Christmas (in july) Card

Can't we all just get along?
May this Christmas season bring you peace.
The Barber Thugs

The Fruit of the Spirit

The kids and I have been doing a long-term project involving the fruit of the Spirit talked about in Galatians in the Bible. Allie got us started on it several weeks ago. It's been a great project so I'll explain how we did it for all of you moms out there who want to give it a shot. There are 9 fruit"s" so each day that we worked on it, we discussed one of them. Then, I drew and cut out a fruit with the spiritual fruit written on it. For example, here is our apple of gentleness. They either colored them with crayons or painted them with water color and then...

they taped them onto the tree.

The tree was cut out from a big piece of cardboard and then the kids used finger paint and their entire bodies (what a mess that was!) to paint it for us.

They are very proud of their finished work.

We also made up a little song to go with the Bible verse. Here is Andrew singing it and the words below (to the tune of twinkle twinkle):

The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace,
patience, kindness, goodness, and let's see...
faithfulness, gentleness, and self control.
Against such there is no law to hold.
Galatians 5:22 and 23.
If you want to see my fruit, just look at my tree.

Each day that we did a project, we'd try to note throughout the rest of the day when someone was doing a good job with that attribute. We still refer to kiwi-kindness fairly often. We've really had a good time with this. I'd love to hear if any of the rest of you try it out.

Jewlery by Andrew

Andrew spent some time this afternoon making us rings and bracelets.

This is a random pic from last nite. I just thought it was cute enuf to share. :)

Today we spent the entire morning at Little Corona. I've never been to that beach, but it's beatiful and has little waves for the kiddos. We had a great time with Allie and her boys. I'm ready to go again! Sorry for the lack of pics, but life was very sandy there.

First Words

Keira has been learning a few new words lately. I'm sure I'm leaving out a few, but here is her vocabulary list to date: mama, daddy, buh-buh (big brother), amen, trash, george, this, more, yes, yum, wow, bubble.

I'm editing this just a few hours later because Keira just started saying, "shoes"... so cute!

It's so funny to write the list. When she says each of these words, it's so much cuter than just reading them.

Fun Kids

There's nothing really special about this video, but after watching a bunch of old video clips on the blog last night, I want to start posting more. They're so fun to go back and enjoy. So, enjoy a little clip of nothing out of the ordinary!

Lions and Tigers

Andrew has been learning lately about wild animals and what they eat, where they sleep, etc.He and I were just playing a game. He gave me a lion so I was pretending to be a lion. He had a tiger in his hand. He stuck out his arm and told the lion, "Kill me, lion." I said, "Andrew, that's not a nice thing to say." So he responded with, "Will you please kill me, lion?"

Flo Paris on Tour!

My friend, Flo, is on her first tour right now. She just played in Bellflower last night and Allie and I went to see her show. It was awesome! She is a gifted and talented singer and songwriter and I am blessed (to say the least) to be her friend. She has dedicated so much of her life to her music and it has paid off. She's an excellent artist and performer. If you're interested, check out her new album.

You rock, Flo!!!

Summer

It's been so fun having 2 active kiddos during the summer. We've been doing so many things that I hope are creating some warm, fuzzy memories for them. The dress Keira's wearing above is one of my favorites. I remember wearing this kind of dress when I was young. It's so fun dressing her up!

We started swim lessons this week and the kids are enjoying them, although Andrew still cries at the beginning of each lesson.

Gabe got to do one lesson with Keira. Keira really enjoys the one-on-one time and the water. She'll dip her face under water at the most random times and comes up smiling.

I love holding hands with my kids. (or see Gabe do it.) It's so precious.

Keira enjoys dress-up now. Most of the clothes are too big, but it's so sweet!

Joleen, Curtis, and their boys came to visit last weekend for the 4th. Here are the two big boys "asleep".
Peek-a-boo!

Sparkler time!

Smoke snakes. The little ones thought they were pretty cool.

The kids are spending tons of time outside. The weather has been beautiful and we got a fun little plastic pool... the makings of a fun summer outside!

Tyler (along with our small group) came over for a 3rd of July party.

I made this cake for the party- a three-layer strawberry filled cake. It was an experitment, but a tasty one!