Well, here we are, enjoying spring time and the flowers that come with the season. The morning was overcast so I thought we would gather ourselves together and take a few pictures.
Well, apparently it takes awhile to gather ourselves and it was sunny by the time we arrived at a bluebonnet patch. The kids were good troopers though and managed to pose a decent shot.
Iris
Eden
Flora – my little flower.
We then went shopping and were headed home when I passed another spot with better flowers and by that time the sky was party cloudy so I decided to try again.
Ivy
Lance
It was lunchtime and we had after shopping attitudes, but bribed with marshmallows, and coached by Aunt Katie we managed another few group shots.
Waiting in the shade for a cloud to cover the sun.
Cuties
My little clan.
So there you have it folks, yearly tradition checked off the list!
When a birthday rolls around in Brian’s family someone often creates a treasure hunt in order for them to find their presents. Brian had a special present for Lance, so the evening after his party, Brian sat down and made some picture clues to hide around the house.
They were everywhere – even in the attic!
The treasure was found in the crawlspace under our house!
The treasure was a leatherman type tool with “more things than you can imagine” according to Lance.
Brian gave a little class on proper knife use and etiquette while Iris sampled the wood shavings.
3 days later Brian was back to the drawing board, creating a hunt for Eden’s birthday! Here he helps the girls decipher a drawing. We realized that a ‘bird’s eye view’ drawing of an item is somewhat puzzling to a child under 3 ft.
Everyone gets in on the action – even Iris! Picking up on the excitement, she would happily run after everyone and manage to catch up right as they dashed off to the next clue.
Presents were found, though out of their hiding place and partially unwrapped. All denied having done the deed so Iris was made the scapegoat and pardoned on account of not knowing any better. Eden finished unwrapping and delighted in finding a maze book and a craft kit.
Our oldest turned 7 today! He is full of imagination and boyhood; he loves weapons and dress up. His current hero is Robin Hood.
Today we all became the merry men of the forest…or maybe the merry women and their fearless leader.
We invited a few others to join our band and the festivities commenced!
First came archery practice – shooting arrows through the hoops.
I made bows out of pvc pipe and string. The arrows were dowel rods tipped with pointed erasers. Simple and very effective
The girls opted for a game of bean bag toss. I don’t think the boys even bothered with this game, they were too busy shooting.
Next, Little John (a.k.a. Aunt Katie) led the band through the forest. This gave Friar Tuck (a.k.a. me) time to prepare the woodland feast.
Bread and cheese, fruit and chicken nuggets were set out for the crowd.
We all dined happily among the green trees (on our back porch).
Lance had a target cake with an impromptu arrow made from a tootsie roll and starburst candy.
After cake was presents! I had fun wrapping this one. It says: To Lance, my mighty arrow. May you be swift to obey the Lord and always keep a straight and true course, May you always hit the mark and be useful in the Lord’s service.
Last activity was a treasure hunt. We had made two sets of clues – indoor and outdoor – due to rain in the forecast, so we split up the boys and girls and ran both sets. We had the boys running back and forth all over the place! Treasure was found and fun was had by all.
At the end of 2014 I picked a word to be my focus for the coming year. For various reasons (explained in our newsletter) I picked the word “Love.” This is a really big word with a lot behind it, but I’m using the “love is” description from 1 Corinthians 13 to direct my study of this concept. As I tackle a word from the list in the passage, I am using it as a monthly character focus with my children. The word for January was ‘Patience.’
Iris practices patience with blanket training.
To my encouragement, right after I had decided to do this, my mother in law sent a character curriculum she found. It puts lyrics to classical songs and suggests simple activities to reinforce the idea.
For the song “I want it now” we planted seeds and talked about how a farmer has to be patient, waiting for his food to grow.
“Turtle Joe,” was a song where other animals wouldn’t wait for a turtle, which made him sad. Then some animals were friendly and walked slow with him. I printed little characters which we used in a puppet show for Dad. We also went on a “patience walk,” waiting for the slower members of our group. This was very hard. We barely made it to Grammy’s house next door.
I checked a few books out from the library that talked about patience. One was about a little bunny that couldn’t wait to eat some chocolate cake. So we made a cake and had to wait all day to eat it!
Ready to devour our yummy chocolate cake after eating our supper of carrots, potatoes and peas (same thing the bunny in the book had to eat).
An unexpected chance to use patience came when we visited the new children’s museum in town. The grocery store was a popular exhibit and the kids had to wait up to 15 min. for their turn to check out. This was done on their own with much calm and order – more than adults are known to exhibit at the real stores! Not one of the children – mine and others alike – could be dissuaded by a bored parent to abandon their cart and move on to another exhibit.
Another song “Are we there yet?” talked about patience on a car trip. I looked up ideas for a car toy that didn’t have a bunch of pieces to lose and pick up and settled on little play boxes. This activity was a big hit with the kids – they LOVE their boxes and find it hard to leave them in the car for next time.
Here’s a close up of Flora’s and Lance’s boxes. They had to scour their treasure boxes for a toy that was small enough to fit inside. Then we created a home around each toy.
Eden and Ivy’s box. Ivy loved using the glue gun and decorated the outside more than the inside!
For the song about growing up, we looked at our photo albums when the kids were younger and then talked about waiting for our new baby to come. We ended up taking a little peek at the baby and “impatiently” found out what we are having!
We used cupcakes with colored icing inside to let the kids in on the secret.
During the month I did a focus topic study on the word patience in the Bible. Specifically looking for two things: How does God love me with patience and how can I use patience to love God. I did a little write-up of my thoughts and observations if you care to read it by here: Love is Patient.
Up next month, coinciding nicely with Valentines, we’ll be looking at kindness!
