the end of mops

our mops group ended the year and will be closing the chapter. it has been at the church for 16 or 18 years and now it is over. it was bittersweet for me. this has been such a difficult and emotional year of mops and i had already made the decision not to be on leadership again next year. unfortunately, all of the leadership decided not to be on steering team next year. without anyone to lead, the chapter is closing. we haven't had any contact from mops international in over two years, other than to renew the chapter membership. we weren't even sure who to contact about not renewing this year, so we guess they will just figure it out when the check doesn't come this year.

for our last meeting, we did a relaxed night of discussing our summer plans and how we plan to keep our littles entertained. for the crafts, i had lots of craft sticks and "summer bucket list" ideas to make either 'bored/chore' or 'bucket list' jars. we also made "blessing bags;" they are bags with some toiletries and snacks to give to the homeless we might see on our way to the zoo or on road trips over the summer. our kids have been begging to make these since i mentioned them a few years ago so they are pretty excited about it. i told the other moms that we needed to make a pact to not give all of them to the two guys who stand next to the zoo or they would have a huge pile of them. love.

mops march craft

this month's meeting was an 'open forum' meeting with discussions around "how old to...?" we did topics like have fast food, spend the night away, participate in activities (sports, lessons, etc.), playing in the yard without an adult, etc. before the meeting, we had people indicate ages for each question on posters around the room and then we discussed the most common responses during the meeting. it was a really great time of sharing and ideas.

for our craft, we made chore charts. on one side is the chore and the other side of the same clip has "done". the ladies came up with really cute color combination for their clip boards (i purchased the scrapbook paper after i made my demo one so mine is one of the most plain). one of the mentor moms made the papered clipboards to take on her mission trip to haiti. love.

february mops craft and devotion

last night was our mops meeting. we had the pastor of our host church share about respecting the men in our lives in honor of valentine's day. for the craft we made a 'love note' station - complete with pen (thanks to kellie for the idea). and i was also up for the devotion (steering team takes turns); here is roughly what i shared:

Every Valentine’s Day I think that I need to look up the story of the holiday, but never do.  Until this year. The problem is that there were a lot of different versions. I know that we are past Valentine’s Day, but I think that there is still parts of his story that are a good lesson in loving. Funning enough, the verse this story brought me to was also the reading for Good Morning Girls this morning. I guess God really wanted me to share it tonight!               

The story goes that St. Valentine was a Roman Priest in Ireland when an emperor persecuted the church and prohibited the marriage of young people. The emperor believed that married soldiers might be afraid to die because of responsibilities of wife and family. This was also a time when polygamy would have been very popular.

The church thought that marriage was very sacred between one man and one woman for their whole life, and that it should be encouraged. That is where Valentine comes in - he was secretly marrying young couples because he felt it was an act that honored God. He was eventually caught, imprisoned and tortured for performing marriage ceremonies against the emperor’s command. He was beat, stoned and decapitated for uniting couples in Christian marriage. It goes that he signed his last words “from your Valentine.”

Another story goes that he was so beloved by the children of the village that they wrote him notes of love - inspiring the exchange of valentines.

And I found two stories of him having a role in the healing of a blind child and sending them a note about Jesus’ love with a treat.

These stories made me feel a lot better about the almost 100 valentines I just suffered through having my three oldest children sign! Valentine’s Day is the recognition of someone who loved God and others enough to risk - and lose - his life.

John 15:12-13 “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.”

I hope that this is the kind of love we bring to our children, our marriages and our friendships. The love of Jesus. This is not a love earned or out of fair treatment - far from it.  It is the love we are freely given by God and commanded to show to others. 

I think it is fair to say that we would lay down our lives for our children without much of a second thought, but can we lay down our pride or our ego to respect the men in our lives? Or then in-laws? Or any of the other people who have a role in our children’s life?

Let’s pray.

