Chores for kids

I'm looking for ideas on chores that may be appropriate for Drake. Right now he sets the table every day and is expected to clean up after himself (and sometimes Levi) and clear his dishes to the sink after supper. He is sometimes required to put his own laundry away and sometimes to make his bed, depending on whether or not I do the laundry while he's gone at school, and whether I remember in the morning to ask him to make the bed. So I know he is able to do these things. I often have him take out the recycling, as well. Oh yeah, and he knows how to fold the clean diapers and dustbust crumbs from under the kitchen table. I was talking to my friend, Cherie, the other day, and she suggested feeding/watering Heidi (the cat) and dusting some things downstairs, like the piano and bookshelf. There may be a few other things, too, but they are not currently coming to mind.

Anyway, I'm trying to plan my days a little better, and I know that planning more specifically which chores are expected of my children each day will foster a more cooperative spirit in the long run! What I am looking for right now is more ideas for appropriate kid chores. I know many of you have kids near the same age - I would love to hear some of your ideas!

Aren't they cute? (I thought this post needed a picture!)

A tooth and a recipe file

Have you ever noticed that when you focus on doing one thing, everything else seems to suffer? It seems there are a few people who can "do it all"...but I'm not one of them! I haven't been blogging nearly as much lately, but I've been doing some other things. And thinking about blogging. It just hasn't happened! (Hoping to get back into the swing...) So anyway, here's one of those "other things" that I'm excited about: I've learned how to get the video clips off our camcorder, onto the external hard drive, and then burned to a DVD! For a non-techie, this is remarkable! The best part is, I can actually do it all by myself now, without the help of two certain tech-savvy people who taught me the ropes. To date, I have created three different DVDs for friends from the video clips we've taken over the past year and a half. I plan on doing more of them for family members next.

So that has been my major accomplishment of late. Drake, however, has had a major accomplishment of another type - his first lost tooth! This has been the source of much pride and joy in his life over the past week since it fell out. Well, "fell out" is not exactly the way I'd describe it; it was actually more of an extraction if you ask me! He is such a boy! As a child, I always wiggled my loose teeth gently and let them hang on by a thread until it was no longer possible for them to do so. This resulted in little pain and little blood.

Not my son! Nope. This kid had a tooth that was only slightly loose, and I think he decided one evening that it was just time. He pushed that sucker back into his mouth hard, and made it bleed excessively. Then he proceeded to pull it forward and sideways, and over the course of about twenty or thirty minutes, he had the thing in his hand! There is still a deep indented line in his gum (over a week later), and it just doesn't look like the tooth was quite ready to let go yet! It made me a little squeamish at the time, but he certainly is proud of the hole in his mouth!

Here are some pictures for you to enjoy.

Something is missing here! (And yes, this is after the bleeding stopped. I think his mouth was just in shock!)

Calling Grandpa and Grandma with the big news!

And in case you're wondering what the little brother has been up to lately...well, let me tell you, he's a different kid than Drake was at that age! Levi talks a lot less, but makes up for it in, ummm, curiosity. That's what we'll call it. It's the quality that causes a toddler to open cupboards and drawers, try to escape from the house, climb onto the table, put things in the toilet, and the likes. He's so cute and funny, though! We are head-over-heels in love with him.

Here's a look at one of his antics from a couple of weeks back. Apparently I left my recipe file too close to the edge of the table, and, as I'm learning, that makes it fair game. (Remember the light globe?) When things were too quiet for a little while, I came to investigate and found this lovely mess...

...and this guilty face!

So. That was a project to put them all back in order in the file! Anyway, he's a precious "baby" (I can call him that until he's two, right?) and I wouldn't trade him for the world...but oh, my, he keeps me on my toes!

And aren't these guys handsome?

I'll leave you with that shot. I think they're all pretty stinkin' cute! Anyhow, I'll be trying to post a bit more frequently, but we'll see how it goes. Hope everyone has a good Thanksgiving week!

