The letter F was an easy one: FLOWERS with cupcake liners and green pipe cleaners. And the verse was also an easy one for me to choose. It is one of my favorite verses: Psalm 103:3a. Granted it doesn’t actually begin with the letter F. But it is such a beautiful truth for us to know. God forgives ALL my sins. I want my daughter and son to be confident of this always.

The “b” part of Psalm 103:3 says “He heals all my sicknesses.” I love the equality of spiritual and physical in the same verse. God cares for every part of our being. In fact, all of Psalm 103 is a poem of God’s great love, devotion and attention to us.

This Monday morning, full of back-to-school scrambling, breakfast prep and full to-do lists be encouraged by God’s love:

PSALM 103

I will praise the Lord.
Deep down inside me, I will praise him.
I will praise him, because his name is holy.
I will praise the Lord.
I won’t forget anything he does for me.
He forgives all my sins.
He heals all my sicknesses.
He saves my life from going down into the grave.
His faithful and tender love makes me feel like a king.
He satisfies me with the good things I long for.
Then I feel young and strong again, just like an eagle.
The Lord does what is right and fair
for all who are beaten down.
He told Moses all about his plans.
He let the people of Israel see his mighty acts.
The Lord is tender and kind. He is gracious.
He is slow to get angry. He is full of love.
He won’t keep bringing charges against us.
He won’t stay angry with us forever.
He doesn’t punish us for our sins as much as we should be punished.
He doesn’t pay us back in keeping with the evil things we’ve done.
His love for those who have respect for him
is as high as the heavens are above the earth.
He has removed our lawless acts from us
as far as the east is from the west.
A father is tender and kind to his children.
In the same way, the Lord is tender and kind
to those who have respect for him.
He knows what we are made of.
He remembers that we are dust.
People’s lives are like grass.
People grow like the flowers in the field.
When the wind blows on them, they are gone.
No one can tell that they had ever been there.
But the Lord’s love
for those who have respect for him
lasts for ever and ever.
Their children’s children will know
that he always does what is right.
He always loves those who keep his covenant.
He always does what is right for those who remember to obey his commands.
The Lord has set up his throne in heaven.
His kingdom rules over all.
Praise the Lord, you angels of his.
Praise him, you mighty ones
who carry out his orders and obey his word.
Praise the Lord, all you angels in heaven.
Praise him, all you who serve him and do what he wants.
Let everything the Lord has made praise him
everywhere in his kingdom.
I will praise the Lord.

(New International Reader’s Version)
(emphasis mine)

Did you read it? I know, I ususally skip over scripture because oh-I’ve-read-that-before. If you didn’t, go back and read it. It’s worth it–and it was written lovingly for you!

Which part of that scripture do you like best?

See all of our ABC Scripture Crafts in one spot!

Today’s craft: Our Fall Family Tree!

I’m sure there are tons of examples of this on the innerwebs – but I modified one I saw on First School from a “family hand flower” to a “family hand tree.”  Basically, we I traced each family member’s hand onto a piece of construction paper, and then we I cut each hand shape out.  EJ loves to use his scissors, although his ability to cut out shapes needs work.

Then came the exciting part for EJ – the glue, of course!  I had glued a large cut-out of a tree trunk onto a 11″x14″ piece of white paper, and EJ struck with the glue.

While I made suggestions for the first two leaf-hands to go on the top of the tree, EJ decided the other two would be “falling” from the tree.  Well done, kiddo!

I love this little family tree!  I might put our names on it later, so in 20 years I don’t forget which hand is EJ’s and which is Dieter’s. 

So, I gave you a bit of a sneak-peak at my fruit-drying endeavor on Tuesday… I prepped everything Tuesday night based on the amount of time the little booklet that came with my dehydrator said each fruit would take to dry.  Based on the booklet, everything should’ve taken 12-16 hours to dehydrate - so I got it going late Tuesday hoping we could enjoy a sweet snack Wednesday morning.  The times were off for my fruit, though.  Everything dried much quicker than that.  I turned the dehydrator off when I woke up in the morning, so everything only took about 10 hours to get to the states that I describe below.  Because of that, next time I can involve EJ more in the whole process – the drying process itself will be come the activity.  However, he did get enjoy the fruits of my labor (ha! get it?).

We don’t usually sit on the floor of our kitchen and eat. Only on special occasions.

Let’s start off with the disappointment… They are in all the other pictures anyway, so I might as well get them out of the way.  The bananas were gross.  Please avert your eyes if you have a weak stomach.

Not only did they look gross, they smelled gross.  Bluh.  I have no idea how they tasted.  No one would touch them.  Can you blame us?