Father, thank you for our time here tonight. I am so thankful for the women in this room and their desire to know you and support each other. Please bless our conversation tonight with Pastor Kip and Lora as we learn more about how to support the men in our lives. Open our hearts to hear what you have for us. In Jesus name, Amen.

presidents' day

our mops group put together a get together for today since the kids would be off from school. they were able to get us a tour at a local pizza hut (even though they normally only do them on weekends). the kids all were able to make their own pizza for lunch on their tour.

after lunch we loaded up to head over to the mckinley museum for their presidents' day festivities. we managed to get there in time for an electricity show which even the littlest kids enjoyed. i think the static electricity demonstration was very popular with the kids. especially the wig where the hair stood on end.

manning was starting to fade around 1:30pm so we decided to get the craft in before heading out. it was super cute (for a presidents' day craft anyway); it was george washington on one side and abraham lincoln on the other. the group picture isn't the best of the bunch but it was the only one where you can see both sides.

so thankful for the sweet ladies who managed to put this together for us. love.

mops december craft

this month our mentor moms put on an "advent by candlelight" dinner for us.  we try to offer a simple craft but i think in future years their won't be one because it distracts from the evening and the mentor moms want this to be a break for the steering team.

yesterday i spent over 8 hours dying almost 900 clothes pins green and 900 wooden beads red.  i thought that this would be easily (and quickly) done in a bucket outside but with temperatures in the 20s, this was not an option.  so i did them all in a pot on my stove while i baked cookies.

and then i tried to reuse our wire from last month to string them together to save an additional expense but about an hour before the meeting i discovered that this was not strong enough to keep a circle shape and it looked more like an oval when hung on the wall.  so then i started to have a stress meltdown while trying to figure it out while the kids were at top volumes - manning crying because he was so sick that his eye was oozing, maddux' nose was oozing, madelyn was crying because she was tired and mason was just loud and happy to be alive.  ahhhhh!!!  i was so stressed and loosing it by the time i left for the meeting that i was on the verge of tears.

as a last minute save, i decided to just bring paper bags with me and explain to everyone what had happened and that the wreaths would be much better if they just put their supplies into a paper bag, took them home and made them with a wire hanger.  they did think that the craft was cute.  i suggested that it was good for cards or for displaying all of the christmas artwork that comes home.  we actually had less people tonight than expected so i was able to let everyone take a lot more supplies so that their wreaths could be much larger (and nicer) than the one pictured above.  here is a link to how this was supposed to work...

it is always a bummer when things don't work out the way you planned.  love.

november mops craft

this month's mops meeting topic was "how to talk about the tough stuff".  we had a fellow member and school psychologist cover how to talk with our kids about war/terrorism, bullying/cyberbullying and death and how kids manifest stress at every age.  it was really, really great!  to go along with our topic we made "nest" necklaces with beads representing our children as a symbol of our homes being a safe and loving place. (and they are just pretty.)

the one shown here is mine that served as the sample. i used 'birthstone' beads, but we also had (fake) pearls and fun colorful beads.  they are super easy to make - i used these instructions for making ours - and everyone was pretty pleased with the way they turned out.  we even had the moppets (aka childcare) workers come over to make some after the meeting.

love.

operation christmas child

the kids love (and i mean love) putting together boxes for operation christmas child.  they really look forward to it every year.  this year madelyn was able to put together boxes at church (on sunday and on wednesday) and we put together four boxes at home.  the boys did most of the supply shopping with me and we tried to pick what madelyn would like the best - we succeeded.  the kids are always struck by the number of 'normal' things go in the box; that soap, toothbrushes, combs, etc. are 'gifts' to someone who doesn't have them.

the kids also worked on some pictures to include in 'their' boxes.  mason drew a picture of him, maddux and jesus (i don't know why i don't have a picture).

