Vitamins, Veggies, Soy, Rice

As I attempt to give some updates on what we've been doing since the beginning of school, the timeline will probably jump all over the place. If time is flying anyway, why not encourage it to fly backwards a little?

Yes, time flies. And within the last three-and-a-half months, three fourths of our children had a birthday. For two months at the end of every year we are bombarded with three birthdays and three holidays. Don't get me wrong, these are all wonderful reasons to celebrate, but it's a little hard on our schedule. So in the interest of ensuring our children have a sane mother, we have small family celebrations for each of the children on (or near) their special day, followed by a combined kids' party after most of the chaos has passed.

This year we decided to celebrate at Feed My Starving Children (FMSC). While the two middles were skeptical (they'd been too young to participate in prior FMSC events), it ended up being a wonderful experience. I'll admit that I was skeptical when Sean first mentioned it as well. Thoughts like "Is there a party room? Where will we serve the cake? How will I keep the ice cream cold? What about singing happy birthday? Will they feel special enough? celebrated?" went through my mind.

The truth is, our kids need a me-focused day like they need a hole in the head. Don't misunderstand me, we cherish our children and think they're the most awesome kids in the entire world (which probably results in enough me-focused days the rest of the year), but because we love them we want them to grow up to be loving, serving, gracious, merciful ambassadors for Jesus and this was a great way to give them an opportunity to do that at a young age. Once I wrapped my head around this, I stopped worrying about the cake and ice cream and got excited about celebrating the number of children we would feed around the world.

Each of the birthday kids got special aprons to wear and we all got those fancy hair nets.

After taking it all in

Wes chose to scoop soy into the Manna Packs.

I think he had a lot of fun once he got the hang of it: vitamins, veggies, SOY, rice

Elise found a station with mostly girls and opted to scoop with the long handled veggie spoon.

Jack navigated his way to his favorite station: the packing. He is an expert at counting the bags

and packing the boxes.

Sean manned the sealer (an adults only job because of the high temp machine)

while lots of other friends and family filled the stations, holding empty Manna Pack bags, weighing the contents to be sure FMSC is operating efficiently,

and working together to feed starving children around the world.

When our two hours was up, we gathered together again for a sample of the life-saving food that this organization ships all over the world and to find out what our contribution had been. 

The result? We packed 80 boxes and, in two short hours, fed 47 kids for an entire year. What a great reason to celebrate!

Now because it was a birthday party, I couldn't just send the kids on their way empty-handed so, as a way to say thanks for helping and celebrating with us, I wanted to put together some party favor bags. So where did I look for ideas? Pinterest, of course.

I have a love hate relationship with Pinterest (though, I'll admit it's mostly love). On it you can find a myriad of ideas and how-to tips for painting stripes on your bathroom walls or throwing together science experiments for your kids when you're stuck at lucky enough to have them at home on a school day cancelled for cold. But it also encourages the ugly habit of comparison.

Her pantry is so organized. Why haven't I spent an arm and a leg at The Container Store and an entire weekend organizing mine?

She only ever uses natural cleaning products. What is this bleach doing in my house?

The pillows on her couch change every season? Pottery Barn here I come!

She serves her family clean organic gourmet 30-minute meals every night? Okay, double the grocery budget and send me to bon appetite!

And then I remember that I am not defined by the neatness of my pantry, the cleaning products on my shelf, the pillows on my couch (thank goodness because the children have spent 8 years jumping on them! Wait, maybe I am defined by those - I'm sensing some kind of metaphor here) or the average (sometimes processed) meals my family eats. I am defined by Jesus living in me and my desire to serve Him by serving the family He has blessed me with and equipped me to love and serve.

And now we'll move on to why I love Pinterest. It's so full of GREAT ideas. Except when it came time to find ideas for party favors for a charitable birthday party. You can imagine my disappointment. So I put on my thinking cap and came up with the following favor bags. (Once I determined what would be in the bags Pinterest did come through for me on design and how-to).