AWANA Grand Prix

Last weekend was our AWANA Grand Prix! Drake spent several weeks preparing his pinewood derby car for the big event.

The car starts out as a block of wood. Drake and Adam designed a shape and drew it on the car, which Mr. Murray from AWANA then cut with his bandsaw. Here, Drake is sanding the car after it was cut to the shape he wanted.

Daddy had a go at it with the electric sander! Much faster...but noisy!

Nice and smooth! And lookin' pretty cool with the wheels on there. Next, Drake painted it, but you'll just have to imagine the painting/decorating stage, because there are no pictures!

Finally - it's the big day!

Mom and Levi ready to watch Big Bro's race!

The cars starting to line up for the race.

Drake's masterpiece!

...and a cool side view! We got there early, because Drake wanted to be one of the first to pick his number, ensuring he could get the #8. Why #8? The Seahawks car wouldn't be complete without Matt Hasselbeck's number!

Finally, it's Drake's car's turn. Ready to race!

The Seahawk-mobile won its first two heats! Drake was really stoked!

All the kids cheered as each car's owner was announced before each heat. And they watched the races so intently! Drake ended up winning his first two heats, then losing one, winning one, and losing another. It was a double elimination contest, so after losing twice he was out. (The two races he lost were second-place finishes to the kids who ended up taking first and second place. Not too bad for his first year! He was definitely happy about it!)

After the races, everyone enjoyed cake and other goodies.

Here's Drake showing off his car and "AWANA Grand Prix" ribbon after coming home and getting ready for bed. What a fun time!

You won't believe this...

I'm surprised that I didn't think to blog about this sooner! This is one of those strange stories that I would expect to hear happened to someone else. Not me.

Three Sundays ago, I think, we came back from church and lunch at McDonald's. (Now a couple of you know where I'm going with this!) Actually, the boys and I came home, while Adam and our friend Dave, who was staying with us for the weekend, went to watch a football game. (Not having cable is problematic when you need to watch a football game...you can't do it in your own house!) Anyway, so the boys and I walk in our front door, and I'm getting ready to take Levi upstairs and put him down for nap. Drake asks if he can play in the backyard. Well, sure. Why not? So out he goes. Five seconds later, he's back. And he's asking, "Mommy, why are all those toys outside?" "What toys?" (I'm confused.) "My cars and Bionicles and some books, too."

Oh...no...

A thought crosses my mind - but I push it out. Impossible. Neighbor children inside our house while we're gone?

Oh yeah.

That's right. While we were out, two neighbor boys from down the street (ages seven and three), not only came into our backyard, but came through our sliding glass door (which I had obviously failed to lock) and into our house, taking some of the toys from the playroom and the living room back out to the yard to play with. What?! Even when the pieces started coming together (including an incriminating eye-witness account from the neighbors directly behind us), I was still in shock. The weird thing is, we barely know these kids! And I had never even met the parents. We'd been seeing a lot of them over the few days prior, which is really the only factor that made the story seem plausible at first. But it was indeed true.

Several questions came to mind. A lot of them actually. Where all did these children go in my home? (Hopefully not through my underwear drawer.) Am I overreacting? Like, is this something one should expect if they forget to lock their sliding door? (Ummm...no.) What would have happened if we had owned a kid-eating doberman? (Could I live with that?) Or what if they had just fallen off our swing set in the backyard and sprained an ankle or something? (Our insurance would be paying for it, I'll tell you that. The US government would make sure of it.) And how about this: Where were Mom and Dad, and did they even have a clue what their children had been up to that morning?

So anyway, I went and introduced myself and (very politely) discussed the situation with the boys' parents (who were both home at the time of the incident, by the way). In the parents' defense, Dad had just returned home from a deployment, and things tend to get a little crazy during that readjustment phase. The boys had been playing outside, and when Dad went looking for them, found them in our yard and made them come home. (The parents had no idea they had been in our house, but the little one readily confessed!)

