"That's not being kind, mom"

Family Fun Night -- last night our verse was, 'Be kind to one another' Eph. 4:32. We started out with of course our usual family dance party to our Veggie Tales song (we have some amazing moves!). After that, we chose to tell them our verse for this week. Then we recited it in CEF (Child Evangelism Fellowship) style...many different voices, cowboy, football player, with our nose plugged, etc.

We had a mission last night. It worked out perfectly because the verse we were on fit well with what we needed to talk about. Dan's mom and stepdad have implemented the "Ultimate Gift" plan for all their kids (8 total). This started last year with the ACT OF GIVING and they gave each of us $xxx to use (in whatever innovative and compassionate way we could come up with) to serve someone or others between Thanksgiving time and Christmas. We shared what we chose to do with the money when we got together for Christmas and recorded it so we could each have a copy. It was a huge success! (I could tell you what we did with the money...if you're interested let me know and that will be another blog sometime).

ANYWAY, this Christmas it is about ACTS OF SERVICE. We will each tell how we purposely used our time and talents to serve someone (other than a relative) in a Christian loving way between Thanksgiving and Christmas. So as a family last night (our verse was very fitting) we talked about what we were going to do. We came up with quite a list, the kids had some great ideas...we are still narrowing it down to determine which things will be possible between now and Christmas. I'll let you know in an up and coming blog what we did...

After we talked through and made our list we worked on our Alphabet book again and the kids each drew a picture and I printed out my big letter B with the verse below it and began to color it in...Josiah chose to draw a picture of him telling his friend 'D' about Jesus because "that's the kindest thing you can do for someone", he said. So true! Alayna drew a picture (using only pencil, no color) of her sharing her toys with her friend M from down the street. She finished her picture first while Josiah and I were still busy coloring. Now, I enjoy coloring. It's relaxing...what can I say. So I was coloring in my big letter B (I know a hard picture, right?!) as I was coloring Alayna asked if she could help me. Alayna ALWAYS asks if she can color my pictures once I'm part way through...I don't color out of the lines and I think she just wants to say she helped color the picture. Well, last night I said, "No, mommy will just color this one". She looked right at me and said, "Mommy, that's not being very kind". My husband, D, thought this was beyond HILARIOUS! He knows I was wanting the letters before the kids pictures to be 'just so'....anyway, she was right...I wasn't being kind and so she helped me finish coloring. I will forever remember that everytime I look at our book and see her coloring on that letter. She apparently was listening to what our verse was, I can be thankful for that!