An unusually quiet weekend . . .

We had a very quiet weekend and NO Saturday afternoon adventure this week! The first reason was because during dinner Friday night it became evident that Emma wasn't feeling well. She was listless and didn't eat well and then went over to the couch and laid down! This is not typical for Emma!

Thankfully, I had gone to the public library that morning and picked out two dozen or so really nice books for the kids to look at, and some for us to read together. I pampered Emma, rubbed her back, put an ice pack on her head (she had a headache and a fever), and just kept her as comfortable as possible. Matthew picked up a few of the animal books I had checked out from the library (his new favorite animal is TIGER!), and he worked on a couple of sketches. Christopher did a lot of art work this weekend too.

The other reason we kept so "quiet" this weekend was … the heat and humidity … which doesn't usually bother me one little bit! However, I felt rather wiped out and without any energy whatsoever because it was really uncomfortable!

We did our Bible story, continuing in the book of Acts. This week, we studied Philip … not the apostle Philip, but Philip the Evangelist. We learned how God used Philip to bring the Good News to the Samaritans, how Philip encountered a "sorcerer" in Samaria, and how Philip was led by God to meet the Ethiopian gentleman who was searching to find out the Truth. 

 Philip's story is a very beautiful one. He was one of the believers in Jerusalem who ran for their lives the very day that Stephen was stoned to death. The Bible says that Saul was going house to house dragging believers out, putting them in chains, and throwing them into prison. Philip went to Samaria first (which was "enemy" territory … the Samaritans were despised by the Jews), and many people came to believe in Jesus because Philip healed many people and performed miracles, along with telling the story of Jesus. 

But there was someone else who needed to hear the Good News! He was the treasurer of Ethiopia, and he had been in Jerusalem to worship God. He must have been a wealthy person to own his very own Isaiah scroll, and that's what he was reading (Isaiah 53!) when Philip saw him in his chariot. Philip walked right over to him (because God told him to) and asked him if he could understand what he was reading! The Ethiopian told Philip that he needed someone to help teach him … so Philip started right in Isaiah 53 to tell him all about the amazing things Jesus had done … just as Isaiah had foretold! Isn't it wonderful that God sent his angel to direct Philip on exactly the right road to talk to this fellow who at that exact moment was reading a gospel passage and wanted to know what it meant?

And God chases after us in the same way, pursuing us, wooing us, to become His children! After the Ethiopian was baptized, God's Spirit took Philip away and had him tell people all up the coast of Israel about Jesus. He finally settled in Caesarea, had four daughters, and actually opened his home up to Paul (the very guy he was running away from) years later!

Most of the books I got from the library were animal stories this time. We've been doing lots of animal outings the past few weeks, and I knew the children would enjoy this. We read the true story of the "Eight Dolphins of Katrina," about the survival of eight marine dolphins during and after Hurricane Katrina. We also read two more (very long) chapters from "The Horse and His Boy." We are really enjoying our Narnian adventures!

Our Friday night movie was, "Despicable Me!" but I sadly slept through most of it! Thankfully, Emma was able to sleep OK Friday night and then everyone slept in Saturday morning.

By about the middle of the day Saturday, Emma started perking up. We did some playing in the toy room, but it certainly was HOT at my little Beach House! 

The kids did some LEGO building, and they made a nice road and bridge with the Hot Wheels tracks for awhile. 

I love this boy!

 We tried a little experiment I had seen on-line this week. We took a small saucer and filled it with milk. Then we added one drop each of blue, yellow, red, and green food coloring ...

 Then we added two drops of Dawn dish soap ... and … voila! Swirly colors!

 We did "stir" this up a little bit. I was wondering if the humidity inhibited the movement of these ingredients ~ because on-line, they really actively swirled around. The children had interesting comments as the pattern kept changing … "Ooo, it looks like planet earth!" … "Ooo, it looks like a giant lizard eyeball!" … and other similar comments.

We don't usually do our Saturday afternoon outings until after 2:00 … but the sun was glaring, it was so sticky hot, and Emma still felt a little weak ~ so I decided against going out anywhere, and I'm glad too; because we had quite a downpour at about 3:30 so we would have probably gotten caught in that and drenched. I guess every now and again, we'll just have to do all of our activities around here instead of exploring the great outdoors; but I did miss doing that this week!