today we went to build boxes with our mops group.  we each brought several of an item and let the kids fill the boxes.  most of our group had never heard of operation christmas child when i suggested it, but i think it really came together thanks to our service chair who organized and hosted us!  we were struggling with shoeboxes so our host ran to chick-fil-a this morning to pick some up.  they were out but generously offered to take down all of the boxes they had hanging from the ceiling!!  how nice was that?!  our goal was to fill 10 boxes (we are a pretty small group) but we ended up with 21!

the kids all completed a fill-in-the-blank style letter to put in a box. 

there was so much joy as the kids filled the boxes.

not all of the ladies brought their kids, but we had a pretty good crew.  manning stayed home with matt because he is better at emptying the boxes than filling them.

so thankful to have this opportunity to give!  love.

mops october craft

this month we made alcohol ink coasters.  for our meeting we watched a movie from mops international about mothering comparisons that made about have the room cry and then even more cried during the table discussions (something new that we are doing this year).  i chose this craft because they can't be 'perfect' and no two are or can be the same.  one of the ladies even cried at the message found in the craft.  (it was an emotional night for a lot of the ladies.)

for those who are crafty (or even those who are not), alcohol inks are very forgiving (you can wipe them off and start over with the alcohol solution), dry quickly and are non-toxic.  several of the moms are thinking christmas gifts.  if you have any interest, here is the site where i learned how to use them.  i used a rustoleum triple layer glaze spray to seal them once dried.

love.

pumpkin patch

yesterday we were a little worried about weather, but the morning came without a cloud in sight!  the kids were out of school and my mops group arranged for a trip to a local pumpkin patch.  the pumpkin patch is so generous because they give large kids groups a discounted rate, add face painting and let all of the kids pick a pumpkin and two small gourds.  it makes for a very special trip. (we have been every year we have lived here.)

manning spent a lot of time in the stroller because it was fairly crowded (not too bad but a lot of school groups) but he was still ecstatic to be there!  the fire truck in this picture has actually been converted into a couple of slides and the kids LOVE it.  madelyn was in line for the zip line right next to the fire truck and mason and maddux were sliding over and over again.

there are a ton of cute things to take pictures with all over the farm while you wait for your turn to take the hay ride out to the pumpkin patch.  madelyn is posing with our friend ella from mops and church.

manning wasn't interested in the group picture, but i liked how he went back to pose on his own.  what you can't tell is he is saying "cheeeeeeee".

i think this is actually a teller window in the 'bank' but the kids told me that they were in "jail." 

there are a lot of animals to feed and pet too.  i literally had to remove manning from the pony.  he could have stayed there all day.  he kept trying to squat down low enough to look into the pony's mouth.

only madelyn and mason went into the petting farm part.  maddux isn't crazy about animals he can touch and the stroller was not going to be possible on the gravel paths.  our whole group was inside and two different families were keeping an eye on them for me.

not even half the kids in our group.

and now for the main event - pumpkins!  because it was such a nice day and schools were out, there were a lot of 'walk-ins' which made the hay rides a little behind schedule.  manning was starting to fade as we were heading out because it was getting very close to nap time.  this whole tractor was just our group - only one side is in the picture.

madelyn and ella

i asked madelyn to take one with me in it so that there wasn't a repeat of yesterday.

serious-faced manning (aka tired manning).

i hustled them back into our group's field so that i could get a picture without others in it but they just wanted to start picking their pumpkins.

manning couldn't get past the dirt on the pumpkins (which i just remembered someone else did that - mason i think).  he did like picking his gourds though.  i think he liked that they were more his size.

since i have been here with more that one kid before, i knew (and remembered) to bring grocery bags for each kid to help with the carrying.  if i had not, i would have had to carry four pumpkins and eight gourds!  super happy to have the bags, even when i ended up carrying all four and manning.

tired manning holding hands with mason on our ride back.

we had to cut out a little early because it was just going a little later than manning was going to be able to handle.  one of my friends had asked if she could take a picture of me and before we left, i took her up on her offer.  we were going to pose with something more picturesque but there was a wait at everything around us so i said we would just do it right where we were.  and then she pointed out the porta potties right behind us.  whatever.  i just wanted a picture with the crew.  and then someone else pointed out the man halfway into the porta potty.  that seems about right that i finally get into a picture and it would be less than ideal.  i still love it.

