Playing in the Dirt

Today was one of those days when you feel like you got a lot accomplished. 

It was filled with so many things that I love. We started our day by going to a couple of Farmer's Markets. After eating breakfast at one of the markets, we picked up a few things...

a free t-shirt,

  some Kenny's Farmhouse cheese 

(my favorite, and it has been since I got to tour the place with a group of students),

some local honey,

 

and some Chaney's milk. 

 

We also picked up some herbs.

 If you haven't tried lemon thyme, it is delicious!

 

 I had never heard of chocolate mint. I can't wait to use it!

  

This year I decided to grow lots of basil. I bought five basil plants. Two for my herb garden on the deck and three plants to add to the garden. I think pesto is in my future!

 Speaking of the herb garden, here it is. 

It also includes a salad bowl from the Farmer's Market. 

 

The big pot to the left of the rack holds my rosemary. It was a small plant I picked up last year. I can't believe how big it has gotten and I was able to keep it alive all winter!

  

After visiting the markets, we stopped by our favorite local coffeehouse.  

My friend Lara was having an Usborne Books story-time. We had lots of fun listening to a story and making a dinosaur craft.

 After seeing friends, drinking great coffee, and making a craft, we ventured out to Second Saturday's Street Fair on the Square. Then we headed home to get to work in the garden.

This year I decided I would plant tomatoes, yellow squash, zucchini, brussel sprouts, basil, parsley, and strawberries. I plan to add okra, too. I am attempting to grow carrots and watermelons from seeds. I also picked up a packet of pumpkin seeds which I hope to plant some time in May.

 

It's not the prettiest garden in the world, because I have to put a chicken wire fence around it, but hopefully it will produce some pretty tasty food.  (Because of the number of rabbits around here, I wouldn't have anything left in the morning without the fence.)

  

A little over a week ago, I added hydrangeas to our back flower beds. I just can't get over how beautiful hydrangeas are. I just love them!

  

Then today I also added some more color to our landscape with the help of some petunias. 

 I don't know what it is about playing in the dirt, but it just feels so therapeutic.

It's been a splendid day!

New Frames

It's been almost a month since I got glasses. About a week after getting those new glasses, I couldn't stand the frames anymore. Thankfully LensCrafters let's you easily change glasses if the ones you chose weren't such a good choice. Even though I really liked the look of my old frames, they were heavy, slid down all the time, and the thick frames were making me dizzy when I used my peripheral vision. So after going and picking out a completely different set, waiting a week for them to come in since they had to order the frames, and wearing them for almost two weeks, the change was definitely the right choice. 

I'm almost to the point where I don't notice them at all,
 and I think they match my personality a lot better. 

Yay for better glasses!

Resurrection Weekend

It's been a wonderful Resurrection weekend! On Good Friday, Bryan and I were able to go to a simulcast of Secret Church. It was 7 hours of intense Bible study, a time of prayer for the persecuted church, and a little bit of worship. We have never experienced anything like it. It was absolutely amazing!
As a family we also did several things to help us keep the resurrection in our focus. Instead of making a potato tomb landscape, this year we made a Resurrection garden by using an empty flower pot turned on its side. We covered the entire pot with dirt and mulch and then found a huge rock to put in front of our "tomb."

Today when we went out to look at our garden, 

it was covered in flowers and the rock had been rolled away.

 We also made resurrection rolls again this year.

We made them a little bit differently by dipping the marshmallow in butter and 

sprinkling it with pumpkin pie spice (just to change things up a bit). 

It still represented the oils and spices that were put on Jesus before he was put in the tomb.

 After our rolls baked for a few minutes it was time to peek inside.

 The marshmallow was gone,

 representing that Jesus had risen from the tomb.

But for our marshmallow-loving two year old this was devastating. 

When he realized the marshmallow was no longer there in solid form,

 he cried for a good minute or two.

Luckily he calmed down after a little bit of explaining, 

and we assured him that he could still have one of our uncooked marshmallows.

We also did a little bit of painting. I taped a cross on a piece of paper using painter's tape.

 Then Seth had at it with lots of colors.

 When he was finished painting and it had dried for a while, we peeled the tape off to reveal our cross.

At church this morning Seth's class did a craft that I was planning to do with him this afternoon. They made a tomb and used a brass fastener to show the stone being rolled away to reveal the empty grave. I think it is just adorable!

