1. Today is Nadia's first spiritual birthday! When she prayed on October 3, 2012, I questioned if it was real, but over the past year I have been convinced, primarily through her attempts to help Ian become a Christian, that it was real. I pray that she will grow in her relationship with the Lord over the decades to come. To celebrate her birthday we are having cookies and cream ice cream cake this evening. The kids have never had ice cream cake before; they are very excited! I also let Nadia pick where we stopped for lunch after co-op this morning, and she picked Dunkin' Donuts, and in addition to the egg and cheese bagel sandwiches, I got 6 donuts for the five of us to enjoy as a special treat.
2. We got some new treasures at the yard sales last weekend - books, puzzles, costumes, a doll, a bike, and some clothes. I am also feeling relieved that yard sale season will be on hiatus for the next several months. The doll I got for $2 is Nadia's most favorite toy at the moment.
3. I attended an excellent parenting seminar at our church on Saturday afternoon with a guest speaker from California (Pastor Mark Holeman). Most of the things that he said parents should be doing with their children I have already been doing because I was following the pattern of my parents - praying at each meal, devotions and prayer at bedtime, going to church, talking about spiritual matters throughout the day, etc. The one thing that he also stressed, which I hadn't given much thought to yet was doing service projects together as a family. He suggests that in addition to random acts of kindness (meaning just helping various people as situations arise such as helping an elderly widow with raking her leaves) that each family should be involved in community service (pet shelter, crisis pregnancy center, food bank, etc.) as well as something international. The international part I had already put into place (we are sponsoring three children through Compassion International), but I hadn't given any thought to a community service project. He suggested that you might try a different one once a month for a few months until you find the one that's a good fit for your family.
4. I meant to mention this last week, but Nadia now likes me to braid her hair!! For pretty much her whole life she hasn't been a fan of having anything in her hair, and in addition to dressing her up in girly clothes, I had looked forward to doing her hair different ways (one of the perks of having longer hair, right?). She never even wants to wear it in a ponytail.
5. The weather has been really nice. The highs have been in the high 70's and even up to the low 80's, which is warmer than usual for October in Pennsylvania. I'm thinking we should take advantage of it and go to the pumpkin patch this weekend.
6. The kids did a good job with dinner tonight, which means we can have pizza tomorrow! We haven't had any in three weeks so we're really looking to it!
1 comment:
You have a lot to be thankful for! We sort of fell into a great community service project we can do as a family. Once a month, we prepare and serve a meal at an inner-city after-school program. The kids don't really understand what we are doing yet, but serving others is something I want see as a part life.
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