First, during history, we were studying Confucius. And we talked about how smart he was, and yet how he really wasn’t “wise,” because he didn’t believe in God. I asked the kids to reflect on that. And Caleb pulled out John 14:6 – he’s not smart because the Bible says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”

Then, tonight we were doing our daily Bible reading as a family. Caleb’s ears perked up when, in Matthew 12, Jesus compared himself to Jonah. (3 days in the belly of the big fish / 3 days in the grave.) Caleb said it reminded him of the verse, “Just as Moses lifted up a snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up.”

That’s a pretty cool line to draw, especially for a 5-year-old!

Thank you, Lord, for children who listen and learn, even when I don’t think they are!

I love their little friendship. Too cute!

Edit: Some of you might remember Logan…He is just three days younger than Ava, and his parents are our good friends (Rusty and Kisha). Thought I’d share an old picture of these two cuties when they were 10 months old, just for fun…

Over time, I’ve just been stashing our extra TP rolls, and I bought some spray paint. And all of that sat in our school room closet for months.

But then! This past weekend I got a GREAT deal on canvases at Michael’s. They had their 2-packs Buy One Get One Free, AND I had a $5 off coupon. So, I spent $10.60 for FOUR 18″x24″ canvases.

And that was all the stimulus I needed!

To begin, here are the supplies I gathered:

empty TP rolls

ruler, Sharpie, scissors

hot glue gun and extra glue sticks

Then, I measured, marked, and cut one-inch segments on each TP roll.

Using the hot glue, I glued my pieces into four-point stars or flowers (whatever you’d like to call them!).

Once they were all glued, I pulled out my canvases and tried some configurations of the pieces, to determine how they’d lie when the project was complete. I couldn’t get this blog post out of my head, and ended up duplicating this girl’s design. I take no credit whatsoever for the placement of my flower-stars. So if you like the end result, you can go ahead and think about how cool Mandi is, not me.

Here are some of the trial-and-errors:

Once I was confident in my design, I pulled out the spray paint. If you’re a DIY expert, I’m sure you know all about spray paint. I am NOT. In fact, I don’t even like spray paint all that much. It’s messy. And now my hands are all messy, too, and I can’t seem to get the paint off them. Anywho…

I bought the cheapest white spray paint there was at WalMart. Ninety-seven cents. I mean, white paint is white paint, right?

Uhm, NO.

I sprayed every single little star/flower with a coat of white paint. And would you like to know what it did? NOTHING! It slid right off the TP tubes and onto the drop cloth. (And sadly, seeped through some cracks in the drop cloth that I didn’t know were there, and then I had to scrub it off the floor. See? I told you this stuff is messy!)

I must have been more in my right mind when I bought the red paint. Rust-oleum Painter’s Touch. Beautiful coverage. LOVED it.

Lesson learned. You actually get what you pay for when it comes to paint.

After the paint-on-the-floor debacle, my brain recalled reading this little tip. Use spray paint inside a cardboard box to contain the spray. Genius.

I sprayed all but two of the flower-stars red (which I hand-painted white, since the spray paint wasn’t working); then I let the paint dry for a while. I arranged the flower-stars on the canvases, and put a dab of hot glue in the center of each one to adhere it to the canvas.

Ready for the final product?

Here we go…..

TA DA!

Soon, I’ll hang it on a large, bare wall in our entryway. I think it’ll add a nice splash of color!

We got our schoolwork done a little early, so that we could do a few cutesy Groundhog Day printable activities this afternoon. We also looked up the news story about Punxsutawney Phil to find that he “predicted” six more weeks of winter. (And the kids cheered! How funny! I always wanted early spring, but they cheered for more winter!)

And then, when Luke got home, we celebrated some more!

We had ourselves a little contest to see who could make the best-looking Groundhog-shaped pizza.

Luke is the master of any pizza-dough-shaping contest! And Gracie didn’t do half bad, either. (The rest of us kind of gave up. My Groundhog face looked like Mickey Mouse, Ava made a heart, and the boys made dinosaurs.)

Luke's Punxsutawney Phil, before he was baked and eaten

Grace and her groundhog

Ava was happy with her heart.

And to top off the evening’s festivities, we had a scrumptious dessert…with P. Phil poking out the top (inspired by the cupcakes here).

For her efforts in the pizza contest, Grace won the chance to eat P. Phil from the dessert. Here he is before she devoured him…Isn’t he kinda cute? (Definitely not perfect, but kinda cute.)

Happy Groundhog Day, everyone!

Next up for celebrations…Valentine’s Day!

He was an interesting guy.

One small detail of his life was that God commanded him to eat a scroll. Grace drew a picture of this:

"Ezekiel ate a scroll because God told him to."

So, we made ourselves a little (edible) scroll out of a tortilla and honey. We wrote “Oh, Israel” on it, because Ezekiel prophesied during the time period just before the third and final invasion of King Nebuchadnezzar and the subsequent captivity in Babylon.

Then we rolled it up all scroll-like, and the kiddos ate it.

We decided a real, paper scroll probably wouldn’t have tasted quite so good.

We also talked about his experience of prophesying to a valley full of bones…and watching those bones come to life! Then we sang the old spiritual “Dry Bones.”

Good times.

But as we were talking over our A, B, and C verses last night, Jaden interjected with the A verse! I made him repeat it on camera today.

P.S. Please excuse that Jaden didn’t know the reference. We haven’t worked on it with him, and I didn’t mean to spring it on him like that. It was a valiant effort on his part.

As I prayed for breakfast, for our day, and for Luke’s day, I included in there how I was discouraged about there still being lingering sickness in our home. (J woke up with explosive diapers. And that’s the least gross description I could think of.)

When I was done praying, Grace said to me, “Mommy, you said you were discouraged. Deuteronomy 31:8 says, ‘The LORD Himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you; do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.’”

Tears filled my eyes as my mind was filled with Scripture by my seven-year-old daughter. How thankful I am to be surrounded by a community of believers who encourages my children to memorize God’s Word.

Have you been working your Scripture memory together?

So far it’s been simple for our family. The first two verses are ones most of us already knew. But it’s been great to have these simple truths posted in our home, for us to remember and discuss and focus on.

So if you haven’t joined in, it’s certainly not too late! (For more details, visit Cindy’s blog.)

Here we go with our “C” verse:

“Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.”
Psalm 51:10

Does anyone have a creative way to work on this verse? Please share!

But it sure is refreshing to see a happy face.

He climbed up on me as I lay on the couch, handed me the camera, and said, “Take a picture of me, Mommy!”

Well, okay, darling. I’ll do that.