Each bag contained a utensil pocket {because we were feeding people},

a globe pencil sharpener {because the food is sent all around the world},

a pencil {to remind the kids of the good they did that morning},

and a tube of m&m's that, when emptied of the candy, can be filled with quarters and returned to FMSC to provide 63 meals.

I threw in a few other types of candy {no cake, remember?}

and packaged them up for the kids to take home with them after our time together at FMSC.

So was it a success? At the end of the day our kids felt celebrated, we spent time serving others with friends and family, 47 kids will eat for a year and we had a lot of fun. I say yes.

Lovely

While I can't believe it's been nearly 6 months since I've updated this blog, I don't have the time to fill in the blanks so I'll leave you guessing for awhile longer (hopefully not six more months) and just start with today.

Normally I'm not a fan of valentines day. I don't like all the hype about gifts and candy and flowers and romance. Don't get me wrong, I like all that stuff. I just don't think it should be reserved for once a year. This year has been different, though. We're still skipping the gifts, candy, flowers and romance (this for the sake of the eight-year-old who exclaims "GROSS!" at the mere mention of kissing), but we are doing a few extra things to recognize this day dedicated to love.

The boys both had valentines parties at school so I spent some time "researching" (read: a GREAT excuse to use pinterest!) easy homemade valentines. We opted for simple and cheap and modeled our valentines after these. Ours weren't nearly as pink or witty, but they did point to One who is love {1 John 4:8}, the reason we have the ability to love {1 John 4:19} and the One who loves us more than any other person possibly could {John 15:13}.

I had visions of grandeur when I started the week and thought the girls and I would do a valentines themed craft each day. It only happened Monday and Friday. But we did two! It's more than zero. On Monday we made this heart chain. It gave us a chance to talk about math - we practiced measuring and talked about patterns. Yeah for everyday teaching opportunities!

Today we got out the paints. My girls love love love to paint.

We don't do it nearly as often as they want, but today seemed like a good day (and I had no other crafty plans) so I drew some hearts with white crayon on some papers and let them discover the secret design as they painted.

Needless to say, Elise's work showed a little more purpose than Evie's. Evie just likes to transfer water from the cup to the paints.

But she sure looks cute doing it! {I have no idea what motivated the hat. She came downstairs with it on and insisted on wearing it while she painted}

I couldn't let the girls have all the fun...

After we cleaned up our paints it was time to show a little love through food (a popular way to express love in our family) so we melted some chocolate and dipped strawberries.

And then, as quickly as we could before the chocolate hardened, we grabbed anything we could get our hands on that we could dip in the rest of the chocolate. I found some marshmallows (kids like those right?)...

...and graham crackers (Ree Drummond style - thank you Amazon Prime for access to The Pioneer Woman).

And then, just for fun, I melted some white chocolate and dedicated a marshmallow to each of the kids.

Valentines activities are hit-or-miss at our house, but not love. Love for the Lord and love for each other are never in short supply.

Then and Now

This was last year on the first day of school when we had a first grader, two preschoolers and an almost four-month-old.

This was Monday, the first day of school, and we now have a second grader, a kindergartner, one preschooler and an almost sixteen-month-old.

And I just can't believe it.

Summer

This is what summer

is all about.

More KIBA and a Little Pankow

We started Thursday just like every other day of KIBA: dancing and mumbling singing along with the (German!) KIBA songs. Evie was in her favorite place.

 

 

These wonderful ladies were a HUGE help for us Americans who knew very little German. They helped translate what the kids were saying to us as well as what was going on in our morning and mid-day meetings.

 

 

Evie spent Thursday looking at books in her stroller. She's still working on her English.

 

 

Caleb was solo in his class on Thursday because Sam was "home" sick. (I forgot to mention in my last post that Wednesday night started a contagion of sickness that lasted nearly two weeks! Thankfully the bug only lasted about 24 hours, but it hit thirteen of the fourteen members of the Phillips and Starkey families whether they were in Berlin or not). During this day's class, Caleb got to share about his experience when the tornado hit their home a few years ago. Germany doesn't have tornadoes so the kids were all curious about what it was like.

