This Week.

Pumpkins, field trips, rocket launches--this October has been wondrous for me.

Monday was the school rocket launch. While the boys waited in line, Maylie and I played on the playground. She slid down the slides and we made a little restaurant counter where we ordered hamburgers and ice cream. A few other little girls decided to join our fun.

The boys' rocket is the 3rd from the right. Tate's was destroyed as we were making it so they had to share Easton's. It went several hundred feet in the air and parachuted down slowly. We followed it across the field and into a neighborhood but lost track of it as it disappeared behind a rooftop. We spent the next half hour wandering the neighborhood with other children who had lost theirs and never found it. Easton was sad so we continue to check the office every day for any rockets that have been found.

Tuesday we went down to Perry to pick up our last CSA share. We received a half bushel of apples and potatoes and onions and peppers. It was a nice drive. We all picked out our pumpkins that evening as well.

Easton has especially enjoyed our Halloween countdown and likes to update it for me daily. Maylie asks nearly every day if it is Halloween yet so she can wear her Cinderella costume. We're getting so excited!

On Friday I was privileged to go to Easton's field trip to Hill Air Force Base. I had these four cute boys in my group. I honestly have never had more fun on a field trip in my life! They were all so sweet and fun to be around. I was especially grateful I was with boys for this particular field trip. I didn't have to fuel their excitement in the slightest. They loved every minute of every helicopter, B-17, cannon, and machine gun.

They each made their own rocket and launched them.

They also decided they needed at least a hundred pictures by the planes doing cool poses.

While we were gone, my sweet mother came to watch Tate and Maylie. She brought over her new "Magformers." These magnetic blocks entertained for hours. We were both astounded at the creativity the boys demonstrated in building unique structures. The extent of my building skills was constructing a tiny pyramid. I should have taken more pictures of their unique and amazing creations!

The Finished Playroom.

I have been so extremely excited for this project since I first dreamed it up a few months ago.  I was so tired of having their bedrooms double as play areas--they're just too small!  And since we are several years away from finishing our basement, I thought the only alternative was to shrink our upstairs theater just a bit and create a playroom in half of the room.  My goal was to be done by Christmas, so we worked like crazy to build the shelves and paint, and get the right baskets, and make the wall hangings, and everything!

Saturday we plunged into the final phase of development and finished it up before we left to our Johnson Family Christmas party that afternoon.

Then last night after church I put all of the toys lovingly in the baskets and brought the boys and Maylie in to see the surprise.

I'll never forget the looks on their faces as they wandered around stupefied.  They immediately gravitated to the chalkboard table and after spending a few minutes experimenting there, they started finding all of their toys in their new homes and pulling them out.  It was dinnertime and I suggested they finish playing after dinner, but none of them wanted dinner.  Easton said he wanted to stay up there forever and play forever.

We finally convinced them to come downstairs for our dinner, and they have being playing upstairs ever since.

I am so so so so happy with how everything turned out and am SO grateful my children finally have a dedicated, darling place to play!

{P.S. Ignore the horrible low-lighting in these pictures.  I wanted to hurry and just snap some with my camera before the littles came in and it was already dark...but even despite the pictures, you can still get a feel for the whole coziness and charmingness of this special little loft.}

Kindness Candles

A few months ago, when our home seemed a little contentious, I knew something had to be done.

So I walked into my bedroom closet and spied a mason jar full of tea candles, and the Spirit whispered to me that this was exactly what I was looking for.

The boys and I had an impromptu lesson about how the presence or lack of kindness brings more light into our home or causes it to diminish.  I told them every time they spoke kindly or did something kind, they would get to take a light out of the jar.  Every time a harsh word was spoken or an unkind deed, they had to put a light back into the jar.  Patrick and I were not exempt and agreed to the terms as well.

Then I asked them what thing they wanted more than anything else right now (under $10).  We wrote the dreams on a paper and taped it to the jar to remind us of what we were working towards.  We decided that if we could get all of the candles out of the jar, we would have a celebration and then buy the things we wanted.

It took weeks to accomplish our goal, but even within the first week, I noticed a significant increase in the harmony of our home.  The spirit of contention was replaced with a spirit of love.  And we each worked hard.

The day all the candles finally were out, the boys and I had a celebration.  We lit them and talked again about the increase of love we had felt.  And then they each made a wish and blew out the candles.

Then we shopped online to find the treasure they wanted and to compare prices, and a few days later, Patrick took the boys to the store.  It was a happy day....

Play {Part 2}

"The revelation that we have everything we need in life to make us happy but simply lack the conscious awareness to appreciate it can be as refreshing as lemonade on a hot afternoon.  Or it can be as startling as cold water being thrown in our face.  How many of us go through our days parched and empty, thirsting after happiness, when we're really standing knee-deep in the river of abundance?"

~Sarah Ban Breathnach, Simple Abundance

Mommy-Playtime has still been going well.  I am so grateful that I have accepted myself as imperfect, because imperfect I am.  There are days that individual playtime with each of my little ones doesn't happen.  And many of these pictures represent play activities that the boys invent on their own.  And we are connecting in grand and glorious ways and the Lord is truly blessing us.  All it takes is the desire, and He works miracles through us.

Here is a Sunday activity we tried one day.  It's called "Scripture Hero Cars" and it was an idea from my good friend.   We asked the boys to choose their favorite scripture prophets and heroes and then we wrote the names on pieces of paper that we taped to the tops.

Then they each picked a car and told the story of the prophet (or as much as they knew).  We filled in the details and then they got to race their cars down the ramp.

We repeated the activity for all of the cars.

And in the middle of the event, we heard cries from Maylie's room...

She had sneaked away, crawled inside her toy basket, and couldn't get out.