What Seeds Are You Sowing?

This morning was one of those mornings where I thought I was going to ship my girls off to public school if I heard them argue one more time.  They were just. not. getting. along.  We were taking a break from studies and tidying up when I heard another argument break out.  Frustrated, I told them to separate and then meet me in the kitchen in 10 minutes.

A while back we ordered a book that a friend had recommended called "For Instruction In Righteousness".  There are some beautiful ideas in this book for using God's word to guide our families.  I decided to work with my girls on one of the ideas from the book.  So .  . .

When the girls met me in the kitchen I handed them two containers and had them go get some fresh dirt.  When they came back in the house I had them sit down and told them we were going to plant some seeds.  I handed them a packet labeled "Strife and Contention" with pictures of angry flowers.  (Since I only spent a few minutes making the packets it wasn't like they were perfect, but they worked.)  On the back of the packet the description read "Guaranteed to produce large, stinky blooms.  Long-lasting quality.  Ingredients: selfishness, anger, spite".

The look on their faces was pretty cute.  Giggles was alarmed that they might actually grow stinky flowers.  I urged them to open up the packet and get to work.  (The packet contained grains of rice.)

After they had planted their "seeds" I held up another packet labeled "Peace and Joy".

"Now, girls . . . this is what kind of flowers I want you to grow.  The description on the back here says that these flowers will smell sweet and be pleasing to the eye.  The ingredients are selflessness and humility."

They just stared at me for a second.

"Okay, start growing these flowers!" I urged, pointing to the "sweet" flowers.

Giggles looked confused, "We can't grow that; we planted the wrong seeds!"

This naturally led to a great discussion about what kind of "seeds" we plant each day.  I swear I've talked with them about this kind of thing before but have never seen such interest.  Gotta love hands-on teaching!  Some verses we studied after this were Proverbs 16:28, Proverbs 20:3, and Proverbs 17:14.

I hope that this might be a help to some other parent, because it certainly made a difference to us today!  :)

Lest I Forget . . .

My babe (Calico, age 2 1/2) has made some adorable statements lately.  A sampling:

Broccoli is "flower power".

Instead of simply being cold, we often hear, "I so feezing!"

Of course she wants to pray for dinner like everyone else, so on her last rotation her prayer went something like this . . . "Thank you for the God, and thank you for the Jesus."

I took a Sunday afternoon nap recently and was woken by my sweet girl and her handful of Polly Pockets.  While relaxing with her I yawned and she stuck a Polly Pocket in my mouth.  After I sputtered and told her not to put her toys in my mouth, she marched her Polly back to the other dolls and said, "Hi girls!  I just went swimming at the pool!"

Whenever she is asked about her age, her prompt reply is, "I am seven."  She thinks her 7-year-old sister, Giggles, is the coolest thing ever.

I was going on a quick trip to the store, sans kids, and had barely made it to the door when I heard a screech.  Calico came running to me, picked up some new (to her) Nike tennis shoes she had just gotten, and exclaimed, "Take me and my pretty shoes with you!"

During school the other day I was reviewing our science lesson with the girls.  I asked them, "Nicolas Capernicus rightly assumed that what was the center of the universe, that everything revolved around?  Before either girl could speak up, Calico shouted "me"!  (Side note: I really don't think she had a clue what we were talking about and just has excellent timing.)

One more.  In the above photo she had exclaimed, "I made a snowman!"  If you look closely, you can see the milk spill in the shape of . . . yes, a snowman.  :)