Five For Jesus

Awhile ago, a friend of mine shared the "Five For Jesus" concept with me. It is a way to get your kids into the habit of having a quiet time with the Lord. I wasn't sure how it would work with three very active little boys, but I suggested it the other day just to see what would happen. It was one of our off days from school, so we did it in the morning after breakfast. Each of the boys took a Bible story book and found a comfortable spot in the living room and I picked up my Bible, too. I set the timer for five minutes and we started to "read." I could hear Stephen reading under his breath and he did very well for a kindergartener! Timothy was sitting on the black La-z-boy telling himself the stories from his picture book. Christopher was ... well, he was all over the place for a bit, but then settled down with a Thomas the Tank Engine book. Oh well.

The timer went off after five minutes, and NO ONE MOVED! They kept reading! After a few more minutes I closed my Bible and quietly told them that the timer had gone off and they were allowed to go play. NO ONE MOVED! They LOVED this idea! Since then, Stephen has been the one to remind us every day that we need to do our Five For Jesus and he makes sure everyone has their books and then he sits down, flips to his bookmarked page, and starts reading before I even get the timer set!

Tonight was precious. Stephen and Timothy were on their separate chairs reading, Christopher was on my lap and I whispered his Bible story to him and Daddy was sitting in his chair reading his Bible. I can't tell you what a beautiful sight this was! Anyone who has ever been around us here at home knows that our house is not one of those calm and peaceful and quiet places of rest when everyone is awake and raring to go, but watching these boys stop everything to have their Five For Jesus warmed my heart!

If you have children at home, I encourage you to try this! If they have this (what's the best word??) practice - habit - routine started this early in life, it will be second nature to them to stop and have some quiet time with the Lord as they grow. I will lengthen the time as they get older, but for now, five minutes seems to work well. I'm so glad my friend shared this with me and I trust that God will help those roots of discipline to grow deep in my children's hearts! Have YOU had your Five for Jesus yet today?

Good Friday

Growing up in Ohio, Good Friday was really not much different than any other day, except that Mom would try to make us eat Cream of Wheat with raisins (her favorite way ... our LEAST favorite way) and we'd have rice, in honor of Aunt Peg. Other than that, I really don't remember Good Friday being anything special. We still went to school. We still had to work. Stores were still open. Life was the same, and sometimes there would be a special evening service in our church in Norton.

When I moved here to Canada, I was caught off-guard my first Good Friday here. It was announced the Sunday before that we'd be having Good Friday services at church on Friday. Neat! I thought. But then Fred told me that since he wasn't working on Friday, we should plan something special in the afternoon, unless we had our family dinner that day. Huh? Why would he have off? Why would they plan a family dinner that day if there was a Good Friday church service to go to? I'm not sure when I realized that EVERYTHING was closed down on Good Friday and just about EVERYONE had the day off, AND we had our Good Friday services at 10:30 in the morning! Ten years later, I'm still thrown off by that, but I go anyway.

The other thing that throws me for a loop is that the Easter weekend here is handled about the same way as Thanksgiving weekend. Families pick and choose what day they want to celebrate together. In the States, Thanksgiving is on THANKSGIVING! You don't sit around and say, "Ok, do you guys want to have our family meal on Thursday, Friday, Saturday or Sunday this year?" NO! You have Thanksgiving on THURSDAY! DUH!!! Well here, Thanksgiving is on a Monday (which TOTALLY throws me off because I'm ready for another three day break after that!), so every year we go through the same thing, "When do you want to have Thanksgiving? Saturday? Sunday? Monday?" It happens again now at Easter time. "Should we have Easter on Friday, Saturday, Sunday or are any of you off on Easter Monday? Maybe we should do it then?" I always thought that Easter was on EASTER! I guess not.

This whole picky-choosy mentality for holidays is quite unsettling for me. I love predictability and this is NOT predictable. Yet, despite my mental mess-up every holiday as we try to decide what day really is the holiday, I'm thankful that the REASON behind the holidays never varies! It never changes or becomes more or less significant because of the date it is celebrated. The facts are the same. Jesus WAS born ... so we celebrate Christmas. Jesus DID die ... so we celebrate Good Friday. Jesus DID rise again ... so we celebrate Easter. We are exhorted to give thanks in everything ... so we celebrate Thanksgiving. I love that God's word and His love and who He is never changes. That predictability is very comforting to me. I love that He changes not. I can count on Him. I know where to find Him. He is my rock.

Go ahead and keep messing with my head when you change the date for Easter every year and when we decide to celebrate Thanksgiving in October on a Monday (or maybe a Saturday) and when everything shuts down on a Friday so that we go to church in the morning for a Good Friday service. You can mess with my head and throw me off of my calendar, but you can't take away my security in Christ!

