What a year....what a decade....

I remember New Years Eve 1999...10 years ago. I was with some great friends, dancing to Prince's "Let's Party like it's 1999" and out until 4 a.m. to ring in 2000.
My oh my how a decade changes things.
The end of 2000 I met my guy.
Two years later, he asked me to marry him, I said yes and we were married 10 weeks later.
The beginning of 2004 we closed on our first home. Thirteen days later we found out that we would be welcoming our first child that fall. September 2004, Max David James changed our lives in way so that we would forever forget how it was when we were childless. April 2006, our Molly Marie joined our family. I have few memories of us with just Max. January 2008, we receive word that Aaron has gotten a job in Kentucky. Easter of 2008 we make that move. Three months later in June, Maggie Grace arrived (very quickly). Kentucky is the only home she has ever known. I will bawl like a baby when it comes time to take our last family picture on our doorstep here. January of 2010 we will be moving back to Michigan. I am so very excited, but a bit sad to be leaving here...this small town.
So the planning and phone calls and address forwarding and nagging of my husband :) begins. The Good Lord has blessed us all so much. I can't wait to see what He has planned for us this year...this decade...

Dollar Store Finds....

****Sorry. I cannot get those pictures to rotate. I did it the same way I do everytime, but it will not rotate. I apologize for having to crank your heads to see the photo.*****

I went to the Dollar Store in hopes of finding some plastic storage bins for the kids stuff. I didn't find that, but I did find some GREAT finds. I was really excited. Aaron told me that we better get back to Michigan because we have zero room for what I keep bringing into our little home.

First I spotted these maps. They are nice & big. Sorry I didn't take them out to take a picture of the whole thing.

Nevertheless, they include maps of:

The Holy Land during New Testament Times

The Exodus

The Tribes of Israel

Paul's Journey

Next, I was excited to find big bible story cards. They are nine 8x11 cards in each packet. They have bright colorful photos on one side. On the back side is the verse and then the correct number order in the lower left hand corner.

The four I found are:

Jesus Walks on Water

Noah's Ark

The Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes

Jesus Heals a Blind Man

I am a huge fan of file folder games so I was ecstatic when I found these.

See the Light is a Bible Matching game. It includes the game board & 40 matching cardPretty self-explanatory.

Bible Clues is a game of just that, Bible Clues. It contains 1 game board, 4 game pieces & 38 Bible question cards. The questions cards have 3 clues on each one. If the kids can guess the answer after one hint they get to move 3 spaces. If they guess after 2 hints, 2 spaces. After 3 hints, they move 1 space.

God's Kingdom is a Bible Trivia game. It comes with 1 game board, 5 game pieces and 52 Bible question cards. Players move one space for each correct answer given. They also follow the instructions on the game board spaces.

The Lord's Army looks like my favorite. On the inside of the file folder there are two men. The point of the game is collect all of the pieces of armor for your soldier. The pieces of armor that you must collect are:

shield of faith

helmet of salvation

sword of the spirit

belt of truth

breastplate of righteousness

feet of the gospel of peace

I think Max is going to love this one!

While digging through all of this great stuff at the Dollar Store, I found some Bible character cut-outs. There are 3 in each package. Again, there is a bright & colorful photo of the person from the Bible along with a brief description.

I bought the 4 packets they had available. They are:

Joseph, Noah & Daniel

King Saul, Queen Esther & King Solomon

Ruth, Mary Magdalene & Hannah

Moses, David & Jonah

Finally I found packets of inspirational posters. Each packet includes 3 posters.

Those are:
Psalm 23, The Lord's Prayer & Jesus Loves Me

Galatians 5:22-23, Psalm 46:10 & John 8:12

I can't wait to get back to Michigan so that I can hang all of these great new finds up in our spacious classroom! Until then I'll take it out a little at a time and play!

The first snowfall of the season...

Last Saturday, December 5th, this is what we woke up to:

The kids LOVED it!!! Of course, it was all gone by noon, but the kids were just so happy to be able to play in it. Maggie loved flicking all of the snow off the bushes. Max & Molly were just giddy being able to throw snowballs at their mommy & daddy!

My Maggie...

A few days shy of one and a half. She is growing up so much everyday.

She is by best listener as of late. She is really loving her baby dolls and loves taking them on walks.

She points and says, "ook".

She picks something up, walks over to me and her daddy and says, "See?"

I ask her where her nose is and she points somewhere on her face. She smiles, begins to scream and then claps for herself.

She gives the best hugs and kisses...whenever I ask her.

Keep 'em coming baby girl!

My Molly...

Today, Molly and Max were coloring their latest picture for their Advent projects.

We found another stash of colored pencils.

We all sat. They colored while I went through and sharpened all of them.

Molly picked up two pencils. They were both black.

"This doesn't make any sense. Two black ones? That doesn't make any sense."

I have no idea why I laughed as hard as I did, but I did. It's usually the look she has on her face. I think it's the same one her cousin, Joshua, makes when he does all of his funniest work too!

My Little Boy...

My Max...my only son...my oldest...so sweet...he loves his momma so and I hope that never changes.

Our days go pretty well until clean-up time comes around. My kids HATE cleaning up...unless of course there is some grand prize at the end of the "clean up what you destroyed" tunnel. Today was no different.

Max had taken Maggie's big pink bucket of toys and dumped it out. He laughed. I told him it was indeed funny, but that he would be picking all of those toys up and putting them back into the big pink bucket.

He didn't do it. He didn't do it. He didn't do it.

So....

I yelled.

He cried.

I felt awful and went back into my room so that he wouldn't see me feeling awful.

I went to work on cleaning up my room in the hopes that the children would see this as some kind of race against mom.

