Fun with friends

We had a visit last week from some special friends! While they were visiting, we did a tissue paper art project . . . lots of fun!

Here are our friends working hard on their projects!

Jaden is busy adding squares of tissue paper to his fall leaf outline that he first "painted" with water.

Once the tissue paper was on and completely wet, we let it dry before removing the tissue paper pieces.

And here are the finished projects . . .

It's looking more and more like fall every day! I'm hoping that we can go for a nature walk at the end of this week and pick up some fall leaves . . . both Lael and Jaden have been fascinated by the vibrant colors we've seen around us so far! Our God is so creative, and He's made such a beautiful world for us to enjoy!

Faith is . . .

Here's a quote I read today by Oswald Chambers:

Faith is deliberate confidence in the character of God

whose ways you may not understand at the time.

Praise God that we can have faith in Him, even when our circumstances don't make sense! We can be confident in His character -- His love, righteousness, strength, goodness, mercy, power . . . all of who He is! And that is a comfort in uncertain times!

Our vacation (part 2)

After a delightful time in Ocean City, Maryland, we traveled up the coast a bit to Delaware and spent a night with some of Daddy's family at Bethany Beach.
The highlight of the time (in addition to time with grandparents, aunts and an uncle) was spending the morning at the shore!

We loved digging in the sand . . .

. . . running and leaving our footprints behind . . .

. . . and playing paddleball with Daddy and Grandma!

We saw dolphins swimming really close to shore (but not close enough for me to get a good picture of them) . . . Lael was thrilled as she was hoping to see dolphins while we were away. A little "love gift" from God to her heart! And what trip to the beach would be complete without boardwalk fries and lemonade? (thank you to Grandpa for that treat!)

Before we knew it, it was time to pack up and return home (awww, do we have to go?) Thanks to Uncle Tim and Aunt Cherie for the invitation -- we loved ending our vacation with you!

Our OC, MD Vacation!

The Invisible Woman

I ran across this video today and it really spoke to me . . . reminding me again why I do what I do and challenging me to be purposeful in all I do! Enjoy!

(Before you play it, make sure you pause the music playing on my blog -- scroll down until you see the finetune player located in the right-hand column)

Introducing Poppy and Jason!

We are now a family of five! That's right, we added two hermit crabs to our family while we were on vacation! Lael and Jaden have been wanting a pet for absolute ages -- Lael says for her whole life ;) Anyway, while we were on vacation, we saw these little friends at a store and decided to bring them home with us!

This is Poppy . . . Lael's little buddy

And this is Jaden's hermit crab Jason
They really enjoy it when we take them out of their cages and let them crawl around on the floor. The kids made a play yard with the blocks so their crabs can get some exercise and play together. Jason has already changed shells since we got him on Friday! (But he switched during the night, so we missed it . . . too bad!) Poppy is the more active crab during the day, but Jason is a "night crab" -- doing a lot of his moving around after the kids go to sleep. We are excited to get to know our little friends better in the days to come!

Parenting resources give-away!

Values Driven Family.com is having a give-away of some wonderful parenting resources as well as some that will encourage moms in their own spiritual walk. You can check it out here to find out more (and to sign up for the drawing)!

By the way, check out their website as well -- they have lots of resources of their own. I have listened to several podcasts of their seminars, which have blessed me tremendously.

Make-You-Smile Monday!

Have a great day!

What's going on at GodSeekers Academy this week?

This week we are studying the ocean in preparation for our family vacation which is coming up! (Yay!) We are reading a wonderful book called Atlantic, which is told by the Atlantic Ocean in the first person -- we've had lots of fun discussions about personification with this book! In addition, we've been looking at different shells and seeing their similarities and differences. Hopefully we will be able to add to our shell collection on vacation!

Yesterday we were looking at a book of seascapes by different artists. We really liked this one by Gustave Courbet called Lake Leman at Sunset.

We discovered that Courbet thickened the bright red paint with sand to give texture to his painting and make it look more like waves, so we tried that ourselves.

This is Jaden's painting of a storm "that messed everything up" (his words).

Lael really wanted to put reflections and shadows in her painting like other artists she has seen. If you look carefully, you can see the sun reflecting on the water and the shadow of the boat as well.

And here's Mommy's attempt . . . I really enjoyed using the sand paint; it added fun texture!

Today we're going to do an experiment with evaporation -- which will be a great review of the water cycle that we learned about last year. We are also going to do some salt water painting -- painting with heavily-salted water on black paper, then using a blow dryer to evaporate the water and reveal the salt crystals. The kids can't wait for that!