Bulletin update

Found the website for the children's bulletin downloads. I'm so excited!! When I had did it before they didn't offer it in a download format. It is going to be so much easier to work with this way. Today I'm going to go get the clipboards for the bags and I hope to make the bags today too! I have some great canvas material (green stripe and blue stripe). I will use one color for the 3-6year old bags and the other for the 7-12 year old bags. Hope that the kids like it!!

Went to the movies last night with the kids. Saw "How to Train Your Dragon". It was great! Joanna got a little emotional toward the end but it all was O.K.

Activity Bags

Just keep thinking about our Christian Education Dept. at church. I'm thinking that perhaps I need to be part of the committee that helps with all of it. This would give me input in what's happening and maybe help with the creative end of things. The other area of children's ministry that has been neglected is the activity books that are available in the lobby for kids. The gal that had been keeping track of that doesn't come to church anymore (or VERY infrequently). I've been thinking on this one for awhile on ways to improve and freshen the area up. I had seen at a church we had visited some activity bags for kids that had a box of crayons, stencils, stickers, a small clipboard with paper, and an activity sheet. I'm thinking that I could do that. Started working on general clean-up of the boxes yesterday and found a shelf/rack that I could house the bags on to keep the area neat. Just need to find the activity pages to use and then assemble the bags. I'm excited about this project!!!

The weather has been incredibly nice here. Yesterday it was in the upper 60's and today it is going to be in the 70's!!! Spent some time raking the yard out yesterday and doing just a little bit of cleaning in the flower beds. Looking forward to digging around some more this week!!!

Christian Education

I took a turn yesterday at teaching the 3-5 grade Sunday School class. Usually I don't mind doing it...kinda of fun to hang with the kids. However, I found yesterday's session challenging. My own 2 kids were being quite obnoxious and not good at being "present" with the lesson and the other two (a member's daughter and her friend) were really out there too. Usually I don't have a problem with the class (I've taught it before) but yesterday was not good. I'm wondering if the regular teacher just isn't teaching well and commanding their respect. It took about half my time to just get them centered on reading some of the scriptures for the class. This shouldn't have been so hard. My youngest said something along the lines of "we don't usually read from the Bible but read from a worksheet". I think that there is a need to get hands on experience with reading the Bible. I even made it easy because we used the same version of the Bible and I gave them the page number of where they needed to be. The other part of the problem (I think) was the cirruculum. They were starting in on the "winter" quarter with the text being the Christmas prophecy and story. Strange to work with because it is almost Easter and should have been something about the last supper or palm Sunday. I'm going to ask the pastor about it and see what's up. There has been a real laxness on the part of the Christian Education at our church and I'm concerned. There are some fabulous people in our church whose talents are not being used. Hmmm....gotta meditate on how to approach all of this.

Visitor

I have a friend coming over to visit today. She is the youngest daughter of a couple who were very active in our church in Mason City. She is in school right now to get her nurse's degree because she is desiring to be a missionary nurse someday. Isn't that the coolest?! I hope that my children have that kind of vision as they grow up. Even if they don't serve full-time in a mission's field....I would pray that they would want to serve! Anyway, it is a lovely day here and I am looking forward to playing around outside with our friend! Have a great weekend!

Snow?!

We had such a nice meal for St. Patrick's day. Husband had downloaded some coloring sheets for the girls to work on so we could have some refridgerator art. Then we broke out my mom's old pink china set, used "the silver" and then REAL glasses for our beverages! I had baked some large cupcakes and then Lydia got excited about making homemade frosting for them. So we got her going on that part. It was nice and beautiful. I didn't even mind all the hand-washing that china and silver require!

Spent some time outside yesterday doing some basic clean-up work on the flowerbeds. It was so beautiful and spring-like. Of course, they are forcasting SNOW for tonight through tomorrow! Geesh....it is crazy. I suppose that I should dig around the garage and look for my bag of grass seed and spread some out before the snow. This is a great trick for starting grass. The snow is just heavy enough to help the seed sink slightly and then as the snow melts it waters the seed. Before you know it....you have beautiful grass without all the watering that goes along with starting grass seeds.

We all went to the International Dinner last night that was presented by the International Club at Penn. The food was very delicious. Afterwards, I finally sat down at pasted my gardening notebook pages. Just need to make a cover page and I'm set to go. Need to get my recipes in the clear page protectors so that project will be done too!