super fun morning.  we are tentatively going to go back with matt later with our bible study but we will see what the weather does.  of course, the kids have no idea.  i didn't tell them about today until we were on our way to maddux' swimming lesson.  there are just too many variables to us leaving the house.  love.

marathon day

today was literally and figuratively "marathon day"!  i got up with matt at 5:30am to see him off to the akron marathon and had the intention of taking a picture of him with his bib on, but i forgot.  he was running a leg of the relay portion of the marathon.  his leg was 5.5 miles.  we were a little worried that he wasn't going to be able to get out of there in time to make it to mason's 9:30am soccer game so i was going to have to try and coach with the other three sitting on the sideline.  we didn't want them to be unsupervised so one of my friends answered my plea for help and offered to bring her two kids up to watch the game with them.  just as we were leaving i got a call from matt that he was almost home and would make it for the game.  whew.  a quick text and my friend didn't have to make the trip over to the fields.

mason sitting out with some teammates (2 of 6 kids in their family).

mason saw a little more actin than normal in today's game.  i think he is getting a little more aggressive in that he will go after the ball instead of waiting for it to come to him.

mason and maddux playing a little one on one in an empty goal during madelyn's game.

madelyn got to play goalie again and was able to keep several goals out.  she is showing improvement too.  i think that having a practice each week where they go over rules and strategies for playing has really helped her understand what she should be doing and how to think about the game.

maddux is still a hard core fan of the color orange so we just had to get a picture next to this orange car in the parking lot after the games.  now that he points them out, it is amazing how many orange cars there are!

no rest for matthew.  he was able to take a quick shower though and eat some lunch before his next task!  net on the schedule was filling rice bags/meals at church for haiti.  maddux wasn't old enough so i thought it would be good for daddy to take the two bigs and i would stay home with the littles (i also had to prepare for our evening activity and clean after such a crazy busy week - not a lot of rest for me either).  the kids were super, super excited!  haiti was our mission for vbs over the summer and this was the last event before the medical bus leaves for haiti.

all ready for food packaging

madelyn and mason could not have been happier about their jobs - madelyn got to put in the "vitamins" and mason got to put in the vegetables.  matt said it went pretty well but that it was a little stressful making sure they both did their jobs correctly while keeping up the pace and doing his own job - actually, he didn't tell me what his job was...

and they got to sign the ceiling of the medical bus too.  madelyn has been able to sign it three times now!  and mason has signed it twice.  i thought that it was so sweet (and, yes, i even thought that it was romantic) that matt found my name from vbs and added his own.

when they were done they came home to pick up the rest of us so that we could go over to a local park for our mops family picnic.  the power went off at some point before we left so matt had to manually close the garage.  in fact the power was out most of our way to the park.  we talked about the power being out while we waited for our coordinator's husband to get there with the pizza for our dinner (everyone brought sides or desserts).  and, yet, it never occurred to us that the power was out.  the pizza shop couldn't bake our pizza!  ugh!  so we called places in a wider and wider radius until we found one with power so that we could order some new pizzas.  we were all a little hungrier than was ideal when the pizza finally got there, but we still had a nice time.

for some reason, matt picked this weekend (when we are crazily over-scheduled) to have mulch delivered.  so when we got home from the picnic, he changed his clothes and got to work in the yard!  how 'lucky' for him, he had three 'helpers'.  

i brought the kids in for baths and put them to bed while matt continued to work outside.  and then he finally got to/had to come inside, take another shower and at long last, lay down!

he is amazing.  love.

mops beautiful mess kick-off meeting

tonight we kicked-off our mops year!  this year's theme is "beautiful mess".  it is all about how what we see as the 'mess' of our lives, God sees a masterpiece in progress.

