Promoting Thankfulness

One of the things we constantly struggle with is getting our kids to understand just how blessed they are.

At Thanksgiving time, I like to do something to make them think about some of the things that they're thankful for.  Last year I got a few branches from our tree and cut out some paper leaves. We then wrote things that we were thankful for on the leaves and hung them from the branch.  The girls enjoyed it and this year one of them asked if we could do it again.  We replaced our tree though (the old one died) and I didn't want to risk hurting the new one.  So instead we started the wall of thankfulness.

I was going to do it in the kitchen where we would see it during dinner, but I was afraid it wouldn't stand out well against the wall paper.  So, I used a wall in our entry way.  I just printed a sign and taped it up along with a few of the bigger more obvious ones. (Last year we ended up with a whole bunch of leaves naming individuals because they were friends, so I tried to head that off a bit with Family and Friends).  I was trying to decide if I wanted to buy some poster tack for the thankful items or if I wanted to use tape, when I remembered the shaped post-it notes I bought a while back.  They're working great, they stay up and I don't need to worry about the paint getting messed up!

I'm linking this up with the Works for Me Wednesday post at We Are THAT Family.

Words...

There's a book The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman which outlines 5 primary ways people express and receive love.

1. Words of affirmation
2. Acts of kindness
3. Quality time
4. Gifts
5. Physical touch

The idea is, that most people have a primary love language and that's the way they tend to feel and express love. So someone who's Love Language is Gifts, likes to get gifts, it makes them feel loved.  Similarly, since that's how they feel loved, they tend to give gifts as a way of showing love.

So, as part of my family goal, a few weeks ago, I had my oldest daughter take the quiz on their site for kids.  I was totally surprised by the results from it.  It turns out that Words of Affirmation is her love language.

Since she's taken the quiz, I've really been trying to watch what it is that I say to her (and to everyone really). Instead of showing her love, we were often doing just the opposite with what we were saying.  Don't get me wrong, we don't call names, do insults, etc, but we were yelling a lot, this was ending in a lot of tears.  I think I'm seeing an improvement.

In the end, I'd like her to feel like she can come to us with anything she has to say, without fear of us criticizing her, but I also want her to learn to express herself with words better than she has been.  So hopefully going forward, I'll be setting a better example and she'll learn.

As the Hawk Nelson song goes:

Words can build you up

Words can break you down

Start a fire in your heart or

Put it out

Are your words building people up? or breaking them down? Are they putting a fire in someone's heart? or putting it out?

Praying...

We incorporate prayer into our family life by praying before the girls leave in the mornings, before meals, and before bed. The girls usually do the before meal prayers and the bedtime prayers. When they were younger, we taught them some of the more common kids prayers.  But as they got older, I tried to get them to make it and pray more from their heart.  That ended up in either a fight, or them repeating a made up prayer over and over.

Recently, it dawned on me that since they're always the ones that pray before meals and before bed, they don't have anything to model after other than the standard "Now I lay me down to sleep" and "God is good, God is great" prayers.  So, I've been trying to make a better effort to model prayer for them.  There's no reason for THEM to always be the one to say the prayer before dinner now.  So, this week I'm going to try to say the prayer at least once before a meal and I've been trying to pray with each of them before bed time where I say the prayer (usually in addition to their own prayer).

How do you teach your kids to pray from their hearts?

I'm still here...

It's been a while since I've posted I know.  I've been keeping up with MOST of the goals though...

Physical goal (Weight loss)
At one point, I was down to 214, but I've gained some of that back.  I've been struggling with fitting exercise in with work. I really need to get back to working out.  However, when you consider that I'd planned on loosing 2 lbs a month and we're just going in to April, I'm still on track, just barely though.

Spiritual Goal (Read the whole Bible this year)
I've been keeping up with this one, I still have a few chapters of Matthew to catch up on, but otherwise, I've been sticking with the goal and reading every day.

Family Goal (Do one thing a week with the kids to help them come closer to God)
This is one that has been slipping.  We went to Winter Jam a few weeks ago and saw my daughter's favorite singer, Toby Mac and introduced her to a few new artists.  She got to learn the inspiration behind some of Matthew West's songs, which I really like.  Now that Easter is upon us, I made resurrection rolls with my oldest daughter this morning and I read part of Luke to her.

Personal Goal (Learn Java so I can write an app)
This one I've really fallen behind in.  But I really want the app I have in mind.  I spent several hours doing work that I could've used the app for today.  So hopefully I can learn what I need to write it.

Financial Goal
The new job is going well. I feel like I'm really helping out there. Hopefully they're feeling the same way!

So, wish me luck, I'm hoping we'll be able to settle into a routine once Easter's over and I'll be able to take some time for the other goals.

Financial Goal: Met!

I'm very happy to announce that I've met my financial goal for the year!  Today, I start my new job!  I'm still going to be testing software.  I'm actually hoping that I can help them automate the testing too, so that way I'll get a little bit of experience in that area, while I share my experience with adding Quality Assurance to the software development process.

I'm really looking forward to working for this company, although the commute has me a little hesitant.  I'm going to be going 40 mins each way.  So that means less time with my family.  I'm a little nervous, it's been 15 years since I've started a new job!

My husband and I have set some long term goals for our family financially, so hopefully this will help us get there.

Please pray that this works out.

New week, New verse

Our new Bible verse for the week is:

I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. (Psalm 119:11) 

This week, I'm giving my girls a "Heart Attack".  I'm putting a different heart shaped post it on their bead room door every night with something I love about them written on it. That way, they'll see it when they get up in the morning.  Things like: "I love your smile", "I love the way you play with your sister", etc.

Too often, we focus on what needs to change in our kids, and not on the happy things.  It's hard to get our kids to focus on happy thoughts, when we're not doing it ourselves.  I also think it's healthy to build our kids up.

It's not fair

Yesterday's entry in Made to Crave talked about "It's not fair".  A very timely entry seeing how my husband has lost more weight than I have, despite us doing similar amounts of exercise and my eating a salad every day in place of his sandwich and chips.

I've known for a while now that we have significantly different metabolisms.  It just makes loosing weight together really difficult.  Not to say though that I don't want to do it with him, it makes it easier when there's an accountability partner there.  It just makes it a bit frustrating.  I really need to find a way to channel that frustration into my exercise.

How do you cope with the difference in your husband's eating and your own?