Sometimes dreams do come true

I've always been a bit of a dreamer. And for as long as I can remember, I grew up dreaming about what my future, and my family, would be like. 

Some of my dreams were quite sensible. (Marry a guy who goes to church. Yep, got that one.)

Others not so much. (12 children? Um, not what we're planning at this point...)

But one of the dreams that stuck in my mind as I got older was to be a family who rode bikes together. I'm not really sure where it came from, although I do have some very strong memories of riding around the park as my Dad watched, and of Mum and I riding together. But even though I didn't ride much past the age of 9, the dream persisted. 

Today, it came true. The four of us went riding together, with SP on his balance bike and F in the trailer. Three hours, three playgrounds and a whole lot of fun and relaxation together. 

Bliss. Thank you, God. 

What were your dreams for your grown-up life? Are they coming true?

Ride for Refugees

You may remember Dave & SP's participation in the Ride for Refugees bike ride last September. 

Since then, I've got a bike and we've also got a trailer for the kids to sit in. 

Initially F wasn't too keen on the trailer, so both new acquisitions have been mostly gathering dust for a few months. Well, my bike has been gathering dust. Dave has taken SP on rides in the trailer, and he loves it. 

But on a recent retrial, F was much happier in the trailer, and we've been going on a few short rides. 

So I've set myself the challenge. Ride for Refugees here I come. 25km, in 11 weeks time. 

I'm not going to be silly about doing the whole course if it's too much - if I need to have a rest or turn around before the halfway point, I will. And I won't be pulling the trailer that day - Dave gets to pull SP & I think F will sit this one out. Dave's thinking of doing the first 25km lap with trailer, then another lap by himself, and he'll probably still finish before me ;)

It feels good to have a goal. 

You'd hide in the library

After a phone call to our local library, it appears that Press Here has been returned. It must have gone back with another batch of books and just longer than expected to process. 

Excellent. 

If you were a library book, where would you hide?

I lost a school library book in year 6. I remember it vividly. We paid for it, then I found it in a forgotten corner corner of the classroom. 

And it never happened again. Until this year. 

This year, we've lost three. 

The first was one of those little skinny Mr Men books. Yep, that was bound to happen one day. We have floor cracks big enough for one of those. 

The second was a DVD that evaporated between the car and the returns desk. 

The third was due back today. There has been much hunting. It's a reasonable sized board book, so surely it can't be that hard to find. 

Time to bring back the 'kids library books only in the lounge room' rule. We were doing pretty well at this until F found her book-loving side and now she wants to take them all over the house. 

I've looked in bookshelves, cupboards, under couches, beds, the piano... Do you have any ideas?

A different kind of book review

Whenever I read a book, I find things I would like to blog about. And I have visions of writing these beautifully crafted posts, with concise and informative book reviews. 

But it never happens. 

So I'm going to try something different. As I read, I'm putting sticky notes on things that I find interesting, and planning to post about them to share with you. It won't be organised, but it will be a way to share information. 

I really wanted to do a good review of 'Maybe I Do', by Kevin Andrews. Fabulous book, which, coupled with an article in the Brisbane Child, prompted me to write my first ever letter to an editor. But I didn't note down the best bits as I read, and it's essentially a 600+ page literature review, so I didn't have the impetus to go back through it and sort them out again. Maybe one day. 

Since then, I've read Dr Susan Prescott's 'The Allergy Epidemic', and I have some notes on that coming up. Stay tuned. 

Excitement

It's our quarterly church working bee tomorrow morning. SP is so excited he had real trouble getting to sleep. 

He'll be taking his mower, whipper snipper (aka pool noodle), wheelbarrow, shovel, hammer, saw...

Hope the outside jobs aren't rained out. I'll have no trouble finding the blokes some inside tasks, but there'd be one little boy very disappointed...

Decluttering win

I have a love-hate relationship with 'stuff'. I feel like our house is crammed to the brim and I'd love to own less, but I have a hard time getting rid of things, and I'm good at buying more things too. 

This year, I'm following along with Brooke at Slow Your Home. She's aiming to get rid of 2013 things in 2013. I'm not doing the count (because I fear that would lead the decluttering to take over my life), but I am finding her monthly list of areas to tackle very helpful. 

On Saturday, I cleaned out the car and the bathroom cupboards, which finished up January's list and got me started on February's. Yes, I know Saturday was 23 Feb, but it's not a race, right? I'll be quite happy if it takes me two years instead of one. I'm just going to keep plugging at it. 

February's list includes the office and paper clutter. Yikes. Wish me luck...

And feel free to take a peak inside my bathroom cupboards :)

Where does your anger come out?

SP (3 1/2) is struggling with anger at the moment. Particularly hitting, kicking and screaming. Unfortunately these angry tendencies come from me, although I expressed them a little differently in my childhood, so I'm particularly keen to help him to deal with his anger better than I do. 

We've been doing 'use your words', with some success, and also some deep breathing and counting to 10, but I've recently hit on something else.

Here's what I said to SP: 

 

- the Bible says it's OK to be angry, but it's not OK to sin (say 'no' to God / do the wrong thing) when you're angry. 

- when he hits and kicks, he's letting his anger come out through his arms and legs. When he screams, he's letting it come out through his voice. These things are not OK. 

- it's better to let his anger come out through his breath. Nice slow deep breaths to gather up the anger and let it out. 

I saw him use this without prompting this evening (yay!) and he looked a bit like a woman in TV labour, but it worked :)

And I've realised in writing this post that I left the God bit out of the solution. I'll be having another chat and add in 'tell God what you're angry about and ask him to help you' and 'the Holy Spirit is working in you and helping you not to be angry.' Sometimes, blogging is very useful. 