 

 

Sarah and Sam {not pictured here} were able to join us for the second half of the day, which I was really happy about. Both because Sam was feeling better and because Sarah and I were in charge of that day's craft and I didn't want to fly solo.

 

We planned to have the kids make groggers {noise-makers traditionally used during Purim fest}. While the story of Esther is read, the children shake their groggers any time Haman's name is mentioned. It's a clever way to keep the kids engaged.

 

 

This is the first completed grogger.

 

 

Although Sam was feeling well enough to be at KIBA, he opted to stay back and be creative with the moms instead of heading to the park for baseball with the dads.

 

 

Gloria, who was part of the team from MN that ran the first KIBA, was an awesome help with the kids. She helped teach the oldest group of KIBA kids in the morning and then did a lot of translating for Brian and Sean in the afternoons at the park.

 

 

As we headed home that day, I noticed that the walk was beginning to feel familiar and the things I'd noticed the first few days were becoming the "new normal." So I snapped a few shots of our way home in order to reset my vision.

 

Pankow: from KIBA to "home"

 

 

 

 

 

Just like Pankow became familiar, I think it's easy to get familiar with every day life and to lose the alertness that God wants us to have. It's so easy for me to focus on my daily tasks {cooking, cleaning, reading, snuggling, tickling, disciplining...} and forget that God has me doing these things for a bigger purpose, I just need to reset my vision in order to see that He's asking me to serve and love and teach my family so that He may be glorified. I need to remain alert to the Spirit's prompting so that I don't miss the beautiful details in my children and lose appreciation for the privilege I have to be home with them.

Home Sick

Day three of KIBA started just like all the others. Two wonderful people played with the big kids so the rest of the KIBA team could meet for prayer and preparation for the rest of the day. Then we gathered as the children arrived and started singing. We listened to German kids' songs (the ones used for KIBA) almost exclusively for weeks before we left for Berlin. Despite that, there was still only one song that I could sing confidently: Ich Lieb Dich, Jesus {I Love You, Jesus}. And I think that's because there are only twelve words in the whole song.

Song time was one of the few times Evie could roam {not Rome} around without disturbing the teaching, but all the dancing and moving about made her a little nervous. She spent most of song time in someone's arms.

No matter what country you're in, kids can't sing songs without actions. I'll be the first one to admit that the actions helped me to know what the songs were about too. One of the songs was about how creative God is and it listed some of the unique traits about different animals. One of the lyrics said something about a bunny - hase - {obvious from the "ears" made by two fingers on top of your head} and its nose - nase - {at least I thought it was the bunny's nose because the action was to scrunch up your nose and point to it with your finger}. I think my assumption was correct because at one point in the week I told a little girl that she had paint on her nose and used the same word. Lest you think my German improved dramatically from simply being able to ask about the weather, I should clarify that I didn't actually tell this girl that she had paint on her nose. I pointed to my nose, said nase and positioned her so she could see herself in the mirror. It's amazing what you can get across with hand gestures and grunting. Anyway...the actions came in handy.

 

The kids in Sean's class acted out the story of Esther most days. Again with the actions... For Jack, this may as well have been a silent production.

 

 

This day the kids made castles our of toilet paper tubes. There was a Bible verse written on the castle wall...in German :)

 

 

One Wednesday each month, FeG Pankow uses a room in the community center to offer a "cultural" experience. This month's Wednesday just happened to be the same week we were in town so we were asked to share a little Minnesota culture with the attendees. We told them about what it's like to live here and gave them a little taste of Minnesota with Pearson's Nut Rolls, root beer, s'mores and Sarah's {now world} famous chocolate chip cookies. After the initial introductions I took the kids back to the apartment so they could get a decent night of sleep.

 

 

 

I don't know if it was all the reminders of home in the presentation or that we'd been gone for nearly a week by then, but I was really starting to miss the kids back in Minnesota.

 

While the rest of the team fielded politically charged questions, I had a quiet evening looking through pictures and writing what would be my last blog post from Berlin.