My family has an ideal, a goal, to have a clean house when Christmas comes. This goal is often times equal to “shoveling the walk while it’s still snowing.” One of these years, though, we are going to achieve this ideal – and this may be our year. This year, we’ve made a checklist of what needs to be done. …
The Gift Giver
Book Review and Craft There’s a new Christmas book every family needs to have in the library. It’s called “The Gift Giver”. This fantastic book is the story of how Santa Claus got his start. This sweet, emotionally real, and spiritual take on the Santa Claus story is not only refreshing, but also immensely enjoyable. *I received a copy of …
Favorite Family Christmas Traditions
Trimming the Tree and Setting up the Nativity December has come and with it all the great family traditions that make this month so magical. Each family has traditions that make the holidays more meaningful and enjoyable. These traditions are what everyone looks forward to, and are what holds families together. For the next month, I will be sharing some …
Thankful Prayers
It’s amazing the power of prayer, and in this activity — Thankful Prayers — the challenge is to offer family and personal prayers composed of expressions of gratitude for a week. There are amazing things that happen when working on this activity.
Chain of Blessings
Our 7 Days of Thanksgiving continues with a fun game — the chain of blessings. Players take turns naming a blessing and writing it down on paper to create a physical reminder of the family’s blessings.
Thanking You Postcards
Sending thanking you postcards is a great way to help children express their appreciation for those who bless their lives.
The Nutty Robots!
I coach the Nutty Robots team. And, while preparing for a competition, a series of unfortunate incident occurred. What happened next showed just how amazing kids really are.
A Thankful Tree
Our 7 Days of Thanksgiving continues with this thankful tree activity. The activity focuses on naming specific blessings in the different categories in life. While a bit more complicated than our first day’s activity, this allows for more depth of thought.
A Thankful Turkey
Seven Days of Thanksgiving: Day 1 It’s so much fun to spend the month of November counting blessings. My family has a lot of traditions to help us remember our bounteous blessings during this month. Some are familiar, such as writing down one thing we are each thankful for each day. As we’ve focused on our blessings, we’ve begun to …
Be Prepared for Emergencies
Last year, around this time our furnace needed to be turned off. We had a natural gas leak because of improper installation and a lack of air circulation. It was a mixture ripe to cause carbon monoxide poisoning. We were fortunate that we have a fireplace to heat our home with. And, thanks to some good friends, we had gone two …