 

Also on Good Friday, we took a bouquet of white carnations and we filled the water with red food coloring. The carnations are supposed to represent Jesus being sinless and the red is supposed to represent us and our sins. Over the weekend the flowers were supposed to turn red representing Jesus taking our sins upon Himself. Today the flowers were actually starting to have hints of red on them, but they were nowhere near red.

So even though it didn't quite work the way I had planned, it was nice to have a reminder sitting on our mantle of Christ's ultimate sacrifice for me every time I looked at it.

"He personally carried our sins in his body on the cross 

so that we can be dead to sin and live for what is right. 

By his wounds you are healed." 

1 Peter 2:24

Bread, Tea, and a Prayer

When you celebrate holidays differently than other people, sometimes it's hard figuring out how we do want to celebrate, and make it meaningful for our family. We are still in the beginning stages of shaping our traditions and celebrations. We don't ever want the focus to be on what we don't do, but rather what we DO to celebrate each spiritual holiday.
Before kids, I never really thought about all the events leading up to Christ's death and resurrection. Sure I knew about them, but I just kept on with my life and when Easter Day (or Resurrection Sunday as I like to call it) rolled around I spent my hour or two being especially grateful for Jesus' sacrifice. How sad it that? Well, Jesus has been messing with us for the last few years. It's why we do so many things differently. It's why we try to take out the distractions that can get in the way.
Today is considered the day in Holy Week when Jesus ate his last supper with his disciples. Then he went to pray in the Garden of Gethsemane. It's when his disciples kept falling asleep and when Judas betrayed him. So to help Seth understand a little bit better and a great reminder to us as well, we went to one of the more wooded parks in town and had bread and tea. What did Jesus drink with His last supper? Wine. What do we drink with most of our meals? Sweet tea. So sweet tea it was, and it was a special treat for Seth.

We used two different books to help us illustrate why we were in the woods. We love the Read with Me Bible for Toddlers and have been using it for a long time. We also recently bought The Usborne Book of Bible Stories. It is a wonderful resource!

After we ate our bread and tea, we walked farther into the woods. Seth already knew that Jesus went to pray in the garden, but I think this really helped him understand even more. Just as raindrops started to fall, we stopped to pray. It was so sweet.

 

It was definitely one of those moments that we don't want to forget,

 and it will definitely be repeated in years to come. 

Life of Jesus Cross and Resurrection Eggs Sensory Bin

Today we did a couple of activities to help us prepare for the celebration of Christ's resurrection. We made a cross with pictures of events from Jesus' life. You can find the printable pictures and cross here.

This year we decided to take the contents of the resurrection eggs and do something different with them. We put them all in the plastic container that we use as our sensory bin. I added some dried black beans so that we could kind of dig for each item.  

We used The Story of the Resurrection Eggs: Benjamin's Box, Amazing Grace: Lord Jesus Lives, The First Easter, and The Story of Easter: Read and Share to help us identify each item and to help Seth see how the item related to the events leading up to Jesus' death and resurrection. These last few nights of learning have been incredible. I have been amazed at Seth's attention span and how much he can remember. It's so sweet to see him beginning to understand.

The Parable of the Lily

 Tonight we made lilies and read The Parable of the Lily by Liz Curtis Higgs. We traced Seth's hand and rolled the hand print up around a pipe cleaner. They weren't the prettiest things in the world, but I think Seth liked them.

 

 While we were assembling our flowers, Bryan pulled up some pictures of lilies on the laptop to make sure that Seth understood what he was making. Doesn't he just look so grown up in this photo?

 

Right before bedtime, we read the parable. 

It's such a sweet story and a reminder of God's great love for us.

 

Palm Sunday 2012

Today is Palm Sunday and to kick off our week of activities leading up to Resurrection Sunday we made palm branches. These were super simple and turned out so cute! 

I rolled up one sheet of green construction paper. Then I traced Seth's hand, stacked my papers all together so I only had to cut out the handprint one time, and then we taped them onto the rolled up paper.

 After waving it around for a few minutes we had to do some reinforcing with the tape, but it could withstand the abuse from a toddler pretty well.

 Silas got his own palm branch that I made with some kids at church this morning. 

It was made from a large craft stick and only had a few handprints glued to it.

 This year we are using The Story of Easter: Read and Share in addition to our collection of Easter related books. This was given out last month at a MOPs meeting that I regularly attend at a local church.

It has already been so helpful and we still have a week's worth of great stuff to learn about!