After that, I immediately called my friend, Cherie. I needed to burden someone else with my bizarre story! And by the end of the conversation I was feeling, well, a little more normal and less shocked. And reallyreallyreally thankful that our "intruders" were little kids who just borrowed toys from inside our house - they didn't even take them. It could easily have been something oh so very much worse!

So anyway, now we have locks on the backyard gates and try to remember to lock the sliding door, pretty much whenever it's not in use. And just in time, too. Because yesterday I forgot to lock the door, and Levi figured out how to open it. I found him happily playing in the yard by himself, with the door wide open. Well, at least he couldn't get out of the yard!

"Owie!"

Levi isn't much of a talker. And the words he does say are typically recognizable only to us, or in a really obvious context. (Examples: "Buh!" for bus; "Sah!" for socks; "Suh!" for pizza...and yes, they always come out of his mouth with an exclamation point!) A couple of weeks ago, Levi learned to say "owie" - we laughed so hard over how clear he says it...SO cute! Then I tried and tried to capture it on video, without much luck. Many, many video clips later, he finally said it. Success at last! Anyway, here are two of the video clips we took that day. The first one is much longer, and shows some of his hilarious facial expressions, but no "owie". The second (very short) one was my success story!

The voices you hear are me (running the camera), Drake (in and out of the picture) and our friend Dave, who was sitting at the table with us.

(I think Drake was getting tired of all the attempts - what do you think?!)

As I was uploading these clips today, Levi heard them and was fascinated. He kept saying "owie" over and over and over...

Waiting

Waiting is hard. We've been at our current base for four years, and you know what that means: it's highly likely that orders will be coming our way sometime soon. Part of the military adventure is not knowing where (or when!) we're going next! But I find myself having less and less patience for that type of "adventure" lately. In my sinful human heart, I want nothing more than to be able to tightly grab hold of the future, squeezing and twisting it to fit my own short-sighted desires. Sometimes I feel tired of a life where one can never really put down roots. I am not a person who likes change, and somewhere in my dreams, my husband has a middle-class civilian job, and we have no plans to leave a community and church and friends we love...ever ...We own our home, and I can paint the rooms whatever color I want without that irritating thought in the back of my mind - in a few years, I'll be painting all these walls white again!...My kids can have a school and activities where I'll have reason to care about the happenings a few grades ahead of theirs; no more of this by the time Drake is old enough to be involved in that, we won't be here anymore stuff.

Yes, sometimes the grass truly seems greener on the other side.

But about four years ago, I went through something that changed my life. We moved to Florida. Did I want to leave Minot? No! Was I angry and frustrated, and did I throw some grown-up sized temper tantrums? Yes! I wanted nothing more than to stay forever in the frozen north. Granted, I was learning to trust the Lord a bit (if you've been reading this blog for long, you'll probably remember that my relationship with Jesus truly began during that assignment), but I could not imagine why on earth I would have to leave the people who mattered most to me in all the world, and who had been instrumental in gently bringing me to an understanding of who God is and how much I need Him. It was utterly disappointing and confusing for me.

I wore these feelings on my sleeve, apparently. One night just before we left, one of these precious people I was struggling to let go of sat down with me and gave me a half-sheet of white paper. I have just now pulled it out from its place, and I'm looking right at it, remembering. This is what it says:

Attitude
by Charles Swindoll

"The longer I live the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than success, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company..a church..a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past.. We cannot change the fact that people will act a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it."

"Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death - even death on a cross!" Philippians 2:5-8

Yep, that's what it said! I was convicted, and decided to change my attitude and make the best of what had to be. That doesn't mean it was all easy and happy, but it did help me notice the hand of God more readily. I realized that He was in Florida too! (And I carried that paper with me in my purse for several years!)