Easter Readings goes global

I'm a bit excited - there are actual people using my material :) The response from members of our church was pretty good, there are a few facebook friends & rellies using it (including one in the UK, hence the 'global' bit) and another church has picked it up too. A big church, with lots of people. Some of whom knew me as a primary schooler. That feels weird and a bit scary. 

But I like being useful.

Easter Reading Booklet Download

I never do things the easy way. When my friends first expressed interest in using my Easter reading ideas, I thought it would take me a couple of hours to put together a couple of pages for them.

Then I got started. 

Two weeks later, here it is. All 37 A5 pages of it. But I'm really happy with the way it's turned out.

If you're interested in using it, here are the download links: 

To read on a screen, download this one (one page per sheet)

To print your own booklet, download this one and print back-to-back (two pages per sheet with pages in order for booklet printing).

Feel free to print a copy for your own use. I'd love you to leave me a comment to let me know you're using it, and later to tell me how it works for you. Constructive criticism very much appreciated. 

If you would like to print multiple copies for use in your church or group, please comment here or send me an email (teamench@blogspot.com) to ask for permission. 

I'd appreciate your prayers as I promote this at church tomorrow. We have quite a few families with young children who aren't in any regular Bible reading habits, and I'd love to help them. 

Got a couple of spare minutes to waste?

Try this. Almost makes me feel like a philosopher. 

New Testament Matching Game

Last week at Church4Kids we covered the 4 gospels, focusing on the idea that they tell the same stories from different perspectives.

I gave each child a print out of the Palm Sunday story from a different gospel, and helped them to colour in key words & phrases in different colours. Their faces lit up when they compared passages and saw the similarities. I love teaching 'well-churched' kids new things, or at least old things from new angles. 

This week, we're heading into Acts. We'll cover Jesus' ascension & the Holy Spirit coming at Pentecost, which should be revision from previous terms. And I'll introduce some of these little guys and their books: 

 

Which brings me to the reason for this post. These visuals took me longer than expected, so I thought I'd share them. They're still a little wonky, and don't ask why James is the first book in the list. 

Here's the link, use them however you want. There's some little boxes with author descriptions in there too. Oh, the pictures aren't mine. They're from here and here. Aren't the little bible guys cute?

I'll get the laminator fired up and we'll use them all term. Hopefully they'll help us to match authors to books, and also to put the books in order. I've got a song for that too - I might post it sometime :)

Sleep needs

On Sunday night, I was asleep by 8pm. Yesterday I had one of my most productive mornings in recent memory, and the whole day went smoothly. 

On Monday night, I was asleep by 11pm. Today has felt like one long series of bad decisions. 

Correlation does not infer causation, but I think a link is pretty likely, don't you?

Overheard

SP is re-enacting David & Goliath in rest time. Except he's using a sword instead of stones. 

I just heard: "Oh no, Goliath is dead. He's gone to be with Jesus."

Hmm. What do I do with that one? :)

Computer filing frustrations

Why oh why can I find a camp program from 2005, and not the graphics from my Easter Calendar of 2 years ago? Sigh. 

Ideas, Ideas, Ideas

A week ago, I was all set to teach my year 1-3 church4kids class for a term on Acts, with a little bit structure of the NT thrown in. But I was a bit bored with that, so I'm now writing my own term's lessons on the whole New Testament, using Acts as my backbone. Fun :)

This morning, I went to a Children's Ministry Training morning, where we were reminded from 2 Timothy about the importance of both parents and churches in teaching kids about Jesus. During the team discussion time, I mentioned the Easter Calendar that I developed a couple of years ago. The mothers present were very keen to use it with their families, and even the non-mother wants the readings in the hope of re-starting reading the bible with her husband. 

With Easter so early this year, the first reading should occur on Sunday 17 February. So the pressure's on to convert my scribble into something usable by others. I'm also hoping that the graphic designer in our congregation might be able to redo the pictures for me.

Please pray for great wisdom as I write some notes to go with the readings. My primary audience will be Christian parents (of mostly 2-6 year olds) who are good at taking their kids to church but not in the habit of Bible times at home. Pray that I'd make the notes very user friendly, so that whole families will enjoy talking about Jesus together. 

I'd love some volunteers to proof it for me in a few days time. Anyone?

Eastern Europe circa 1910, in colour

This is very cool.  Both the glimpse back in time, and the technology used to do it:

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/08/russia_in_color_a_century_ago.html

Psalm 71:1-6 audio

I'm enjoying memorising Psalm 71 with the ladies at Do Not Depart. This week we'll be aiming for verses 4 & 5. Incidentally, does anybody know how many women are registered? Just curious. 

I can't seem to help turning memory verses into a song of some sort. Here's my version of verses 1-6. It's no musical masterpiece, but it's helping me learn, and I hope that it will help some other people too.

Sorry it's just a vocal line at this stage. I've been having microphone issues with instrumentation. Still working on it.

Are you working on any memory verses at the moment?

Bible Bookcase Puzzle

Whilst googling for a 'books of the bible' graphic for Sunday School, I came upon this game. 

I'm tempted. 

Does anybody have it? Do you think your kids (or adults) would have fun with it, either at home or at church?

Yes, it could happen to you

Click on over to Biscuit magazine & read 'Beating Breast Cancer'. 

I went to school with Sarah & Tarah, who is also a member of our playgroup. Such an awful thing for a young mum to go through.