Five Six Several for Sunday

1.  I finally used up the last of my Christmas stamps from last year.  Whew!  Just in time to get some new ones for this Christmas year.

2.  Kloe is playing tennis in school this year, and she LOVES it.  Ever since last Valentine's Day, my kids beg to go play tennis anytime we have a free afternoon.  Can you believe this was my first time to use my new racket?  I know.  And after I'd played for a while, the kids weren't all that anxious for me to use it again anytime soon. :)





Love this action shot! :)









Haha - me in a jacket; Jacob with no shirt. :)

3.  Jacob's last soccer game of the season was a couple of weeks ago.  Team USA had a great 5-3 season.
 

The coach (who also happens to be my Mister) has a tradition that any player who scores four goals in one game gets to pour water on him. But when it's the last game of the season, we pretend everyone scored four goals. Even when it's 41 degrees outside.

4.  You might be a redneck if....this is how you make Cocoa Rice Crispies.

5.  We have Box Tops coming out our ears....

6. They're back!  Glory and hallelujah.  Hurry, buy a bag or twenty before they're gone again!

7. Science experiment.  I wasn't sure what exactly was supposed to happen, so I asked.  Jacob said, "Nothing, I just wanted to make it look all science-y."

8.  Our first pomegranate.  Not a lot to eat out of a pomegranate, but lots of fun (and so pretty)! :)

9.  Does your table ever look like this?  No?  Just me?  Sigh.

10.  I'm plum (do your people say plum?) out of dinner ideas.  What are you having tonight?

Hey, wait. Didn't we have spring break?

Why, yes. Yes we did.

And we went somewhere. And mama didn't blog about it. Well, let's rectify that, shall we?

Since the Mister had gone out of town the weekend before to meet up with some old high school friends and couldn't get off work, and since I'm trying to save my vacation time for my mission trip (in less than two months!), the kids and I took a short, 3-day road trip to Abilene by ourselves.

It was a fun, relaxing get-away, with none of the week-long-big-amusement-park-trip stress and exhaustion. We left on Thursday, and that night we went to a fun little place called Prime Time, which is similar to Main Event but on a much smaller (and more affordable) scale. In addition to the usual bowling, laser tag, and arcade, they also have go-karts, outdoor mini golf, and a Nascar simulator, which was a BIG hit with Jacob. :) Unfortunately, Mama didn't bring the camera. I know, I know....what was I thinking? But it's kinda hard to take pictures while you're barreling around the go-kart track or dueling it out in the laser tag fight of your life. ;)

The next day, we met up with one of Kloe's school friends who moved to Florida 3 years ago, but now is living in Abilene. We all spent the morning at the zoo, then had lunch together and took in a movie that afternoon. You know I love me some zoo pics. :)

These fish were seriously creeping me out.  There were hundreds of them, and they were HUGE.  In fact, they were so thick, the ducks were actually walking on them.

Eww.  Moving on.

The thing I love most about the Abilene zoo is that you can feed the giraffes.  It's so fun! You walk up this taaalll bridge....

...and at the top you can buy giraffe treats (who knew?) - crackers that the giraffes just love. They look like giant, bumpy graham crackers.

Have you ever seen a giraffe's tongue? Let me just say....eeewwwwww. Their tongues are like long, skinny, purple snakes. Guess you have to have a really long tongue when you eat out of trees, yes?  And look at this sweet face - doesn't she look like she's in heaven?  :)

On our last day we visited Buffalo Gap Historical Village.  Such a fun piece of history with houses from the 1800s, an old printing press, school house, chapel, jail, doctor's office, bank, and train station.  I LOVE this sort of thing - imagining the people who used to live and work there is so cool.

We also had fun feeding the goats and chickens at Buffalo Gap.

This ol' meany was a bully and wouldn't let anybody else get any food. I had to distract her while my kids fed the other kids (hahahaha - I crack myself up).

And just before heading home, we stopped at the Frontier Texas museum.

Stampede!

Stagecoach used in Little House on the Prairie.  So fun!

There seemed to be a lot of ewww factor on our trip.

We had a lot of fun.  Despite the fact that the hotel pool was closed (the nerve!).  :)

The end.

On Friday.

I had planned to write a light-hearted Five for Friday post today.  I was going about my morning, emptying the dishwasher, watering the tulips, planning the five things for my post (because I'm actually off work today, gloria and hallelujah!), and then I sat down at my computer with my cup of coffee, opened my email, and read this post from Lara at To Overflowing.  And there went Five for Friday.