No matter what our situation or lifestyle, the God we serve gives us specific blessings and a purpose for being in our particular position. This is something positive He has shown me about the military (or any transient) lifestyle: we may have an easier time keeping an "eternal" perspective. We do not have the option to buy a house and plan to stay there through our golden years. We can invest ourselves in our church fellowship to a point, but this is knowing that soon we will be ripping ourselves away from those people we've grown to care so much about. We will have to start over a number of times...and get that lonely and difficult "stranger in a strange land" feeling, no matter how many times we do it. But although these facts may be annoying or downright discouraging, the benefit is that we are pressed nearer to God in the lonely and uncertain times, and reminded again that this world is not our home! Feeling like a "stranger" can be a keen reminder to praise and thank the Lord of Heaven that this world isn't all there is!

Right now, I don't have a desire to stay here forever like I did in Minot. But there is something I do want, a precious desire of my heart. I have been pleading with the Lord over it. And yet I know that only He sees the big picture. Only the King of the Universe knows exactly where He wants us to fit into it. How many times have I laid my desires at His feet, and then found myself sneaking back to retrieve them, to try squeezing them in my own hands again? My flesh cries out for power over the future, which, of course, it cannot and should not have.

We hope to know by December 15 a little more of what our future will hold, although there is also the distinct possibility that we may be totally skipped over for orders this cycle. (In that case, the wait will continue.)

I pray that no matter what happens, whether we get a "yes" or a "no" or a "wait some more", that I will be able to bring glory to Jesus with my attitude. I pray that we will be filled with patience beyond measure to get through this time of waiting, and that the Lord would see fit to mature us into the most useful vessels possible, whatever the outcome. He is good! Always.

Halloween happenings

Drawing the face on Levi's pumpkin

Drake has never been thrilled about touching the pumpkin "goo"...but we got Levi to reach in and get some of the seeds out!

Here's Drake with the finished products! I realize now that multiple steps in the pumpkin-carving process were not photo-documented! Adam finished getting all the junk out of them, separated the seeds out to bake, cleaned and prepped the seeds for baking and carved the faces in the pumpkins. During this time, I was giving Levi a bath, putting him to bed, and then making carameled apples for the three "big" people in the house. And apparently, this is where the camera finally got picked back up again...






And here are our jack-o-lanterns with candles inside!

And how could a weekend be complete without fishing? Adam was off work on Friday, and Dave was here also, so they had a fun morning "ripping some lips" - to quote my dear husband.

On Friday morning, Drake's school had a Storybook Parade, where the kids could dress up like their favorite book character. Drake wanted to be Shere Khan the tiger from Jungle Book. (And yes, that's electrical tape on an orange t-shirt!)


Levi and I went to Drake's school to watch the parade, and it was really cute! There were a lot of kids who dressed up. Here's Drake as he passed by with his class!



The boys dressed up for Halloween! Levi is a leopard and Drake is the red Power Ranger.


Hard to believe, but my mom made the leopard suit for Drake when he was 2-1/2. It fit him very well for Halloween when he had just turned 3. Levi is 20 months! Hmmm....I think there's a slight height difference!

My sweet baby leopard thought the candy part of Halloween was pretty awesome!

Drake didn't want to go trick-or-treating, so we went to a "Family Fun Night" put on by a local Baptist church. It turned out being way more fun than trick-or-treating anyway! Here's Drake fishin' for some candy. (Note that he took his mask off - he still has a trace of Shere Khan whiskers on his face from the parade! Oops!)

I got Levi to climb inside one of the bouncy cages - this one was specifically reserved for toddlers, so it was safe. Once he got in there, he didn't want to come out!

Daddy with his baby leopard.

This was one of two BIG inflatable slides for the older kids/adults. This one was the smaller of the two, and Adam talked Drake into trying it. He wasn't too sure about it, but once he tried it, he LOVED it and did it several more times...

Then onto the REALLY big slide! This picture doesn't really do it justice - Adam estimated it to be about 40 feet high. (I wouldn't know; I don't do estimates like that. 20 feet? 100 feet? Don't ask me!) Drake had a blast on this one too. So all in all, the Family Fun Night was a success, and we even came home with a bunch of candy!

So that's it! Hope everyone else had a fun Halloween as well.