The apples fared much better.  Very nicely dried, no discoloration (thanks to a dip in pineapple juice beforehand)… while a dried apple does not have a very appealing texture to me, that’s just a personal preference.  EJ and Daddy ripped through them with no problems.  I think Dieter could also eat these without much problem… they are soft and kind of sproingy.

Finally, at last, the pineapple.  I had very high hopes for these little guys – thanks to Mrs. Cory in the 3rd grade, who dried a spectacular bunch of canned pineapple slices for our class on Hawaiian-Luau day.  The way I remembered those amazing pineapples was my goal… so sweet, so sticky, still a tiny bit juicy inside… 

My pineapples were over-dried.  But while they did not live up to the memory I have held in my heart for years and years… they were still delicious!  How can you go wrong with sweet pineapple?  They were definitely the family’s favorite.  Although they were a bit crunchy, and very chewy, and a tad bit difficult to eat….

They also made delightful finger puppets. See?

EJ is going through a phase where he does not want his picture taken.  I think it’s more a phase where he does not want me to do a thing that I like… like take pictures of my children, sing, hold Dieter, kiss him, etc.  Anyway, that’s why he’s not looking at the camera in any of these pictures.  In fact…

… most of the pictures I took of him looked like this one.  I will hand it to him – he did not allow his obvious displeasure with my picture-taking to interrupt his enjoyment of the dried fruit.

As we walked from the car to the house this morning, we found EJ’s first feather!  (Please forgive the dust – I didn’t realize it would turn up in the picture – otherwise, I would’ve dusted!) 

EJ was very excited about the feather… he immediately declared it was from “our” hawk (we have a beautiful hawk that hangs out in our backyard).  It’s now in my “stone vase” – I realized after the 20th little rock EJ gave me that I would be getting a lot more rocks than flowers… and I love it!

We talked a lot about fall today.  Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s been cold enough in Richmond to make the leaves turn colors and fall… So there are not many leaves around yet.  However…

…acorns abound.  And they are not only falling – the trees fling the acorns down at us.  EJ knows about the acorns falling, so we sat in our front yard on this cool-ish fall day and gathered fallen acorns and flung them back at the trees.  Fun fun fun!

Tonight, I prepped an “F” surprise for tomorrow – fabulous fruit!

Does anyone listen to the They Might Be Giants‘ kids’ CDs? Confession: I was a huge TMBG fan in high school…  when I heard they had children’s CDs, I got Here Come the ABCsfor EJ.  It’s a fun CD, with a lot of bouncy but not annoying songs about the alphabet.  For the letter F, there is a song called “Fake-Believe…”  and it keeps running through my head.  I need to share: “F is for FUN, F is for Fun, F is for FAKE-BELIEEEEEVE!”  There – now it’s out.  Thanks.

… we’re on to letter F!  F is for fun, friends, family, flowers, farmer, fireman, football, food, fruit, fox, flag, father, fall, fish, frog… I know I’m leaving some out!

We kicked the week off early with some family time!  EJ is finally old enough to really be able to play with someone else, which has made the past couple get-togethers with his older cousin tons of fun!

They were inseparable, which was fabulous to watch.  There was also some football on TV, which was fabulous and fun as well.

Today, we went over our F verse, “Do not fear, for I am with you.” (Isaiah 41:10).  EJ’s been acting “scared” a lot lately – perhaps a symptom of his age, but it doesn’t help that this age falls in with all the frightful Halloween displays at the store.  We’ve always prayed that God would take away all scary things from the house and all scary thoughts from our head, and I thought a simple verse proclaiming God’s power over fear would be a good idea to back all of that up. 

The verse is also the basis for one of the Seeds Family Worship songs – one that I really like and is easy to pick up.  I realized what I was doing wrong with choosing and trying to teach a verse each week – or rather, what I wasn’t doing right.  I wasn’t praying about it.  I would pray about our week, but not about which verse specifically we should focus on, or how to present it to EJ, or that EJ’s heart would be softened towards the verse.  Once I prayed for all of that, the burden just felt like it fell off my shoulders and verses just popped into my head.  I am not limiting the verses to the ones in the Seeds Worship CDs, but if it happens to have a song attached to it, I will use the CD to help.

Something else I did last week was create a special playlist in our iTunes for the week.  I put any and all children’s songs that had important “E” words in it into the playlist, and we had our own soundtrack for the week!  It was fun, and not too mind-numbingly repetitive.  I’ve done the same this week, and I hope we will enjoy it as much!

We’ve got some fun activities planned this week with fruit and family-flowers, and I’m thinking about something firetruck-related.  We’ll see if that pans out at all. So, finally, we’re back on track!