A Mom Just Like You.....My Journey through Life with 8 Children....
• Jun. 16, 2009 - What is Visiting and Who Does It?
 What is Visiting and Who Does It?
(To view the video you will have to click on the link right below these words. The link is in orange letters and the post is in white. It will take you to YouTube to see the video. If anyone can help me in knowing how to post the video directly onto this post without having to link you to YouTube I would appreciate the help! Either Email me or leave a comment or a note in my chat box! Thanks so much!)
What is Visiting and Who Does It?
I just got back from visiting my Nana of is 96 years old and grew up in Italy until she was 16 years old. Sadly although her body is strong her short term memory is going because she has dementia. When I went to go see her, I hadn't seen her for 2 years because I live far away from her. While I was there she kept on asking me what I was doing was called I was trying to explain to her that I was visiting her. She wanted to know who did these kinds of things and I said visitors. Her expressions while she is trying to ask me questions and while I am answering them is so sweet and precious. This moment in time is so very precious to me. It is a priceless and precious memory I will treasure forever. Enjoy! I was trying to explain to her that I was visiting her. She wanted to know who did these kinds of things and I said visitors. Her expressions while she is trying to ask me questions and while I am answering them is so sweet and precious. This moment in time is so very precious to me. It is a priceless and precious memory I will treasure forever. Enjoy!
Dearest Lord,
I love my Nana with all my heart. Keep her safe in your arms. Comfort her in times of need and sadness and always keep fresh in her mind this time we spent together as I too want to forever remember it. Thank you precious Jesus! In your precious name I pray! Amen~ |
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• Sep. 12, 2007 - Up, up and away....Building Those Memories
Balloons, balloons and more balloons....
We woke up one morning at 5am, left by 6am to see the balloons all set sail for the skies by 7am. It was a morning none of us will ever forget!! A true and everlasting fun family memory!!!
Do you make an effort to cooperate with the Lord so that He can build memories in your life? It is up to us to make sure we have our time with Him in order to see what memories he is building in our lives.
Doing this for our children was so much fun!! But we couldn't of pulled it off without them doing their part. They had to participate in order for us to succeed. Because they did a memory was able to be formed. The same holds true for us and the Lord. God has great things in store for us too. But He cannot build those memorable moments in our lives if we don't participate and do our part. So if you feel like your life is lacking where memories are concerned take a look at yourself and see if maybe you are not participating. If that is the case change it today! Do your part and then enjoy those wonderful memories that get built!
Enjoy the pictures!!!
Dearest Lord, Thank you for the opportunity to build those precious family memories. Ones that our children will never forget nor will we! Memories are the glue that holds a family together! In Jesus name we pray, Amen~
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• Jul. 17, 2007 - Sharing My Heart........
  
Sharing My Heart.........
My sweet MiMi, oh how my heart cried with yours today. When I saw the sad burden that you were carrying in your  heart, I knew this was a hard thing for you to have to go through once again.
I am so sorry that every baby bunny you have found was lost to death and so quickly after you found them. I am the first to understand just how hard it can be to understand God's reason for allowing sad things to happen in our life. But I can assure you that there is always a reason for everything that happens in our life. When we belong to the Lord, which I know you do we can trust in Him and trust in His ways always! Even when it is hard for us to do! He will always be there to help us through it.
My heart is the first to understand the pain and sadness that comes along with the loss of something you love. But let me reassure you my son that with each loss the Lord has grown me and I know He will do the same for you. He catches every tear you cry and He will someday turn your sadness into joy.
In the meantime I am thankful that you are trying so hard. I know you try to smile when you feel like crying. I see you trying so hard to accept whatever God is doing in your life in between your tears. I love you my sweet boy! I am here for you always and my arms are always welcome for you to rest in and release your tears onto my shoulders whenever you feel the need to do so.
Together we will get you through this sad time with prayers, tears, hugs, love, talking and crying out to God to comfort you when the pain gets too severe! You are never alone, never forget that my precious son, never forget it!
