More snapshots from Monday

We left Krupp Farms shortly after noon Monday and drove on home to eat our lunch. We enjoyed lots of fresh fruit and vegetables and then were ready for more play!
Michigan gets pretty hot in July ... I was thankful for our basement playroom. It is at least one room in this house that is nice and cool!
Christopher took every single Matchbox car and lined them all up in front of the castle ... all the cars were waiting to see the king!

It was a hot afternoon, but too beautiful to stay inside all day. We opened up our bubbles in the backyard and enjoyed making enormous ones and chasing after them! We also played some rounds of baseball. Christopher bats as a lefty! Emma takes her batting very seriously, and she is very good! And Matthew even smacked a line drive, although this might have been purely by accident ... long story!
We got out the sidewalk chalk and made beautiful pictures on our driveway. I drew our house (kind of), and Christopher made some designs of his own. Emma drew SpongeBob, quite well too! Christopher also requested that I draw him a whale, some fish, the ocean, a baby shark and a daddy shark. I didn't take any pictures of them. They were pathetic!
We each had our own "squares" on the driveway and sidewalk so that we didn't draw on top of each other's pictures.
Diana and Matthew relaxed in the cool grass. Matthew had his own square of the driveway too, but was more interested in watching everyone else's artwork than creating his own.
After a little while, we returned to the playroom in the basement. Matthew really liked this toy I picked up for 99 cents on the clearance rack at Ikea. I really cannot tell you what it is even ... a bunch of parts that little kids like to fool around with ... Matthew busied himself for quite a while with this, and then Christopher took over and managed to build some kind of car out of all of these pieces!

Christopher set up a row of dominoes and watched them all fall down! Soon after, Diana went back to her parents and gave us Jones grandparents some alone time with the children. I was anticipating this sleepover with a little bit of dread, not a lot, but I was wondering HOW I was going to get them to sleep. I prayed about it the night before, and God brought me to some old and familiar verses in 2 Corinthians 12:9: "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." And verse 10 says: "For when I am weak, then I am strong." What a wonderful reminder of these great promises. I certainly am weak when it comes to getting three small children to bed and sleeping! So I asked the Lord to help me, and He certainly made me strong!
The prior day, I drove over to the Family Christian store and picked up a few books that a dear friend recommended to me for reading to the kids. The See It ~ Say It Bible Storybook (by Anne Adams) is very nicely done: colorful, interesting, accurate Bible stories for children! We read all about how God made everything that we can see!
The book pictured above, however, is my favorite. "The Jesus Storybook Bible: Every story whispers his name" (by Sally Lloyd-Jones). She is such an excellent writer! She tells the greatest love story ever about God's love for us! So I took these two books and the children into my bedroom (a room that we don't play in), and we all cuddled up on the bed together. We read all about how God made everything we can see out of absolutely nothing! Christopher was SO intrigued and had many questions. It was wonderful to see him thinking and understanding as the Bible story was taught to him!
While I was at the bookstore, I also purchased a few quiet and soothing CD's of children's lullabies. My favorite one is: Sweet Dreams and Starry Nights: Gentle Lullabies for your little one ~ Volume 1. It has songs like "Butterfly kisses" (Bob Carlisle), "I will be There" (Randy Stonehill), and Brahm's Lullaby (instrumental by Phil Keaggy) and other quiet and beautiful music about how much we are loved. I turned the CD on, tucked the little ones in, and turned out the light. The children liked the music very much. But I could still hear them tossing and turning on their bed rolls. So, one by one, I just sat next to them, rubbed their backs and faces, spoke words of love to them and ... Matthew fell asleep in just 10 minutes ... Christopher in 15 ... and Emma in about 40 ... I could hear their soft breathing, said a prayer of thanksgiving, and fell asleep! It's precious moments like this that I will remember and cherish for as long as I live.