Unforgettable Childhood

We packed our boxes for Operation Christmas Child. It was so much fun. You can watch a little vlog of the girls packing their boxes. You can also click on the whrrl below to see pictures of the fun.

Hi Everyone! I am posting over at a new blog called the girl creative. This fabulous blog was created by my friend Diana. It has great craft ideas.

I posted a new activity that we are doing to countdown to Thanksgiving called “The Blessing Tree”. Enjoy!

Check out other Wordless Wednesday posts at 5MinutesforMom.

Sunday night we moved to the letter “B” in our ABC Journey through Scripture. Immediately my thoughts went to Matthew and the Beatitudes, but for a 3, 7, & 9 year old, that is a little bit too much. Especially because my oldest is in the process of memorizing both the 10 Commandments and the 23rd Psalm.

So my husband and I decided on Matthew 5:8.

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.”

We asked each of the girls to tell us some of the blessings in their lives. To be honest with you, this was not the discussion did not go as planned. The girls really struggled with coming up with blessings. It was frustrating. It made us realize this was a conversation that we really needed to have as a family.

I told the girls what my Bible commentary said about the word Blessed. It said, “To Jesus, Blessed means the experience of hope and joy. . . To find hope and joy, the deepest form of happiness, follow Jesus no matter what the cost.”

We moved on to being “pure in heart”. We asked the girls this question:

What does it mean to have a pure heart?

They  really didn’t have any answers so we turned to 1 John 1:7.

“But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.”

We talked about the statement, “the blood of Jesus”. We asked the girls if they knew what that meant. Madelyn said “Jesus died on the cross to cover our sins”. Her older sister said, “Not cover our sins, He died to take away our sins”. We explained to the girls that it means both things.

We asked the girls this question:

Why do you think if we are pure in heart we will see God?

They were not sure so we asked them this question:

Do you think that if we are sinning do you think we will see God?

They agreed that we won’t see God if we continue to sin. We were trying to get them recognize that they do see God at work in their lives already. We asked them:

Can you think of examples of God working in our lives?

This made the verse start to make sense to them. They thought of examples of God healing people that they have prayed for. That seems to be the easiest way for them to see God’s work in their lives and the lives of others.

We ended our devotional time with a prayer. Each of us prayed about something we are thankful for. After this time together we realize that we all need to take more time to see God working in all the details of our daily lives. It also made us realize we have so many things to be thankful for.

We survived the week of play practices and two performances. The play was really cute. This last week really made me realize the importance of arts in my kids childhood. I have some exciting plans in the works. I can’t wait to share with you. Here is a couple pictures of girls in costume.

Madelyn – The Beautiful Day

Taylor – The Flute

Well, it has been one crazy week at our house. Both of my older girls tried out for a play on Monday and they both got parts. They were both very excited. It has meant school all day, then play practice until bedtime. They only had Monday through Thursday to prepare and then tonight and tomorrow night they have performances.

I was really nervous that only one of them would get a part and then I would have to deal with hurt feelings, but that didn’t happen so I sighed a breath of relief.

My oldest daughter lacks no confidence (that can be a good and bad thing) so she didn’t doubt that she would get a part. In fact she is on stage most of the play.

My youngest is the complete opposite. I could see on her face during the entire audition process that she was nervous that she would not get a part. However, when they asked her to say a line, she was loud and clear. I was pleasantly surprised and impressed.

I realized right away that my younger daughter had a pretty small part, mostly because she is one of the smallest little actors they have on stage. I was a little worried about how she would respond when she found out that she had a small part. I should not have worried, she is a kid that finds the positive in every situation.

After her first practice she came in and said, “I am the only Beautiful Day (that is her character) that has two lines! And I have a very important part because I am the first Beautiful Day on stage and I talk first.” She then told us every other Beautiful Days’ lines. I figured by today she would be directing the Beautiful Days.

I can’t wait to share photos tomorrow from the play. I am so thankful for this little bit of Art that is being brought into our little town. There is not much opportunity for the Arts in our community. A thanks to The Black Hills Playhouse for there hard work with all the kids.

That leads me to my first Unforgettable Childhood Project. I am in the formulation stage, and I can’t wait to tell you all about it. As I have been brainstorming about this site I have started to realize that it is about more than my 3 girls and creating memories that last a lifetime. It is about all children, especially those that I touch. How can I create memories with them that will last a lifetime? I guess you will have to come back to my site later to hear all about my vision.

The light in this picture is not perfect, but she was having so much fun jumping into the leaves. We love Sunny Fall days in South Dakota.

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