cream rewards

Yesterday was errand day. As always I reminded the kids of what behavior I expected. They were so very good, which was amazing since most of us are getting over colds. The kids got a couple of very nice comments while we were doing our shopping, but the last one topped them all!

An older gentleman that we have seen and talked to before at Costco saw us at Safeway yesterday. He talked with the kids as I picked out produce and then he went on his way. A few minutes later we passed by him again. He handed me $10 and said "I'd be obliged if you would get the kids an ice cream cone" boy did that make their day!

We tell the kids regularly what a blessing they are to others when they are well behaved and

friendly, that it encourages people to see them being so good and happy. It was so nice for them

to be rewarded in this way.

a little helper and a little "mommy"

Thursday was a cooking day for me. I made four lasagnas (one for dinner, two for my freezer, and one for a friend), and two loaves of garlic bread after doing school with the kids and all of our other regular everyday things.

Miss E's job today was to make zucchini bread (her favorite quick bread). Mr. R wanted to learn how to make bread, so I had him help her. That went okay, but next time I think I'll just supervise as he tries to do it on his own. I think he can figure it out. They made a great double batch! (at least it smelled great, both loaves went right into the freezer).

The big hit of the day was when Miss E was making her second double batch of zucchini bread. All of the boys were busy with afternoon clean up and Miss J was running around getting into trouble. Miss E invited her to come help her (I was making garlic bread, Miss J was not interested in helping me, she just wanted to be held if she was in the kitchen). Miss J thought helping Miss E sounded great and stuck with her from start to finish (I love our school table, it is great for most projects the kids do!). She helped pour everything in after Miss E measured it. She helped stir (you should have seen the mess!), and once they were all done she even helped with clean up! Miss J was determined to do all that she could to help out and be a big girl! It was great to see her interest in helping with the food and her ability to stick

with the job. I think the best part though was to see Miss E working so well with her, including her in the work even though it really made more work for her. I guess I liked seeing these things because these are both things I work hard at, teaching the kids to enjoy serving/working and I work hard to include the kids in most things I do. It was great to see both of these things reflected in my "little helper" and my "little mommy"!

*this morning I got up to find Miss E had helped Miss J pick out hair bows (Miss J LOVES her

hair bows). Miss J thought it was quite important that this morning she have her hair done before breakfast, so Miss E changed her diaper, got her dressed and did her hair too, all while I made breakfast! What a good big sister she is (and a great help to me)!

our chore chart

This week we are practicing with our "new" chore chart. We've been using this system for quite some time, but I re-assigned chores and switched some of our focus days around so we need some time to adjust before we start back into school.

This is the system I've been using for a few years with changes as needed here and there. Last year the big change was putting it on a white board using permanent marker (and erasable ones to mark what has been done, or things that change frequently). This has worked out so well because it is right out in the open where every one has to look at it and see what they still need to do, and I can tell at a glance who has not done their jobs (including me, its so easy to get sidetracked by a little one wanting to read or cuddle and forget what I was doing!). Each child is assigned a color and I use colored erasable markers to put a dot next to their jobs. Even the non-readers can look to see that they have a job that has not been marked off and ask a passing "reader" what that job is!

The biggest change this year was changing around our "focus" days. Mostly our errand and cleaning days needed to be switched around. We were running errands on Thursdays the day after AWANAS, and it just was not working to run around all morning with kids that had been up late the night before. Also our cleaning day had been Fridays, but we like to use that day for field trips and sometimes Rob is off on Fridays, on those days it was hard to get the cleaning done.

Mr. S is doing more chores this year. He has been the slowest to learn to do chores, but he will often rise to a challenge, in the last few weeks he has been talking to us about what a big boy he is. We figured it was time to give him more responsibility. Right now he is mostly just shadowing Mr. R and Mr. M on jobs that I know he is ready for. I'm guessing that by after Christmas he may be able to take on a couple of the jobs on his own at least one day a week. For the bigger kids their biggest changes are not in the jobs themselves but that they will either have less supervision from me, or that they will be training a younger sibling to do the job (which is adding work for them).

I also schedule "nap time" on this board. My three oldest don't need naps at all, but this is quiet time so they need to be assigned things to do that are quiet. Mostly that is school work, reading or on cleaning day that is cleaning the bathrooms. Also I use that time to have one on one time with them. Each child has a "special helper day" on that day they come down early to help with breakfast, they get to walk to the mail box, and spend time with me during nap time.

We're working out the kinks this week and I've found a few things that need moving around, I'm glad we have one more week before we will start school. Over all it seems to be going well though.