Jesus I ask that you please comfort MiMi during this time of pain and sadness. I know he wants to trust you and he is truly trying to do so. This note he wrote shows his heart. You know his heart dear Father and so I ask that you show him what it is you want him to learn through all this. Let him feel your presence in this time of need and wrap your loving arms around him to comfort his pain and tears! In Jesus name I pray, Amen! |
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• Feb. 27, 2007 - What Traditions Are You Creating In Your Homes Sweet Mothers???
"Mommy what can I do for you"? Sweet sisters this is a regular question that my children ask of me. It gives them such pleasure to please me because they see it gives me such pleasure to do things that show them love, encourage them or just build memories and traditions into our family. Many times, dear mothers, I will awake to a note taped to my door or an envelope in the mailbox that has a fake stamp drawn on it. These are little notes my children like to leave for me. I love leaving my children notes, this is a tradition that I have modeled for our children over the years. I like to leave them notes telling them what great things God has in store for their lives, letting them know how much I love them and I lalso ike to build them up in these notes that I leave for them. I like to leave the notes taped on their bedroom doors at night or hide them in other places so that they will find them upon waking or while getting dressed. As I mentioned in a previous post that for Valentines Day I would cut out paper hearts, big and small, and leave a trail of the hearts leading them to their little surprise I made or bought for them. My children have now adapted this same tradition and now on Valentines Day they will leave trails of paper hearts for my husband and I leading us to the little surprises they made for us. My birthday is on Valentines Day and my 9 year old son handmade such great decorations and cards for me this year, they were just absolutely amazing, if I can I will try to post some pictures of them. Last year my second to oldest son made me the most amazing card that was also very precious and unique. Each of my other children seem to take turns making my husbands and my birthday special with each and every passing year.
Dearest mothers a birthday tradition I started back when my oldest turned one was that every year I make my children a special crown for their birthday out of construction paper of their favorite color. It was fun making a crown with 19 points this year for my oldest son LOL, a very challenging feat. One year one of my sons made his sister a paper crown for her first birthday it was so very precious dear sisters, and he did this completely on his own. Another tradition we like to do in our home is we try to find something new and special to do as a memory builder for the birthdays that fall in that year. Like one year we all stayed up late, the night before a birthday, except for the birthday person, and we all blew up enough balloons to fill up the birthday persons room with. When the birthday person awoke they awoke to a room full of balloons in their favorite color, boy did teach child have such different expressions from each other when it was their turn for their birthday. One child squealed with glee, another thought to himself how do I get across the room with all the balloons there, another wanted to jump right into them. Each child is so very different and unique.
An Easter tradition we like to do is every year we like to recreate the empty tomb. I set up a tomb area with a big stone rolled off to the side and lay loose cloths inside. I draw a picture of an angel and have him saying, "Why do you look for the living among the dead, he is not here, he has risen." This is so easy to do dear mothers. Sometimes I will use under the kitchen table as the empty tomb. I do this by putting a large tablecloth that hangs down over the sides of the table and then I use a big round pillow from one of my sitting chairs as the rolled away stone. I also use towels or rags as the cloths that were left inside the tomb that Jesus was wrapped in and I draw the angel on plain white paper and pin it to the cushion (rolled away stone). One year I was sick for Easter so my older children took it upon themselves to recreate this empty tomb setting for the younger ones since I couldn't. I was so thankful and amazed that they did this.
Dear mothers, in our family we do not do halloween. But we have still established a tradition for that day. Every year we take sandwich baggies and we fill each one with like 3 candy bars or more however many our children feel led to put into each bag. We then form an assembly line and we will have one child get the baggie and put the candy into the bag while another will put a tract into the bag that shares about Jesus and then the bag is tied closed. We make up ALOT of these bags of candy and then as a family we all pray over the bucket of bags before the bucket is placed outside. We place a note above the bucket letting people know that the bags were placed out there for them to each take onej for each child. Then we go about our business that night. We always pray that God will reach many people through this process and that they will come to know our Lord and Savior Jesus . Now that we live out in the country we do not have any trick or treaters anymore so we now have to come up with a new tradition for sharing Jesus during halloween. But this is an old tradition our children will always remember and can carry it on in their own families when they grow up if they move back into a town setting. It also helps teach them a form of simple evangelizing.
