Nature Art

We were inspired by a new art book I purchased from the Usborne lady at Mayfest. Below are the "pictures" we created using sticks, stones, flowers and leaves that we collected on a trip in the woods. The idea was to start with a simple shape like a circle and build your picture around that, but as you can see, Samuel expanded that idea to other things.

The Star

The Firepit

The Triangle

The House

Fun with food

In March Jim was gone for a weekend of training with Intervarsity and I felt bored with our suppers, so we had breakfast for supper. And to make it extra special I made plate size pancakes with faces. I used this recipe for homemade pancakes and before I flipped them I used blueberries to make a smiley mouth and a nose. After they were finished I added banana slices with blueberries for eyes and pupils and yogurt for hair. The kids loved it! Thanks Aunt Michelle and JJ for the inspiration!

At our house I also like to make faces on a piece of toast and peanut butter using bananas and raisins. Grandma lets the kids cut faces in their cheese slices or gives them tiny cookie cutters to make butterflies and flowers with their cheese.

It may be bad manners in some homes, but go ahead have a little fun with your food!

Be patient and persist . . .

Patience and Persistence are the two words I heard Monday morning as I lay in bed. It has been a busy few weeks. The many hours outside gardening and landscaping and just plain having fun with the kids have left lots of things undone inside the house. You know the list, laundry, dirty floors, bathrooms, bills and to top it off the dishwasher missed half the dishes on Sunday, so I was left with lots more dishes to wash. Plus the Christian Business Directories came in a few weeks ago, which just is a lot of work to coordinate. Anyway, I was feeling very overwhelmed to say the least. And I think that morning in bed was God telling me to be patient and persist through the mountains I saw before me. Slowly some things are getting done and all week now those same two words (patience and persistence) have been running through my mind and keeping me sane!

This morning, I remembered something God had shown me about patience last fall. It was in one of my lessons for Son Harbor and the teacher portion encouraged you to think about areas you needed to be patient. My first thoughts went towards situations with the kids, like Grace whining for a glass of milk or the chaos of everyone putting their shoes on to go somewhere. But then He showed me the bigger picture of patience. At that time Jim had no job for the summer and I was feeling a little worried about what our future held. But at that moment I knew God was saying be patient in these little things and also the big things of the future. I had never thought about patience in that way. Today I encourage you to find an area in life where you need to be patient.

I do have more posts with pictures and the kids, but everytime I sit down to work on it the computer jams up and I just go to bed instead. I guess I need to be more patient with this too.

A little behind . . .

Hi all,
Well it is obvious from the date on my last post of March 18, that I am a little behind on my blog updates. There is a lot to catch up on.

I am sure all of you know already that we are not moving this spring, we will see what next year brings. That was big news and now we are past it and on to other things. But on the plus side much of the house is in better shape and now we are focused on the garden and finishing up some other projects.

Jim is busy at LawnMaster, but has already noticed some very positive differences from his old company. Although at 5:00am he will say, I forgot how hard this part of the job is. The drive is long, but he doesn't complain. I am so proud of how hard he works and always tries his best. He has also been talking to Intervarsity Christian Fellowship and has received a provisional letter to be on staff at the UW-Green Bay campus. This basically means he has the job pending a background check and his ability to raise the necessary funds. What an amazing work God has done, we can only praise Him for the way both of these jobs have come together to not only provide for our family but also fulfill a longtime desire in Jim's heart to be on serving on campus.

Stay tuned for more updates on the family and posts from the last two months. . .

To catch a butterfly

For Easter the kids all received butterfly nets, bug boxes and magnifying glasses as gifts from my mom. (It was a suggestion from me.) Well they have been anxiously waiting for the butterflies to appear so they could net one. Last week they finally saw their first butterfly outside and on a mission they went.

It has been more difficult than they expected to catch one of these butterflies. Running and chasing has proven futile, but entertaining for me to watch. I have suggested sitting near some flowers and waiting for one to land, but that takes more patience than they want to give. So the chasing continues.

While planting garden last Friday they spotted a caterpillar. He was named Spots (because he was a pale yellow with black spots) and put into the bug box. Well Sunday brought a surprise when Spots began to lose his fur and legs. Thankfully Jim was home to confirm that he was not dead as the kids feared, but starting his cocoon. Hopefully he survives the transformation and we will soon have a butterfly (or moth) in our bug box.

