• Children's Bible Study
    Daily Devotional,  Holidays,  Traditions,  Uncategorized

    Advent Devotionals: A [shorter] Jesse Tree

    Very, very rare (like, in this house, it’s maybe happened ONCE) is the year when the holidays roll around and everything falls neatly in to place: Christmas decorations put up right after Thanksgiving (and all the boxes they spend the other 11 months of the year in are packed quickly and neatly out of sight until they’re needed to return everything to in the days after Christmas) so that we can maximize our enjoyment of them. Christmas shopping completed early and gifts actually wrapped in advance of Christmas Eve and placed under the tree (with coordinating and thoughtful wrapping) so that we can enjoy the look of them. Just the…

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  • Family Fun,  Parenting,  Traditions

    Kid-Friendly Family Games

    Back in March, we traveled (by Megabus . . . but THAT adventure we can discuss on another post) to Washington DC with both kids and luggage full of winter clothing.  Quick Travel Tip: it is COLD in DC in March. On the upside, it is not crowded, and if you’re up for it, there is ice skating on the National Mall. Very Cool.  Literally and figuratively. But, I digress. So, we spent a full week eating every meal in a restaurant of some shape form or fashion.  Our children are generally well-behaved and pretty good company, but let’s get real . . . they aren’t perfect. And, after getting…

  • Family Fun,  Homeschool,  Traditions

    I’m a total loser

    Some of my favorite memories of my childhood involve being a loser. My dad was absolutely fantastic about playing checkers with me, starting sometime around when I was 8.  After we’d gotten pretty good at playing a basic game of checkers, he had a desire to learn how to play chess, so we basically learned together.  And, here’s the important part – he never, ever LET me win. In fact, on the VERY rare occasions when I did, in fact, beat him, he would grin and look at me and say, “You gotta let the little kids win sometimes.” And I would grin and laugh with him, because we both…

  • Homeschool,  Traditions

    First Day

    So, we started our homeschool year today.  Was it perfect and smooth? Why, no, it was not.  My Kindergartener, who has anxiously been awaiting this day (mostly in anticipation of our traditional ice cream smorgasbord for lunch) and who was absolutely giddy while doing his back-to-school supply shopping the evening before, deflated and lost his enthusiasm shortly after realizing that we were going to be doing a little (and really, just a little) actual school work before we switched to the “celebration” portion of the day.  Trying to get him to complete anything was, to say the least, a challenge. His sister, a Second Grader, declared for the first time…