For Christmas we like to make up pretty plates of baked goods. On these plates we like to put tracts that share about the reason for the season. We then take the plates of goodies and have the children deliver them to our neighbors and our community workers. We do other things too but this is just one example of one of the traditions we do in our family for Christmas and another one that teaches evangelism to our precious children dear mothers.
Something else we like to do dear mothers is whenever we hear an ambulance or fire truck we have taught our children to pray!!! Pray for the person or persons who may be hurt, we ask the Lord to send His angels to the people involved in the tragedy right away! We ask that they be comforted, healed and that they may come to know our Lord Jesus if they don't already know Him. We also ask that the families of the people who may be hurt will also be comforted and that a peace will surround them all. My children are so accustomed to doing this now that whenever they hear a siren one will yell out, "Who is going to pray"? I no longer have to ask that question because it is now done by them.
Oh dear mothers these things are so simple to do and not only do they build traditions into your family, but they also build lasting and treasured memories into your children's childhood, while growing creativity into the lives of your precious little ones. These things also build character and teaches them to love others in the process. It also helps further Gods kingdom in the process of establishing these traditions while also modeling simple evangelism. I love to see my children following in the ways we have modeled for them and have also taught to them.
Something fun we do is we make charts for things like bible memorization for our children. As our children learn scriptures they get to put a sticker on their charts for each verse they learn not only is it fun but it also builds a sense of accomplishment as they hide Gods Word in their hearts. We also have our children do presentations of bible stories in front of the family once a week. My second oldest and third oldest sons like to do paper puppet presentations. Not only do they make the puppets themselves but they are required to prepare the entire presentation from start to finish all on their own. This helps teach organization and they learn how to prepare for presentations all on their own. The younger ones love to watch these presentations as the older ones put them on. If you go to my, archives the Oct 26th 2005 post, there are pictures of the paper puppets and alittle more detail on this topic called "Dinner and a Day". We also have our children stand in front of the other family members and sing or recite passages of scripture together. Our two oldest daughters do this and hold hands while doing so. It is so precious to watch them and it also builds such great relationships between them dear mothers and they are learning public speaking skills in the process. There are so many other fun ways to build memories, build traditions, make holidays memorable and just teach our children character and evangelism in the process.
I would love to hear of traditions and memory builders that you all do in your own families. Why not take a moment to share with all of us some of what you do in your own families by posting a comment post on here. It is always fun to hear and learn of new and exciting ways to build family traditions and memories. Please do share dear ones I am looking forward to you doing so!
Have a blessed night!
Dearest Lord,
Thank you for each and every mother here. Thank you that they all have a heart for you and want the best for their precious families. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to build lasting memories and traditions into the lives of our children. These memories are not only ones that glorify you but they help leave cherished memories in the lives and minds of our children! Happy memories that make them want to carry the traditions on into their own families when they grow up, get married and start having children of their own. Thank you for making us in your image, for it helps us want to be creative also! We love you Lord! Thank you for being with us in each and every step we take! In Jesus name we pray Amen!!
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• Oct. 18, 2005 - Generations
As I sit here and ponder the generations that were before me and the ones that will come after me it floods my mind with never ending thoughts. I am a thinker by nature. I
never stop thinking and pondering life and life's events, the past, the present and the future. I am always thinking about my children and their future and where I would like to see them in their adult years. I thought about how my children's future mates were being prepared long before I ever even heard you should teach your children to pray for their future spouses. It was just something I thought to do on my own. Reminding my children of the power of prayer and how they should be praying for their spouses to be. I would tell them pray for the things you would like to see in a spouse. Do you want a patient spouse? A loving spouse? A gentle spouse? A kind spouse? These are all things they can be praying into the lives of their future mates to be. Pray they are pure and stay pure. Pray they love God and want to serve God all the days of their lives. It is never too early to be praying for any future children you and your husband will have or any future children your children will have too. I teach my children that they should pray for their future children. I tell them I prayed for all of them before they were conceived and I still pray for any future children God will still bless us with in the future.
