I'm fighting a battle around here.
A battle against The Sand and The Mulch.
My 3 year old attends preschool 2 morning per week where they have a really fabulous playground that includes 2 huge sandboxes, 1 sandbox even has a full-size playhouse inside where the kids can pretend cook with sand! His class has playground time last thing before they go home, so I pick up my son and he is covered in sand. There is sand in his hair, sand caked onto his sweaty little cheeks, and gallons of sand in his shoes. I do my best to brush him off, dump out his shoes outside but still, it makes it's way in! And to be dealing with this much sand in my house I really ought to at least be able to see the ocean from my window, but, sigh, it's 45 minutes away by car!
Then there is The Mulch.
My older 2 kids attend elementary school where they play on a mulch playground. And especially my son comes home every day with tons of mulch in his shoes! And if he forgets to take his shoes off outside, my kitchen is like a big mulched flowerbed, only without the flowers.
And yes, I make him sweep it up, but his sweeping abilities? Are far from stellar!
Seriously, the floor grit was so bad the other day that even my oldest son decided he needed to put his shoes back on to walk around the house!!
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And don't even get me started on the Hunger Strike of 2010.
Which involves our dog suddenly refusing to eat the prescription dog food she needs to stay healthy, unless you mix it in with something yummy.
In any sane person's house she'd just starve, but not here in the land of chaos. Here, my husband heats up chicken broth on the stove to pour over the dog's food every morning at 8AM and again at 9PM!
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But, on a positive note, Big Duke (my 3 year old's security object) has a new playhouse!
I was desperate to occupy my littlest while I looked through school papers/discussed their day with my 2 older ones one day this week and I had a big box around from all the jeans I ordered for my 7 year old to try on (by the way 8 slim seems to be his magic size) and so I brought the box into the kitchen, got out the crayons and said, "Here, you can color this box and then we'll turn it into a house for Big Duke."
It may not be the most beautiful house on the block, but Big Duke seems happy with it! And the red pipe-cleaner door handle really highlights the modern architecture of the house, don't you think?
My toddler really had fun filling the house with all kinds of toys for Big Duke.
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It makes for a snug fit, but he managed!
It was really funny, at one point my daughter suggested that Big Duke needed a bed in there and my 3 year old said, "No! Big Duke sleeps in my bed, this is just his playhouse!"
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I'm gonna get really controversial here, but for some reason I feel the need to share that, yes, we participate in a bit of the Halloween festivities. We don't engage in any witchcraft or call forth spirits of the dead (Deut 18:10-12), but we decorate with pumpkins, eat candy corn, and let the kids dress up as friendly superheros, or real-life heros, like astronauts. We go trick-or-treating just to our neighbors, and we go along with some neighbors who have kids, and we pass out candy (and sometimes invitations to our church's really cool kids Christmas show) to kids that come to our door.
If we did not do these things, we'd miss out on a great opportunity to interact with and meet neighbors. It is sad that the neighbor interaction doesn't come much more often than every Halloween, but it means that in this day and age, it's extra important to take every chance you get.
I heard a Christian friend recently describe that they don't celebrate Halloween or pass out candy and try to not even be home that night, and I did not judge her for her decision, but I couldn't help wondering if she was missing out on an opportunity to welcome others to her home and potentially be a light to the dark parts of her neighborhood. What other night do you have the chance to interact with tons of families who come straight up to your door? And if Halloween is really evil, my God's in the business of turning something meant for evil into something meant for good (Gen. 50:20).
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This post from Ann at A Holy Experience has me really wanting to do better about memorizing scripture. I've memorized verses here and there over the years, but I've never attempted a whole book of the Bible! It sounds so hard, but how cool would that be to write God's words on your heart in that way. And God's pretty good at helping with hard things, right? I'm really thinking of tackling the challenge. Now, which book to start with?
And nobody suggest Jude or Psalms! Seriously, don't do it! I'm not going for shortest or longest, just manageable and really meaningful.__________________
Have a wonderful weekend!