I went to make my bed and as I pulled off the pillows I found this:

I saw him draw that earlier in the day way before any of the yelling had taken place.

I called him into my room and with tears still rolling down his cheeks he crawled up on my lap.

"When did you make this for me?"

"Today when you were eating lunch. Then I came and put it under your pillow."

Tears for me. Did he know that that was going to happen and that he could make me 100 times more guilty if he planted a sweet picture like that right were I would find it at the exact time I would yell at him???

I got hugs and kisses and a picture that I will keep forever.

How blessed I am!

Oops! Forgot one more story...

The Tuesday before Thanksgiving we rented Santa Buddies. (Our kids LOVE those "Buddies" movies.)

Of course, it was all about the spirit of Christmas and believeing.

At the part where the Scrooge character begins having second thoughts about Christmas, Max turns to me and says,

"Momma, I think he is starting to figure out the true spirit of Christmas."

If only we all believed like the children.

Thanksgiving in a week...is it possible?!?

How can Thanksgiving once again be here?

Are the years going by faster and faster or is just me?

Is it just supposed to be understood that once you have children the years FLY by?!?

Molly piped up today from the back of the van.

"Momma, I love fall. It's my favorite season."

Amen, daughter.

In the way of temps, it certainly didn't feel like we had much of a fall. However, the colors on the trees were the prettiest I've seen in several years.

What a great way God has for reminding us to be thankful for all He blesses us with.

At least that's what I think of everytime I see His colors of October.

Blessings, thankfulness, grace.

We have been busy in school talking about giving thanks to God for everything that we have. I feel like I should be back in school learning about that. I forget it about a million and one times a day!

The kids have loved learning about the Mayflower, Pilgrims, Indians, the first Thanksgiving, etc. etc. We worked on Thanksgiving Lapbooks. Most of the materials we used to make those we got from http://www.1plus1plus1equals1.blogspot.com/ I know that I've mentioned it a lot on my blog, but it really is such a fabulous place to go for great activities for you kids to do and activities to do as a family.

These photos were taking while the kids were pretending to be the Mayflower and Plymouth Rock. They had a great time doing it. Although Molly couldn't stand Max not finding her (Plymouth Rock) that she got up and led him back there.

Praise the King...

Praise Him in the morning for tall and lofty trees

and praise Him in the evening for children on their knees

Oh and praise Him in the noonday for gentle birds that sing

Oh, praise Him all ye people, Praise the King

Praise Him for the peaceful porch and rocking chairs that swing

and praise Him for the rolling hills where children laugh and play

Oh and praise Him for the wandering soul that never lost their way

Oh praise Him all ye people, Praise the King.

Praise the King, Praise the King

Let it ring, Praise the King

Praise the King, Praise the King

Let it ring, Praise the King

And praise Him for the blood that fell and bloomed a rose that day

And praise Him that He suffered through the guilt, the grief, the shame

Oh and praise Him that His tender love will still forgive today

Oh praise Him all ye people, praise the King.

Praise the King, Praise the King

Let it ring, Praise the King

Praise the King, Praise the King

Let it ring, Praise the King

Praise the King, oh, Praise the King

Let it ring, Praise the King

Praise the King, Praise the King

Let it ring, Praise the King

This is a song by Travis Cottrell.

He is the worship leader for Beth Moore and he is fantastic!

I absolutely LOVE this song.

Today I felt a bit like the wandering soul that he speaks of in the song.

So blessed that my King doesn't let me wander too far.

A little Halloween...

We had some fun this Halloween.

I found a few new ideas this year.

One here making Christian pumpkins from 1+1+1=1. It is a FABULOUS blog if you haven't checked it out yet. It also has links to her other blogs which I am just as crazy about too.

Here the kids are making theirs.

We have also been working on a Thanksgiving lapbook. The majority of the ideas came from her website. You can find it here. We have been working on them this week and will continue to do so the next couple of weeks. Updates to follow.

We headed to Knoxville Zoo for Boo at the Zoo the weekend before Halloween. We had a great time. I always seem to get a bit on edge when we go to things like that. I think mostly because of the number of people, the greater potential for losing one of my kiddos within all of those people AND because the kids are never interested in posing nicely for their momma with the camera. I LOVE PICTURES and when the 3 of them do cooperate it revs me up a bit. Just ask the husband.

Before heading to the zoo though, I made these bags for the kids.

(I'm not sure why this wouldn't rotate...had to put it in here anyhow because Molly was very concerned that Maggie only had one picture on her bag. I wanted to get this year's photos ironed on, but haven't yet....Molly seemed better knowing that soon she'll have 2 photos.)
I found this idea in the October 2009 issue of Family Fun magazine. It's a great magazine filled with tons of ideas every month. It's a magazine that you can store away and use it for

ideas the next year. It's considerably cheap, too. I think you can get it for 10 bucks right now for a 12 month subscription. Every once in awhile you can find it for half that on-line. I suppose you could google it.

We also spent some time reading The Pumpkin Patch Parable and making coloring books based on the inspiring story. You can find those coloring pages, here, again at 1+1+1=1 .

I have really been looking forward to talking and teaching (and in turn, learning myself) about Thanksgiving. We have been having a great time this week. So many great activities to do out there...it's hard to fit them all in.

Happy November all!!!

Continuing my catch-up in October...

Can it really be possible for November to be only 3 days away?!?!
I suppose spending half of the month away can make it fly by.
Here is a look back at most of October.

A visit to Blake's. Oh I miss that place...the donuts mostly.

Hanging out with cousins.

Rehearsing for a very special day.

A special cake just for Max from Dru. I will treasure this face all the days of my life!

Time spent at a blessed wedding. It was such an honor to be a part of this couple's start.

Relaxin' and having fun on the remainder of our trip.