I think about my past and my upbringing and where I came from. I look at my Nana and I am so much like her. She confirms many times to me that I am like her and that I took after her more than anyone else did. Even more than her own daughter did. I want for my children to learn about their ancestors and what their childhood was like. I want them to ask their grandparents and their great grandparents all kinds of questions so they learn about their history and learn what life was like back then. I love to hear my Nana tell stories about her childhood. It is fun to hear about what kinds of things she did and what type of child she was. She is so sweet, kind and giving but boy was she a fiesty little thing when she was younger. I am even like her in that respect.
My second oldest son, Daniel, asked me today a question about my dad and his childhood. I told him I don't know but let's have you call him in the next few days and you can ask him yourself. Our memories forget so many things that it would be great if we could retain all that information. I miss out on writing so many things my children do and did because I have such a busy life and so many children I write but rarely that is why I started these blogs. They are easier to maintain and I can type much faster than I can write. So many times I would think oh I will remember what so and so did but you don't. Thank God I love to take pictures and videos for they are great reminders about things. They capture the moment way better than just writing about something on a piece of paper in a notebook does. We make home videos then my husband puts together a VHS video of all types of clips of the year. When the children want to watch a movie we put in those videos and they watch their childhood memories come alive. They also watch their siblings when they were younger and they get a kick out of it. It brings back so many memories and everybody just enjoys the flashbacks so much. We have several years of these videos made up and we need to make some current ones now. The fun thing is you only take clips so you can make up many many videos of one year and they would all be different because there are usually so many things on home videos from throughout the year so you can make a variety and nobody gets bored. They are long videos and everybody knows the stars so it is great fun.
Our history is so important. Watching these videos is a great way of remembering what a fun childhood you really had just incase you forget. I love to learn the history of my family. I know my children do too. I want them to learn much more before my Nana passes away. I want them to call my other grandmother and talk to her about her childhood and learn about her growing up years. They have never gotten to meet her and that makes me sad but that doesn't mean they cannot talk to her on the phone now that they are getting older. Generations are blueprints of who we are and where we came from. I want so much to do a family tree. We have started them many times but they are hard to do and so time consuming. I would love to complete one someday though and pass it on to my children. My oldest son has begun them before too but when we start hitting stumbling blocks we stop. I think my dad has done one before. It would be great to get all the information he has gathered and that would save us some time in the long run. Wouldn't that be incredible if you could trace your family tree all the way backto bible times? Oh how incredible that would be!
Our ancestors are amazing. They came from such a primitive time and they are so much more grateful than people of today because they had little in those times. People today have such plenty of things and everything is so easy and conveient but back then people had little, things were harder to do because the comfort of easy contraptions were not yet made and there were grateful for all they had. Sometimes I wish I could of lived in the earlierr years when things weren't so busy and excessive. But I was meant to be in these times so I accept that and do my best to be the best servant to God that I can be. I try to teach my children to be servants and to not take life and things for granted. To be thankful and appreciative and to have a heart that is grateful to God for all they have. I remind them on a daily basis that we are to be good stewards of everything God has given us. That means to be thankful for all we have and to take good care of all we have been given. To not be greedy and to give to others things that we have extra of or things we have that we don't use. Give it to others that don't have any and will put it to use. Don't let things just sit in our cupboards and closets and not get used. Don't keep things just to own them. Keep life simple and own the things you will use then give all other things to those in need. There are some things I own more than one of but those are kitchen items. I need alot of help in the kitchen with my size family. But other than that I give the excess away. It gives me joy to see others enjoy the things I didn't use.
I want my children to learn where they came from and to learn about their history so they can someday share that with their children. I want the story of our family to live on for generations to come. I never want our story to end. Write it down, take pictures, record videos, ask questions, write little stories. Carry on your stories because the only way they can live on is to share them with your children. If they see you story telling your family stories they will do the same. They will carry on the tradition. So start today. Start writing down your history. Start telling your history. Begin asking your parents and your grandparents questions. You will be amazed at what fun this will be and you will be amazed at how much everybody will enjoy participating! It will be catchey. So don't delay, start today! Give your children the gift of the past, the present and the future to remember for years to come!
Dearest Lord thank you for parents and grandparents that are still alive so that we continue ask questions for my children to learn from. Thank you that they have the gift of learning about our history through the ancestors that have not yet passed on. We appreciate this so much and promise to make good use of learning all we can. In Jesus name we pray Amenmen! |
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