The Heart of a Child

The other day we were driving in the car, and Aile was talking to me about how she wanted to give her heart to Jesus so He would help her be more like Him. She said all she wanted for Christmas this year is Jesus in her heart. I told her that was very sweet, and that I had great news: she didn't have to wait until Christmas! Jesus would come into her heart any time she asked Him to! So right there, she prayed about it. It was a touching prayer, and I was silent for a few minutes after, just thinking about what it meant. The kids were silent too.

Then, about 5 minutes later, Caelum breaks the silence with this prayer: "Dear Jesus, the open door. Amen."

I asked Caelum what the open door was that he was praying about. He clasped his hands together excitedly and grinned at me. "The open door to my heart!" he exclaimed.

Awesome!

The Wisdom of a Child

The other day I was having an especially frustrating day, and had lost my temper a couple of times with the kids. I said something about them ignoring me and I felt like they weren't even hearing what I saying unless I yelled.

Aile replied, very calmly: "Mommy, when I grow up, I am going to raise my children to be very respectful. That way I will never have to yell at them."

Thanks for the advice, oh wise sage.

Brenner's Milestone

Yay! Brenner can now officially write his own name!! If I can figure out how to get the saved image from the iPad to the computer, I'll post his first successes here! :)

Go Brenner! He worked long and hard on this, and I am proud of him! :)

Uncle Ryan's Science Class

So, after dinner tonight as I'm cleaning up the kitchen, my kids come clamoring into the house, surrounding my brother, who is carrying something in a baseball cap. They enter the kitchen, and suddenly the hat jumps. Then the frog jumps out of the hat. For a few comical minutes, Ryan and the kids chase the frog around the kitchen trying to catch him. (Admittedly, the kids were doing more directing than actually trying to help catch the frog.) Then I learn the real intent of bringing the frog into the house.

"Mommy! Uncle Ryan said the frog can swim really well! Can we put him in the bathtub? PLEASE!" I wavered for a moment, but I eventually threw caution to the wind and allowed the frog to be bathed. (Even after he urinated on Ryan's hand twice while the kids were running the bath water.)

So are few pictures to show that the frog did survive, and sure enough, he swam like a champ. In a further experiment, Caelum proved that frogs don't even drown when continually being heavily splashed by an eager 2-year-old.

The kids loved him a lot, and named him Mr. Xanopus. They were very sad to let him go back out into the woods.

1st Grade Begins...

Here are a couple pictures from Aile's first official in-class day of 1st grade (August 25, 2010). Once a week, we join some friends for some joint school time, and here Hannah, Aile, and Anaya are learning the Pledge of Allegiance and working on one of their assignments.

Edible Cells

In Anatomy & Physiology, we have been studying the cell, and it's various parts and functions. So for a fun project, we made an edible cell out Jell-O. The Jell-O was the cytoplasm, then we had Jelly Belly mitochondria, Skittles lysosomes, Smarties golgi bodies, fruit roll-up endoplasmic reticulum, cake sprinkles ribosomes, Twizzlers Pull-Aparts centrioles, and a bubble gum nucleus. We invited some friends over to join us in the project who hadn't been reading the same text, so it gave Aile a chance to teach them about the parts of the cell and test what she had learned. All the kids had fun, and it turned out to be a neat project, worth repeating! (Also, as a bonus to us parents, all those different candies in the Jell-O turned out to be not quite as yummy as the kids had hoped, so they really didn't eat all of it!) :)

Re-creating Adam and Eve

As part of our Bible class, we have been studying the days of creation. The other day we studied about how God created Adam, and them made him fall asleep, took a rib, and formed Eve. So we used some clay and Aile made her own version of Adam and Eve. :)