yesterday the kids and I started our "Around the World In 60 Days" study that I found in my thriving family magazine as part of our "summer school". Over the next 2 months, we will be visiting other countries from our classroom by exploring their culture, tasting new foods and learning what the challenges are in other countries.
This week we are in learning about the many islands that make up Oceania. First we learned about New Zealand. One particular fun fact that we learned is that for every 1 person in New Zealand, there are 7 sheep! Wow! This made us laugh, we said since there are 7 people in our family (includes the 2 pets :) ) that our back yard alone would have 49 sheep! (this lead us to talk about multiplication, 7 X 7 = 49! It's amazing just what you can learn with your kids if you sit down and talk with them for just five minutes! try it!)
in talking about sheep, the lesson lead us to read from Matthew and it told a story about sheep. it read something like that if God has 100 sheep, and one strayed from the herd, he would be more concerned about getting that 1 sheep back than keeping the other 99 sheep in order. this hot home! even my young daughters were so touched by this example of God's love for people-the lost, which is all of us at some point or another. we talked about what it feels like when we stray from scripture and God and what it feels like when we keep him close to our heart. We all agreed, right at our dining room table, sipping our orange juice and myself-coffee, we all agreed that the holy spirit had come to visit us again. The holy spirit was speaking to us through the bible. As we talked about the 1 sheep that had wandered off, we couldn't help but realize that we were the lost sheep, and God had just come back to find us.
You see, our hearts are always changing, our lives are always changing, things happen, certain people come, others go and sometimes, sometimes we can get caught up in this and lose sight of the big picture. We don't go to church anymore, maybe someday we will return. But for now, we are bonding with Christ within our home. And when we start to fade away from it, the holy spirit finds us. It's simply amazing. A force to be reckoned with. I know I am blessed to have a heart open to these experiences, because it does not happen until you let it in.
As we wrapped up our study on New Zealand and Australia, we proceeded with our day of living. The kids wandered around the house doing whatever they desired and I cleaned and played with them and read.
I love that it is warmer now. We love sitting on our porch. In fact last night we considered the idea of having an outdoor home or maybe our kitchen be outside because we just love it out there! Anyway, here lately we have happy hour when dad gets home instead of me having my head wrapped up in the kitchen making dinner. I make a snack and pour the spirits and we all gather on the porch and reconnect. Last night we stayed out there a little longer and while I did manage to make supper, we were right back out there until the moon was out.
Before bed, we ended with a mini country concert in the kitchen. The kids sang country music with dad-one of their favorite things to do with him, while I tidied up and folded laundry. Just as we were ready to go to bed, like I always do, I think about all the things I was going to do that day and didn't get done. While we were all brushing our teeth I remembered I had promised the girls I would do their nails the night before and never got to it. I hate, hate when I don't keep my word and it needed done, so I told them to pick out a nail polish and have a seat.
I removed polish, trimmed and filed the tiniest, cutest toes you could imagine and when it came time to paint I painted tiny toenails one by one with multiple colors and I even painted daisies on their big toes. Just as I was putting everything away, my 4 year old son held up his tiny fist holding green nail polish and he said "hey, you forgot about mine, mom."
well, son, yes i did.
months ago, when his sisters would get their nails painted he would always say he wanted his done. I remember the first time it happened i thought to myself oh how cute would that be to paint his tiny little finger nails, but i knew it wasn't "normal". i thought to myself, now pull yourself together, just because it would be cute it doesn't make it right! i called my husband and he said absolutely not, just tell him that Dad doesn't wear nail polish. boys don't wear nail polish. My son idolizes his Dad in a big way, so this worked. But I could also tell, that deep down, my little boy had his feelings hurt. He just wanted his finger nails painted. In our adult minds, we carry so much baggage and judgement that when we see a man with painted nails we assume he must be Gay or have something seriously wrong with him. But in the innocent hearts of children, they see nail polish as cool colors that you can put on your nails whether you are male or female, who cares!
as a result of us telling my son he couldn't paint his nails, anything that happened from then on that was in favor of the female's roles such as playing baby, wearing lip gloss or putting a barrette in his hair, he would hide so Dad couldn't see or only do it when Dad was at work. Talk about making an issue out of nothing! If we would have just let him paint his nails the first time, to try it out and explain that most of the time girls paint their nails, but it's OK for boys to do too, everything would have been fine. But because we let our hardened hearts perceive that if our son wears nail polish he might act like a sissy, he grew self conscious about things that were absolutely normal in our lives, like a man holding a baby.
so, when an excited little boy waited patiently for his turn with his green nail polish, i painted those 10 tiny fingernails and i told him he looked handsome.
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