Have a wonderful Easter weekend everyone ... whenever you celebrate it! HE IS RISEN!

Swagbucks!

Did you ever hear of Swagbucks? My friend, Katie, got me hooked. If you like to get stuff for free, then this is the place to start! Just register at Swagbucks and start searching for whatever you would normally search for in your day to day use of your search engine, but instead of doing it for nothing, win random Swag Bucks! Save up these Swag Bucks and get some great prizes! Not every search will reward you with Swag Bucks, but when it does, let me tell you, you will get all excited!! You will not receive any spam from this, your privacy will not be put in jeopardy in any way. You will just win random points for prizes. I personally want to save up to get an ipod or an MP3 player. I have a long way to go, but I'm willing to keep searching ... I do it anyway!

Check it out! Just click on these links and get started!

I Want To Go To Paraguay!!

Christopher wasn't feeling well today so when he refused to eat his pancakes, we didn't really push it too much (mostly because we didn't want that last bite of pancake to tip the stomach and have him puke it all back up again). We did try to encourage him since he had only taken one bite before he started his adament refusal to eat. Fred asked him another time to try to take one last bite and he just burst into tears! "I don't want to eat my pancake! I want to go to Paraguay!!"

I hate to say it, but we all cracked up at him. How do you explain to a two and a half year old that he can eat his pancake AND go to Paraguay?! Just not both of them tonight.

New Word

Stephen is using some wooden craft sticks to form letters. He just put a whole bunch of letters together and read, "cozah." I oooed and aaahhhed over his letters and his new word and then said, "Too bad it's not a real word because it looks pretty nice there!" He looked at me with a comical look on his face and said, "But it IS a real word! You know, when you cozah problem?"

Helpful Hints?

Our whirlwind weekend with Mom and Dad here is over. The fun is in the past and now the work must begin. Dad was so helpful this weekend drilling the holes for our Rubbermaid bins that we're taking to Paraguay. Mom helped me pack a few of those bins. What a lifesaver! Now this week I MUST get down to business and get OUR stuff pulled out and packed! I have to make sure the boys fit into the summer clothes, sandles and swimming trunks that we have. (I have to make sure that * I * fit into mine, too!) I need to think about EVERYTHING that I have to think about because this is my last week to get it all done!

One of the things that I've been trying not to stress over is the plane trips. A friend of mine got a bunch of little toys for the boys and wrapped them all up to take on the plane. This should keep them somewhat occupied! Grandma also brought some great backpacks and little fun things to put in them so that the boys have something to do while we're waiting or when they're bored on the plane. Do any of you have any suggestions on what works best for flights for little kids? What kinds of snacks? Toys? Activities? Games? What about suggestions of things to do while we're sitting in the Sao Paulo airport for several hours? I'm happy to entertain any and all suggestions, as I will need them to entertain three little guys pretty soon!

Stephen doesn't know this yet, so don't tell him, but we got him an el cheapo digital camera at Christmas (we're talking a $3-4 job) and we're going to give it to him as an early birthday present. His birthday is the weekend we get back home, but we thought that this camera might be a very good thing to have on such a special trip. Maybe just having him play around with his camera in the airport will help pass the time!

So, here we go! Hunker down and get busy this week, Martha, and be thankful that you're not the one that has to put away the contents of eight Rubbermaid bins stuffed to the gills! Karen, I know you all will be thrilled to get all the goodies inside, but YOU also have to be the one to put them all away! (I think that worse than packing for a trip is having to UNpack when you get home! Ugh.) Ok. I'm off now to be efficient! Hahahahaha!

What?!

Christopher was extremely overtired. He chose not to take a nap, but to try on all the socks in his drawer and then wad them up into little balls and filled up the shelf on his bottom bunk bed. Then he crawled under his bed and played with cars and scrap pieces of tissue that are so fun to pull apart. He occupied himself for about an hour and a half until I finally told him to just come downstairs already. By then his tiredness was starting to kick in, but it was way too late to let him sleep!

For those of you who have ever dealt with, struggled with, seen or heard an overtired two year old, you know how annoying the whining and crying can get because it is just non-stop and nothing can turn the whines into happiness.

So here was Christopher, sitting in his booster chair at the table, wanting to get down. He had not finished his food (how could he eat when he was so preoccupied with his crying?) and Fred was trying to help him. We finally decided to just let him go to stop the annoyance, but when Fred tried to lift him out of his chair, he started screaming, "NO!!!! Mommy do it! Mommy DO IT!!!" "But Mommy's busy." Christopher's overtired reply: "Mommy's not busy! Mommy's nice and warm!"

What?!

Well that cracked us up and made Christopher crawl under the table and scream some more. Oh, the joys of two year olds! I love them!