Happy St. Patrick's Day

It is spring break for my kids this week. We have definitely been struggling to find some rythym to our day. Now that internet is part of our "inner world" at home we have been working hard at maintaining some balance with that. A couple of the families from church have gone on vacation to warm places this week and I think that the older kids (especially Lydia) feels like we need to have a destination vacation as well. There seems to be this need to "get out of town". Hmmm, I must get my creative self in gear and direct their energy. Who knew that children would have problems with things to do! I'm going to download some shamrock artwork stuff and see if we can't create a festive atmosphere for our St. Patrick's meal tonight. It's brisket with potatoes and biscuits for supper. Hopefully a green cake as well :-) .

On another note, I finally found the end of the magazine piles (they were A LOT of them!). Last night I sorted into piles (recipes, outdoor/garden ideas, and home ideas) and trimmed the articles out of the pages. Today I'm going to make the gardening notebook. Now that the weather is nicer I'm really wanting to get out there and work in the yard before the "bug season" starts.

Happy Spring!

I guess that I can "officially" say that spring is here. Why? Because I saw my first robin!! Last night at our Bible study group there were several that had said they'd seen some but this morning was my first siting. The snow pack is nearly gone as well (which shows that my yard is in desperate need of attention)....and this morning it was near 45 degrees outside! I think that we may get to 50 degrees today AND the sun is trying to shine. These are all good signs.

An organizational update. I've officially finished the STACK of magazines (YEAH)! This felt really good to accomplish. Also, I was working on our bedroom closet cleaning out a corner so I can update Spencer's clothes/hanging system and saw what a mess my wrapping paper stuff was. I dug it all out and threw out some bags, cleaned up the rolls of paper and put them neatly back in the container that I have. I also found a lidded clear container to put the gift bags, bows, ribbons, and tissue paper in (much nicer than randomly strewn across the back of the closet). Then it went back into the corner with the box of bags & bows sitting on top of the wrapping paper container. SO MUCH NICER!!

Recycle center update

I've expanded the recycle center since I posted the pictures. I found out that I had another one of the shelf units in the house (hiding in husband's office!). I carefully took it from there without much disruption to his space and put it next to the other in the garage. I had to get one more tub from Walmart and now I have 4 "drawers" for plastic, tin, glass, and pop cans. On the top I have the bins for paper and cardboard sitting side-by-side and then my shoebox for magazines on top of those. It is all very nice and easy to use (an important feature!). I'm think of adding a shelf to the wall and then some peg board or hooks below that. I need to keep by broom, a shovel, trashbags all near this same spot.

I'm nearly through my recent pile of magazines that I found "hiding" in a box and I think that I have another pile under my sewing table that needs to be worked over. I saw a "projects/idea" notebook in another blog that I think that I will try. She used a spiral bound book and basically made scrapbook pages with the pictures of room ideas and then made notes of what she liked in the picture. It looked easy enough that I might give it a go!

Mom's watch

After cleaning out my "junk" drawer in my dresser I had came across a watch that my mom had worn. It's not a valuable watch but nice looking. Well, after not wearing a watch for years I decided that I would wear this one. All my other watches needed batteries (after so many years of non-use!!) and this one was not running either. So, today was the day to take it in and get it running. At lunchtime I went to our local mall where the only jewelry store in town is located and asked for a new battery. The nice lady said she could do that. Off she went to the back room and then came back out and said that it didn't need a battery that it was a watch that just needed winding. COOL! We gave it a quick wind and it is running like a champ. It's nice to wear this little something that reminds me of my mom. She loved to wear a watch and when the Alzheimer started to progress, she would occasionally wear 2!!! Interesting.

Projects

Along with the general cleaning out of the house and getting it under control is the need to finish some projects. The first one that I did was the T-shirt pillows for Joanna and Abigail. I had done this same project with the older 2 kids and knew that I needed to finish the cycle! I had saved their all-time favorite t-shirt (you know, the one that they would wear everyday if I would have let them!) with the intention of getting this pillow done for them. Well, the shirts have been waiting for at least 2 years now! Last week I got the pillow form from Wal-Mart and got the shirts out. This was truly a super-easy sew project....I just sewed the armholes and the neck hole shut, put the form in the shirt, and then sewed the bottom shut. Took me all of 20 minutes to do! I didn't even get it "perfect" but it is done! I tucked the pillows in the girls hampers with their clean clothes pile (Saturday is laundry day) and when they found them there was SO much excitement and joy!

The next project to work on is cleaning out the magazine pile. I'm an avid fan of magazines but the pile is getting LARGE. I am working on going through them and tearing out pages that I want to keep and then putting the magazine in the recycle (I have a shoe box that is just the right size to put them in). I am planning on taking the recipes and putting them in page protector sheets and then storing them in a 3-ring binder in the kichen. The rest of them will go in some files that I had started years ago. These files are catagories like "craft ideas", "bedroom", etc.