As for me and my house

I'm much preferring the idea of writing once a week, rather than daily! It relieves the pressure somewhat.

On the bus to swimming lessons

So, we've come to the end of the first full week of 2015 and we've survived! Woohoo! Zoë was back at preschool and swimming, and our toddler groups restarted too. We've all been exhausted by the activity. But nights haven't been great as Zoë has been unwell and Caleb has been teething... Yawn!


As well as activities restarting we've started learning our Alphabet Bible verses.

Alphabet verses

Joshua 24:15

As expected Zoë quickly grasped the idea of learning a verse and is able to say 'As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.' and know what it means. We've also found a song with the same words which has helped her to remember it.

As for me and my house, as for me and my family,
as for me and my children, we will serve the Lord.
In this family, we're going to do things properly.
Read God's word everyday and then we'll try to pray. 

Although we get it wrong, we will still carry on, make Jesus number one. 

In this place we're going to say grace.
As for me and my house, as for me and my family, 

as for me and my children, we will serve the Lord.

I had some ideas for activities, but didn't really have time to fit it in as we had a busy week! Maybe next week...

Mummy Time

Been reading through the beginning of Matthew. It's been good to reread the Christmas story and then go straight on to the next part of the life of Jesus - it helps so much to read about Jesus' life in chronological chunks.

I've also been reading A mom after God's own heart: Chapter 3 is entitled 'Talk to your children about God'. Before I share what I've been reading I thought I'd briefly summarise the previous chapters:
Introduction: Focusing on the heart - this chapter considers the lives of some biblical mums (Hannah, David's family, Daniel's family, Timothy's family, Mary) and what the focus our our hearts should be:

"And since you want your children to love God and follow Him, set the focus of your heart on God and let them see you love Him and follow Him." p23

"Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it." Proverbs 4:23

The following 10 points were initially written as a list for Elizabeth George's daughter's baby shower and she has since written it up into this book.

Chapter 1: Take time to nurture your heart - Elizabeth George's challenge in the first chapter is to make sure that you nurture your own heart as the first way to love your children. It is important that as mothers we read the Bible every day. Deuteronomy 6:4-12 contains major instructions for us as parents:

"Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the door-frames of your houses and on your gates. ...be careful that you do not forget the Lord, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery."

One scholar summed up Deuteronomy 6:4-9 as:

"We are to love God, think constantly about his commandments, teach his commandments to our children and live each day by the guidelines in his Word." p39

Chapter 2: Teach your children God's word - Once we're nurturing our own heart we can start to 'teach [God's word] diligently to our children' through verbal instruction (reading the Bible) and visual instruction (plaques, posters etc).

Following reading this chapter I've been thinking a lot recently about how to help Zoë understand Bible stories better - we started to explore the idea of supporting activities in our Advent series (see previous posts) and am hoping to think some more about we can do this in our normal weeks.

I'll share my thoughts on Chapter 3 in my next post. :)

Other fun

Water painting

Eating dinner with a new 'blue' bib!