Raising little ministry fans

Last week we went to the ASI convention, a once-a-year grand melee of friends, acquaintances and strangers milling about in blissful fellowship. It's also an opportunity for the kids (and me!) to roam the aisles of the exhibit hall, picking up freebie promotional materials from the many booths promoting their ministries there.

The kids' favorite promo this year was hand-held, tiny mechanized fans from It Is Written. They merrily buzzed each other with them and were thrilled with the lights spelling "It Is Written" on the whirring fan blades.

Apparently other ministries had fans, too. After one trip to the exhibit hall, Skyler whispered to me in awe, "Mommy! I saw some other fans, too. They were the kind from ancient times!"

Prayers from the heart

One of my favorite times of day is when the kids pray before hopping into bed. Yes! Silence on the horizon! Here are some of my favorite recent prayers.

"Help people, like the people in Chatta-noo-ga, to love Jesus."

"Help the Christians to not be in prison."

"Help me to be a real friend, who talks to You and reads Your letters, and really, really be Your friend."

"Hep us to be like the dinosaurs. To eat only plants."

Ladies first

This morning in worship, we read about Elijah and Ahab. Afterward, I talked with the kids about the worship of Molech. "Can you imagine if we worshiped Molech? If one morning Daddy and I came downstairs for breakfast and said that something bad is happening to us, and we need to sacrifice one of our children to Molech?"

Three pairs of round eyes stared at me.

"Skyler," I invited, "What if we decided to sacrifice you? You are the littlest, after all. It would be easiest to catch you."

"And what if something else bad happened?" Anaya chimed in. "You might have to sacrifice Sethie next! And then me!"

"Actually, Anaya, since you are a girl, you might be sacrificed first."

Skyler put in his two cents' worth now. "You know that 'girls first' thing, Mommy? I think girls should be sacwificed first."

That's yife

Seth is into punning and clever word plays now. He loves nothing more than humor. As we often say, the development of humor is an ugly process. :) (I could mention the endless knock-knock jokes that don't make sense..."Knock knock! Who's there? Dinosaur. Dinosaur who? Dinosaur that wants to eat you! BAHAHAHAHA!" But...nah...I won't mention those.)

But the other day, he came up with a cute one. "Daddy, what color is the sky?"

"It's blue."

"It's not blue. It's blue-tiful!"

We all had a good laugh at his cute shot at humor. But later, a puzzled Skyler (who still can't say L) asked me, "Mommy, when Sethie said the sky is byoo-tiful--why is that funny? The sky is byoo-tiful."

Same world, different planet

At lunchtime today, I called for everyone to come eat. I heard Anaya parading slowly down the stairs and around the corner. "Anaya is gone," she announced. "She went...somewhere. And I am a queen," she added pompously, with a fair imitation of a British accent, "visiting from a faraway country. My name is Elizabeth."

Well, far be it from me to get in the way of my children's imagination. (Does this explain why they refuse to color in coloring books, and instead plead for plain white paper, so they can draw their own designs?) Queen Elizabeth, decked out in a slithery purple dress-up scarf and a Middle Eastern dress, joined us for lunch. The conversation centered around the religion in her country (which she informed us eventually was "Zim-bobz-we"), the peculiarities of ours, and our need for servants like they had (can't agree more there).

"Where are your servants?" queried Her Elegance.

"Right there, there and there," I replied, pointing to Anaya, Seth and Skyler.

"I'm not a servant!" Queen Elizabeth was shocked.

"Well, then, there and there."

"You just have your sons as your servants?"

"They're not very effective," I acknowledged, "but they're all we've got."

Eventually Queen Elizabeth tired of her meal with us, bade us a gracious farewell, and went out the door to return to her country. Anaya exploded back in the door a moment later, gasping, "Didn't you love Queen Elizabeth? Wasn't she amazing? I love her!"

Zeal not according to knowledge

This morning Skyler came bounding into our room with an announcement. "Mommy, I just went outside and yelled, 'I yuv you, God!' I did it two times." He paused. "I thought He would yike that."

Life is too busy!

And my first post in 2012 is in...July. The end of July, actually. That's pretty bad.

But anyway...I need to get going again. Life has just been exceptionally busy this year. I basically put almost all extracurricular activities on hold while I focused on schoolwork with the kids, and getting our lives organized and structured.

I started homeschooling in earnest this past January, and Anaya whizzed through all of first grade and 3/4 of second by the end of April. Seth made it 3/4 of the way through first grade, too, though considering that he's only 6, I am afraid we're getting going too fast, too soon! In general, I believe in starting later rather than earlier, to prevent burnout. But he was eager...and here we are.

So anyway...I'm trying to resume blogging. Got a lot going on in our lives. I'll try to say more about that later.