Love Your Neighbor

We are currently reading the book, Understood Betsy by Dorothy Canfield Fisher. (This is an excellent book, one of my favorites, so if you haven't read this with your children, I highly recommend.)

There is a chapter in which Betsy decides to help out a poor boy by making some clothes for him. Betsy and her friends begin to chatter about the best way to deliver the clothes so that the boy will be able to show his gratitude. Aunt Abigail overhears this conversation and wisely steers the girls into realizing that their motives for helping the boy may not be proper. Are they looking to help him or just receive credit for the service? Betsy realizes her mistake and decides wisely to leave the gift on the porch of the house anonymously. It is this night that she first truly prays to God from her heart.

After this chapter, Sophie decided she wanted to make cookies and leave them secretly on our neighbor's doorstep. As I type she is outside with Drew "making the drop". We put the verse, Matthew 22:39, on the bag holding the cookies.

Sophie's Sweets

After successfully selling hand-made pipe cleaner bracelets yesterday, Sophie decided she would try a lemonade and cookie stand today.

We made our special chocolate chip cookies and some pink lemonade. She picked out special bags at the dollar store and decided to sell the cookies in a bag at 4 for a $1.00. I helped her with a tag and sign to advertise her new business called, "Sophie's Sweets".

Here are some shots I took of the action. The first shot is of her great-grandparents, who just happened to stop by. :-)

Family Rules

Tonight we had a family meeting and wrote a list of 7 family rules. We have had some recurring issues that were getting out of hand and the atmosphere of the home was not pleasant.

We've decided to keep meeting on Sunday evenings for a while to evaluate how we are all doing and make adjustments as needed. We also have scripture verses posted to back up the rules.

Here is the list we came up with. They are not listed by order of importance.

1. Respect others and property.
2. Obey immediately (all the way, right away, cheerfully)
3. Show gratitude (to God and others)
4. Tell the truth.
5. Do not nag Daddy and/or Mommy
6. Do not whine or complain
7. Always do your best

Most issues we are currently having fall under one of these general categories. It was helpful to get it down on paper. We all signed the list and it will be posted on the frig. The children were surprisingly agreeable, they even suggested some of the rules.

Do you have a list of family rules in your home? If so, I'd love to hear about them.

Lunch at The Buried Bones Cafe

A while back, Sophie created a make-believe cafe in her room. She called it The Buried Bones Cafe. (I think this idea came from a place on the Webkinz site.) Today, as she was cleaning her room, Reese helped her rearrange a little and they hosted lunch.

Sophie has menus, table numbers etc. They took orders, prepared real food, and Drew even gave a little dance show after the meal.

I had a wonderful italian-style salad with kalamata olives and one of the best tuna sandwiches ever. For dessert, we had rocky road ice cream.

I informed them that since lunch was so good, I'd like them to prepare dinner tonight too.

Math -U- See

We've changed our math curriculum and are now using Math-U-See. All of the children like to watch Mr. Demme explain the concepts on a DVD while they use the manipulatives to say it, build it and write it.
Here is a picture of Sophie on the floor with the blocks. She chose to also get the moveable white board to practice the writing. It really is Math you can see!

The Gap

Here is the new look Sophie is sporting. After allowing the second tooth to remain until it was literally hanging from a thread. It finally fell out.



The next picture was taken when Drew and Reese followed her into the bathroom to try and convince her to pull the tooth.

April Fool's Day

I always try to do something to "fool" with the kids but this year time got away from me and I found myself at bedtime last night without any plans for today. It was too late to go to the store so Tim and I hatched a plan to dress funny in the morning. I wore all my clothes mismatched, inside out or backwards. I put about 5 pony tails in my hair in various positions, wore mismatched earrings and a string of pearls. Tim had to go to work so he just put a second pair of undergarments (underwear and undershirt) on top of his work clothes and then put on a funny hat. He also wore my pink crocs. We walked out of the room like everything was normal and pretended Tim was leaving for work. Sophie was laughing uncontrollably ( hilarious to hear ), Reese was just grinning and Drew didn't even notice because he was so focused on his Honeycomb cereal box. Finally, he realized something was up but he only noticed the hat on Tim's head! When he finally saw that Tim had underpants on top of his regular pants, he said, "Daddy, are you really going to wear that to work?"

Unfortunately we didn't get any pictures of us but Sophie decided to play along and here is a shot of her after she got dressed crazy.

Later today I will offer them some "M&M's" in a container but when they open it they will actually find dried split green peas. I'll probably just eat the real "M&M's" myself. :-)