We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all God’s people— the faith and love that spring from the hope stored up for you in heaven and about which you have already heard in the true message of the gospel Col 1:3-5
I bring in my geraniums in the fall and most of them make it through the winter.
I feel like a need a bit of something growing and blooming especially this winter. Another snow storm and yet not much real snow here again, and such a teaser campaign from the weather channel too! Ah well, I was getting pretty cranky about it since I’d like 10-20 inches of snow or spring right now-period. No more frigid temps and snow flurries and actually a good foot of snow and then a quick thaw and spring on it’s heels would juts delightful and also completely wishful thinking!
I took the kids up to Oakmont to go skating a few weeks ago. At Riverside park they put up a temporary skating rink in the football field. It is free, first come first served, old fashioned skating rink! We went early on a Saturday after a few inches of snow so the skating was not the best and it was 13 degrees too, but we had the cleared section of ice to ourselves. It was a lot of fun.
For Valentine’s we have a family tradition of a special meal sometime during the day. It started by accident about 8 years ago. It was a snowy February 14th and we were home schooling then. While the kids were outside playing in the snow that morning, I set up a special lunch with homemade chicken nuggets, decorated the table and cut the carrots into little hearts for a salad. The kids loved it! When they came inside all cold and wet they changed and had a lovely lunch. Since we no longer home school a lunch is out of the question, so for the last few years, I have stayed up late after everyone was in bed and set up the table with special Valentine’s decorations and prepared for a special breakfast.
(our first Valentine’s lunch)
Then I get up and make pancakes or waffles or french toast for everyone. I also usually make a valentine or bookmark to remind the kids how special they are to us. These days since Sam leaves for the bus at 6:40 am it has become a very early event but a great way to show the kids how much we love them. (I put away the decorations that day and so they are only ever up for one day which makes them even more special.) It’s been hard to hang on to some of the great traditions that we started when we home schooled but it’s definitely worth it.
This last week regarding one tradition it’s been a bit of a laugh actually. If you know Mike and I well, you will know that I love to read, I mean, I really love books and reading. It’s probably one of my favorite things to do.
Mike on the other hand is not a fan. He not only doesn’t like to read but due to the fact that he has spent our 18+ years of marriage building bookshelves for me pretty much non-stop (When do you ever have enough bookshelves?! Can you?) he doesn’t even like books themselves. But in an effort to get ‘Riah (our youngest and only non-bookworm; so far 3 bookworms for me-1 book-resister for Mike 😉 to read a little more, he picked up a fantasy adventure book The Ranger’s Apprentice and began reading it aloud to ‘Riah. Now, I especially love reading aloud to the kids, we used to read 1-2 hours a day once upon a time but these days I get in about 1/2 an hour a few days a week. BUT Mike put me to shame this week. He and ‘Riah have gotten engrossed in the Apprentice series, it has 10 books! And now every time I turn around Mike and ‘Riah are nestled together, Mike reading away. They are on the third book! ‘Riah was hoping for a snow day tomorrow so they could keep on reading, hopefully we have another book-worm in the making! Maybe two!
Be Blessed, have a week of wonders, know you are loved!
Nicole
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