The fashionista

I let Abby put on whatever she wanted, and then she told me to how to do her hair. Yeah, she's cool... lol

The Mohawk

Maddox Jolie and Travis Barker have nothing on Josiah Rainwater.
(he's getting a haircut soon, so smile while you can....)

We went out to chinese food this afternoon, and the kids love the fortune cookies at the end. I don't know why, but I think mostly it's just the fun of finding a paper inside a cookie, and then they know it is supposed to say something. Abby opened her cookie and said "My cookie says: I should always obey my mommy and my daddy." I love that fortune cookie.

Feeling kind of old...

So we took the kids to a baseball game tonight! They were quite restless and we had to basically feed them the entire time to keep them semi still. Baseball is one sport that is a bit boring for kids to watch because it just doesn't seem like there is a whole lot of action. The kids did however entertain everyone around us with their constant chatter and interactions. We went to see our friend play with his college team. This friend is actually a kid that I used to babysit. Yeah, I feel old. Sorry, Abby and I seem MIA in my pics from the game!!

Family night!

At church last week we had a speaker come in and talk about intentional parenting, and one of the aspects of it that he talked about was the idea of having a family night. The concept (although not a new one I'm sure) is to pick a night of the week and have specific activities planned to teach about God and Godly principles in a way that can excite the kids and teach them outside times of correction. We are not the most creative people in the world, but we ordered some books and did some research online and came up with our first family night.

The theme was about words and choosing them wisely. (we got the inspiration from www.heritagebuilders.com)

The kids had a bast doing the activities! The one they had the most fun at was our toothpaste game. These were our instructions from the website:

"Have the children sit around the dinner table. Give each of them a tube of toothpaste and a paper plate. Have them race to squeeze every possible drop of toothpaste out of the tube onto the plate. Give them two or three minutes to finish the job. When done, give them each a spoon, lay $10 or $20 bill on the table (we used a $1 bill because our kids don't know the difference...lol), and tell them that the first person to get all of the toothpaste back into the tube wins the money. Give them twice as long to finish - four to six minutes. (Don't worry, your money is safe.)
"

Of course, the point being that it is very easy to let words come out of our mouths (just like it was easy to put the tooth paste out) but once they are out, you ccan't put them back in, so it is very important to choose our words wisely.

We ended by making ice cream sundays and praying together! It was awesome! This week the topic is obedience!! Can't wait! The kids have been asking for family night since the morning after we finished our last one!

Jesus's miracles

I got the kids a video called "The Miracles of Jesus" in an effort to counteract Dora and the Land Before Time. I remember how much my sister and I loved watching Superbook and those type of Bible story based videos and I knew the kids would like them too. As I figured, they were transfixed in front of the show the entire time. I couldn't tell how much they were absorbing until after the video was over when I found Josiah and Abby "playing Jesus" in my room.

Abby: ok, bang bang, you're dead now.
Josiah falls dramatically on the ground arms spread wide and eyes closed.
Abby: now, I'm Jesus
She (not too gently) touches Josiah and pronounces "you're alive again!"
Josiah jumps up and then they switch roles.

Yeah, their favorite story is that of Lazarus. I tried to tell them that Lazarus died because he was sick (not that he was shot), but they figured that being shot was a much more exciting way to act out the story than just laying down and being sick. Too bad "Jesus" had to shoot "Lazarus" before he raised him from the dead since they were short a player....

Disneyworld!

We had a blast at DisneyWorld this past March. We had perfect weather, perfect flight (this was before southwest had to ground a bunch of planes), the kids were awesome, it was just a great time! I honestly think we saw just about as much as we could possibly see in 4 days!

The loved meeting all the characters, and thanks to lots of books and videos before we left, they were familiar with just about every person they met. No fears for any of them, they just had a blast with their autograph books! When we were leaving we asked Josiah who he liked to meet the most, and he said very excitedly "I LOVE the BUS DRIVER." I really think he must have made that man's day because the bus driver heard that and was beaming. All the kids did awesome though. The girls got to go to a princess breakfast which was so much fun. Disney just really does know how to make things move smoothly. Aiyana even got to ride space mountain despite Mimi's protests!! Aiyana thought she was pretty big stuff! Joe and I loved Epcot and could have spent the whole time there if we were not with the kids! So much fun! Thank you Grammy for a trip we will never forget!

MIA

Wow... I've been bad about updating this blog! I honestly thought I would have the time time/energy/wisdom/wit to update this every day or at the very least a few times a week, but here I am, "last visit: Feb 4th" Yikes...

I am going to try to separate this update into a couple different posts, so here goes!