Family Huddle Time #8-

When to Say No, and when to Say Yes!

So yesterday was a day!  First it was Sunday and one of the busiest days of our week.  I honestly have no fun thing to do with your family this week.  But I do want to share something that happened to me yesterday.  I said Yes, to way to many things.  I said Yes to working in the Church nursery on a Sunday morning, when I know my husband wants me in the service with him.  I said Yes to teaching Sunday School for the adult class....which I have to say was an AMAZING CLASS!  And I loved every minute of it.  The sad thing is I say Yes to much in life. 

My son is acting in a local theatre production and has practices every Sunday.  Yesterday was no exception.  After getting him some lunch we dropped him off at the church, and came home.  It was a great day for a nap.  Raining, overcast just a great day to rest and enjoy.  I wanted to just take time for me, and you know what it would have been okay if I had.  I could have read that book, or written that letter or taken that nap.  The more I thought of my daughter downstairs watching TV the more I realized I had said Yes to everyone else....it was TIME to SAY YES to her.  Sure I spend time with her, watching TV, taking her to dance, and doing other things, but what about just taking a rainy Sunday and spending time with her? 

That's what we did.  I found a "Once Upon a Time" scrapbook I had purchased years ago for her, with every intention of writing her her own fairy tale.  I got out all of my scrapbooking supplies and we spent hours creating a story together.  We had NCIS on at first, because don't we all secretly LOVE Gibbs?  We also saw Cupcake Wars, and David Tutera The Wedding Planner!  Okay, so we didn't really watch them we just had them on for noise!  Don't tell me you have never done that?  The neat thing is, we still aren't done with our project!  Yup...the clutter from it is still all over the dining room table!  But we'll finish today...after all today I have learned to say NO to things!  Today...the kids are out of school...the sun is shining...and I am saying YES to spending time with my TWO favorite kids! 

Don't always SAY YES!  It's okay to look at people in love and occasionally say, "NO I am sorry, I can't do that...".  Oh...and if you have an urge to do something creative with your kids!  DO IT!  Just say YES!

Family Huddle #7

I am determined to at least do this on my blog!  So...this one will be short!  The other day we were cleaning out our son's bedroom.  It was about time!  Tucked away behind some book shelves in the corner were these old poster boards.  It was a craft we had done one day while daddy was away.  He still had them!  Of course we ended up throwing them away that clean up day, but here's what the kids and I did.  First we went to the Dollar Tree and bought several white poster board.  (You could get whatever color you want however.)  We also found those ketchup/mustard bottles that you can fill up and reuse.  We went to a craft store and found acrylic paint in colors that they love.  Then we added the colors into the bottles.  We put on old clothes, laid out the poster boards on the back porch and began to squeeze the paint onto the poster board!  It really was a FUN day! Okay, so we didn't hang the pictures any where but they never forgot that day either.  It was creative and fun!  (You could fill up balloons with acrylic paint and pin the poster board onto something, then attach the filled balloons onto the poster board and get out your darts!  Now that sounds like something we will have to try soon!)

Get out there and have fun with your kids!  They grow up way to fast!

Family Huddle #5 & #6

Family is extremely important to me.  It's what makes me smile.  Like the fact that I love being able to watch as my ten year old walks home from school in her big pink winter coat, Coca Cola polar bear hat with a smile on her face as she screams...."Mom, I got a 100 on a math test!"  Yup...family it's important.

So last week I didn't do a "family huddle".  This week I am doing two in one, encouraging you to explore your "creative" side and love on your family.  I wish I could take credit for this next idea but I can't.  I stole it from a friend but since this is going to be a potentially long blog I decided it could be a two in one deal. 

A few years ago my husband turned 40.  I did a "40 Days' of Birthday Fun" for him.  I started forty days before his birthday with a nice dinner at a great restaurant with some friends we had been wanting to get together with forever. I got a baby sitter, took pictures and even grabbed something from the restaurant to remember it by.  I won't list all 40 things I did here, but I will highlight some of them.

• I made a scrap book so I could keep track of all forty days of fun.
• Took the family to Disney's Princesses on Ice...not my sons favorite but we did have fun!
• Had a Star Wars night complete with pizza, a Star Wars movie and some games.  We chose two teams and competed for points by doing a Star Wars word search with so many minutes on the clock; a Star Wars Trivia game; and then each team had to take things I had taken from my crafts to  "make an alien".  We had to name the alien and the planet they were from.  One was Princess Atara from Moldari, the boys made "The Flush King" from the planet of Bladder-ooine...they still remember this night!
• I got creative with change too...like one day I gave him 40 pennies and tried to find one from each year he was born...same with nickels, dimes and quarters.  (I bought him a photo box to keep his loot in!  Let me tell you it got challenging finding forty things to do!)
• One day it was 40 Hershey kisses day.
• We had Josiah day when Josiah made a special picture just for dad...it went in the memory album.
• One day I wrote 40 reasons I love you!
• On Aiden's day she painted a "fireman" picture because her dad is her hero, and he was a fireman for a while!
• Friends started getting in on this plan, one day a friend of his took him to play golf! 
• We had family football night (the original huddle time) when we went to see a friend's son play high school football.  It was freezing cold that night and Aiden said "my toes are like ice-clickles". 
• One day Josiah wrote his dad a poem. 
• One day Aiden wrote a poem for her dad. 
• One day it was 40 reasons you are special.
• Josiah wrote his "dream adventure with dad" which at the time was a Lord of the Rings adventure scenario, lots of Orc killing going on there.
• I wrote a poem on my dream vacation with Randy.
• I had a romantic mad lib one day, and a romantic word search game another.
• I bought him some crayons, because when we were dating we colored with Josiah, a lot!
• Aiden wrote a story about her favorite adventure with daddy.  She wants to head to California with him!
• There was a lunch date with Aiden, a movie day with Josiah, and a guys night out with his best friend.

  I didn't spend a load of money.  Some times I would, like when I paid for him and his best friend to go off for steaks one night.  It was work, but it was worth it.  In the middle of the forty days of fun his Mom suffered a heart attack.  I had to improvise a lot, like some days got changed quickly and I would send his "small" presents with him when he went out of town to Tennessee.  I wrote it all in his memory album, which is nice too, because now we can look back and remember just how sick she was, and how blessed we are she made it through. 

At the end of the forty days I got sneaky.  I had been planning a "huge" surprise party for Randy.  He had no clue, but I had managed with the help of his best friend to find out the e-mail addresses of friends from long ago.  I also had contacted many people from our older youth groups.  Several who were not able to attend made videos of themselves wishing him a happy birthday.  Many sent e-mails which I added to the scrap book.  I told Randy that a big party just wasn't in the budget.  He seemed let down, but he had no clue what was about to happen. 

We had two girls drive all the way from Florida to be with us that weekend.  They were part of the "surprise", but also my helpers.  They supposedly left after our Sunday morning service, but really they went up to the Fellowship Hall where a deacon let them in to decorate for his party.  Friends and family came after the Sunday PM service started and snuck in the back door of the Fellowship hall.   After the first praise and worship song, our worship leader said, "Pastor Randy you are looking a little tired there, are you feeling well?"  One of our friends came from the back running down with a stethoscope in hand and then the church was flooded with a load of people all singing "Happy Birthday"! 

Looking back it was so much fun!  So many great memories of people who took time out, even if it was just to send a card or an e-mail to wish him a Happy 40th!  It may not have been as good as what he did for me on my 40th, but I know we all still remember the 40 days of fun!  Hmmmm, maybe I will have to bring it back when my son turns 18? 

Love on your family this week, maybe even have a Star Wars night, after all it comes out in 3-D this week!