By God's divine non-coincidence, the kids and I have been reading Exodus chapters 11-13 this week in our morning devotions.  We started at Genesis 1:1 way back when and have been reading straight through, and this is where we are this week. :)

You friends who hang out around here know I'm not a great deep thinker.  I wish I were.  I pretend to be - ha!  But in fact, I'm not.  Not a deep thinker, not a deep, spiritual teacher, grasping or creating profound teaching moments for my kids.  And so I have to work with what I've got.  And one thing I've got is a great love for ceremony and ritual and tradition.  It sounds grand doesn't it? :)  Like I orchestrate great, moving traditions for our family.  Ha - not hardly!  But small, familiar traditions, yes.

So...Lara's post....Exodus chapters 11-13....and tradition.  Hmm.  Do those 3 things have anything in common at all?  Well, a little.  If you think creatively. :)

Because I love tradition, and because I tend to rely on rituals and ceremony to create those teachable  moments for my kids, we've been trying in our own little way to get ready for this Resurrection weekend by preparing our hearts and focusing on what it's all really about.  Not bunnies (though cute), not eggs (though so much fun - and YES, we will be coloring some tomorrow!), but Jesus.  Jesus who died.....died.....DIED so we - so I - wouldn't have to.  Because He loves me.  Because He longed for His creation to be redeemed. 

And so to try to remember that, we've been reading this week from Max Lucado's book, This is Love, and we've been reading the scripture passages that tell about what happened in Jesus' life between Palm Sunday and Good Friday (I've always thought it was so weird that that whole week usually gets left out of the story).

And tonight we will celebrate Passover.  Oh, how I love this tradition!  I love the symbolism and the reading of the scriptures, and knowing that for thousands of years, God's people have celebrated this same festival in exactly the same a similar way.  And I love beyond words how every. single. part. of the Passover seder points to JESUS!!  It is absolutely amazing how all those thousands of years before Jesus was even born, God was writing His story into the celebration of Passover.

I love how the matzah (the bread - Jesus is our bread of life) is striped and pierced like Jesus was.  I love how there are 3 pieces of bread (representing the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), how the second piece of matzah is broken (as Jesus' body was broken) and hidden (as Jesus was laid in the tomb).  I LOVE that Jesus was celebrating the Passover meal with His disciples when He broke the bread (did you ever wonder why He broke it?  It's part of the Passover seder ceremony) and said, "This bread is my body, which is broken for you." 

I love that the Israelites sacrificed a lamb (ok, I don't love it for the lamb, but you know....), and that as they placed the blood of the lamb over their doorposts, they were saved.  And it's the blood Jesus, our sacrificial Lamb, that now saves us.  I love that the 4 cups of wine at Passover all represent Jesus - the cup of sanctification, the cup of deliverance, the cup of redemption (this 3rd cup  - the cup of redemption - is the cup of which Jesus said, "This cup is the new covenant in My blood - ooooooh, I love this!!) , and the cup of hope, which isn't drunk at the meal - it's the cup we will partake of in heaven!

This is what Beth Moore wrote about the cup of redemption in her study Jesus the One and Only:

I am convinced this cup (the 3rd cup of Passover) is also the symbolic cup to which Christ referred only an hour or so later in the garden of Gethsemane when He asked God to "take this cup from me" (Luke 22:42).  This was a cup He could partake only with outstretched arms upon the cross.
The imminent fulfillment of the cup of redemption signaled the release of the new covenant that would be written in blood.  We know Christ did not literally drink this third cup because He stated in Luke 22:18 that He would not drink of another cup until the coming of the kingdom of God.  Instead of drinking the cup, He would do something of sin-shattering significance.  He would, in essence, become the cup and pour out His life the the redemption of man.

Love.

And that's why my family celebrates Passover.

Not because we're Jewish (we're obviously not).  Not because we're under the Law (we're obviously not).  But because the Passover screams of Jesus and what He did for us on this most holy of weekends.

My kids often ask me why we call it "good" Friday if it's the day Jesus died.  It is good because Jesus is the Lamb who was slain for our sins before the foundation of the world.

How does your family celebrate Good Friday?

Rainy day play

Our Spring Break started out cloudy, rainy, and 39 degrees on Saturday. Happy spring, right? The Mister was out of town, so the kids and I laid low and spent the entire day inside.

We watched a lot of Andy Griffith, Good Luck Charlie, and of course, Phineas and Ferb (do you guys watch Phineas and Ferb? it's SO cute) on Netflix. Then we did a WHOLE lot of this....

....and a little bit of this (until I couldn't take it anymore).

And then we decided to make mini cherry-cheesecakes. Mmmmm....

Jacob dubbed it "the best do-nothing day ever!" Not bad for a cold, rainy, stay-inside-at-home, first day of Spring Break! :)