Mayfest 2009

Saturday, May 2 was the 6th annual Mayfest at Camp Forest. Jim's parents are so wonderful and always come to spend this weekend with us. Grandma gets to spend the day watching the three kids and Grandpa runs the grill for the brat stand. I get to do face painting for all the little ones that come. It is always a fun day as a family and serving our community. (Jim usually works his lawn job in the morning and then joins us later in the day.)

This year was definately a wonderful one. The weather was beautiful and we had a great turnout. New this year was a petting zoo. It was the kids favorite part along with the clowns that made balloon animals and the game that involved water squirt guns.

Camp Forest is a nonprofit campground in Forest Jct. As a little girl I went here as part of our church youth weekends. It was where I first decided to change my life to live for Christ, so it has a special place in my heart. Last year Linsey was married in the chapel here and now I am excited to see my kids enjoying God's creation and beauty here as well.

Biking Isaak

Yesterday Isaak decided the warm weather warrented a try at his bicycle without training wheels. We had attempted this last fall without much success, but I was anxious for him to learn. Having only one little one, Grace, in my bike trailer makes for a much easier ride for me.

Anyway, he can do it. With a little practice he is biking without his training wheels and has even taught himself how to get started on his own. Way to go Isaak! He has spent most of today talking about biking more and when he is not talking about it he has been doing it up and down our driveway endlessly.

I hope the wind calms down a little after supper so we can all head out for a family bike ride, before the weather turns sour again tomorrow.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Do you know the history of St. Patrick's Day? I didn't until a few days ago when I looked on the internet to figure out what I would do with the kids to celebrate. According to the information I found, St. Patrick went to Ireland and used a clover to teach about the three persons of God (Father, Son and Holy Spirit). Cool!

So we celebrated our holiday with a little history lesson and discussion about how many leaves are on a typical clover. Because of story books the kids first answered 4 leaves. Then we enjoyed some green scrambled eggs and green milk for breakfast. For supper we had green milk, green mashed potatoes and peas. We also had green rice krispie treats, green Jell-O and pistachio pudding during the day. Finally we made a list of all the things we could think of that are green, I think we got 23 items.

Hope you had a great day celebrating!

Plates, plates and more plates!!!

In the midst of cleaning house and starting some packing, I was in charge of the craft for Moms Inc this week. We were making plates using clear glass plates, paper, and mod podge. They turned out wonderful and the ladies had a load of fun making them.

Needless to say I had to bring them home to finish drying completely and spray with a finally coat of sealer to make them more waterproof. So there are 30 plates turned upside down on cups all around our kitchen. Lots of plates-it is humorous to look around and see plates everywhere.

So for lunch today we had a carpet picnic. Lots of fun, if you ever need to spark up your day, try it with your kids. A simple sandwich and piece of fruit sitting on a blanket on the floor can be so exciting to a child. Although I do long for the summer days to come where we can do this outside again, it is one of our favorite things to visit a park and have a picnic.

If you would like to make your own plate or are looking for a fun project idea google mod podge. Their website has tons of ideas and instructions. I hope to do more with this stuff in the future.

Sliding fun

When Isaak was 2 years old we bought this Step 2 slide. He was such an energetic little guy, we had hopes of it burning off energy. Now Grace too needs that release as well, especially on these long winter days in the house. Sometimes I am frustrated with finding places in the house for it because it is a little large, but most days they play so nice with it. Tonight they were making people trains, how cute!!

Plus they have been such great kids lately and playing very well together. Jim and I are busy finishing projects around the house. We have appointments with realtors next week, so the deadline is on to finish up. It has been such a blessing to have the kids cooperate so well.

Tonight after supper we played dodge ball together as a family, at least our version of it. We have bags of those soft plastic balls, so Jim and I aim them at the kids while they run madly around the living room. So fun! It was an idea born from a family fun night a few weeks ago. The idea was to do activities together and learn that two is better than one and included verses from Eccelesiaties. So we had 3 legged races (which they didn't like) and puzzle races and dodge ball (the cooperation there being picking up the balls together). Well they loved dodge ball. But the next day Samuel and I were doing laundry together and he said it was just like we said at family fun night, two is better than one. Yes! He got it!!

Movies, movies, movies . . .

Wow, we went to our second movie at a theater in one week. I don't think this has happened since our dating days. Last Saturday Jim and I went to New in Town, kind of a spur of the moment decision when we didn't know what else to do for our date night. So we went to the theater not even knowing what was showing. It turned out to be a great movie that we both liked, good humor and romance and no inappropriate scenes.

While we were there last week we saw they were doing a special showing of Hotel for Dogs today for $2.50 that included a small popcorn. So we decided to take the kids. It was a great movie and the kids had a blast.