This weekend, we did not have time to act out our weekly Bible story, so we did it this morning.  Christopher was Elisha, I was the widow, and Natalie was my son.  Natalie and I came to Christopher telling him that we were in debt, and had not food.  He told us to take our oil and pour it into all the jars, pots, and jugs we could find.  So then the three of us began knocking on all of our kitchen cabinets, telling our plight, and getting all the containers we could find out to put our oil in it. 

Since Mommy isn't God, we pretended to fill them all up with our pitcher of (pretend) oil.  Then we ran to Christopher and told him what God had done for us, and he told us to sell it and take care of our debt and food. 

I didn't want to scrimp on getting the jars, since I wanted to object lesson to obey God enthusiastically and with trust and expectation.  I think I could use a little of that myself. 

I was reminded that you can't out-give God, that His commands are kind, and they may require a little more effort than is easy to put forth, but you will never say, "Oh, I wish I hadn't been so obedient to God!" 

Here is Noah building the ark with his hammer and wrench.

Here is the ark with the roof on it, and all the animals in there.

For the floods, we had all our blue scarves wiggling on the floor, and Christopher bounced on the bed to make the boat rock.

Here is the rainbow--he is waving it with Holly, our former babysitter, who graced us with a few hours during a short visit from the midwest!!! (We miss you, Holly!)

Here is the altar Noah built:

We are learning #17 of First Catechism.  We had gotten a little stuck on #16.  Q: 'Who were our first parents?"  A: "Adam and Eve."  CJ always answers, "Adam Eve, Dada, Mama."  This is not because he is confused and dazed at the conjunction junction.  My husband insists that we do not force our children to say things they do not believe, so I simply say, "Adam and Eve" and explain why that's true and move on, which is why we're working on #17. 

Yesterday I acknowledged that he was uncomfortable with that answer, but it was still "Adam and Eve".  He responded in his most heartwarming way, "I say 'Dada Mama' because I LOVE Dada and Mama."  I gave him a hug which turned into about 160 seconds of wonderful bliss of his head on my shoulder. 

Chapter 1

It all started with this:

What you are looking at is one mother's (mine, to be precise) attempt at getting some space while preparing supper.  "Hey, kids, sit at the kitchen island and play with some (searching searching) FLOUR and rice, and let's throw a little oil on that and see what happens."  They had such a ball with it, that we tried to deep fry it, and discovered that flour dissolves in oil when heated (I guess everybody in Elisha's day knew about it, and didn't bother to mention the water).  We tried it again with water and made some tasty tiny loaves of bread, which were a hit with Christopher who was searching for an opportunity to make it again.

Chapter 2

The Kempens realize they need to spend more time teaching Bible stories to their kids, so we buy some, and the first we pick is the Five Loaves and Two Fish and read it every night.  Once Christopher got over the nasty disciples (and that  in the picture Jesus seemed to be pushing the disciples out of the way in his effort to get to the rejected kids), he loved the story and said, "I want to DO that."  So we did--at the top of Look Out Mountain. (:

I don't think Jesus' mountain looked like this, but it'll do...

We were tired, and I thought I might have fainted if I were sent away without being fed...

John played Jesus, and Christopher gave up his loaves and fish, and Bay Bay and Froggie were happy to be fed as well with the food in their basket.

Some other hikers joined in and played the part of the 5000.  They ate a lot of goldfish, but the bread probably had about 12 baskets full left over...