"for we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do." ephesians 2:10

we were overwhelmed by the number of people who showed up!  we are a relatively small mops group with about 25-30 moms each month and today we started getting emails from lots of regulars who were going to have to miss due to illness, etc.  i was actually worried that we wouldn't have very many ladies.  but God is good because we had 27 moms and 21 kids!!  (we normally have 9-12 kids.)  what was even more amazing was that about 3/4 of the moms were first timers!

the steering team has met several times in the past few months and have planned lots of changes to the way we run meetings.  all of the changes were received really well and everyone seemed to have a great time.  we even had four new moms register.

this meeting was much looser than normal and was mainly a 'get to know you' sort of meeting with lots of talking.  while we chatted, we made our "beautiful mess" name tags.  i can never remember how many kids or the mix of boys and girls so we added pink and blue flowers for each child to our name tags.  (steering team members got a rhinestone ball so people would know who we are.  our mentor moms got silver hearts to identify them.)

we are just so overwhelmed at how our group is growing!  love.

preschool open house

tonight was the boys' open house (thank goodness they get one!).  they were pretty excited to go but disappointed to hear that they still have a few weeks before school starts (not until after labor day).  i had to work a mops table during the open house since this is our host church (some miscommunication left me without relief) but i stepped away when matt brought the kids up to meet their teachers.  they both know their teachers because they had older siblings in the class already but still acted a little shy to be the center of attention.

matt brought the kids because i had to come set up the mops table and then i got a call from the coordinator that the bulletin board in the preschool (a small one right next to the door) was very, very out of date (like last march out of date) so i grabbed a roll of brown paper, markers and printed off the theme logo (beautiful mess) on my way out the door.  not too bad for five minutes and no supplies, right?  lucky for me the theme is "mess" because my slapped together board worked great with the theme!

the open house was well attended and there seemed to be a lot of new faces.

unfortunately, i did not get any pictures other than the mops bulletin board.  i just forgot in my hurry to walk around with the kids.  i will get another chance on the first day of school so it is okay.

after the open house, matt and i were talking about when kids would be at the same schools, etc.  turns out that if we hold mason back (which is what we are planning to do at this point) he and madelyn won't be at the same school until high school!  and if we don't hold back manning, he and maddux would be in the same grade.  the boys are going to 'rule' their schools by pure number (and probably size)!  crazy stuff.

so off to another school year!  love.

swimming and a picnic

today was going to be a busy one; so much that i had made a step by step list of what i needed to do last night so that i didn't forget anything on our way out the door. first stop was swimming lessons.  i did forget my camera (i was charging the battery and didn't write grabbing it on my list...) so there aren't any pictures.  first was maddux and the rest of us watched from the viewing room (we aren't allowed on the pool deck or bleachers during lessons).  he did really great and we were surprised to see our neighbor across the street was in the class with him too!  then we went back down to the pool deck to get maddux and drop off madelyn and mason.  the plan was for maddux to shower while they were swimming.  the problem was that the instructors kept trying to put maddux into the lesson line (there were like 6 different classes during this time slot and the pool deck is pretty crowded with all the parents there during the exchange).

by the time we were back in observation room madelyn had already been moved back to the little pool (i had expected her to be in the large pool).  after the lesson i learned that she basically got into the big pool and freaked out when she couldn't touch the bottom  so they moved her back down to mason's class.  she has been anxious about being i the 'big pool' all week so i wasn't too surprised.  oh well.

once we got the two of them cleaned up we headed over to a mops picnic.  we had been at the ymca for 2-1/2 hours and manning was starting to loose it.  i had also forgotten than all the snacks i had packed had been put into the picnic basket so there wasn't much i could do for him.  we stopped at wendy's for a side salad (my lunch) and some fries (a quick snack since the lunch wouldn't be until noon and we normally eat just after 11) on our way since i really, really needed to go to the grocery store and didn't have much produce for lunch making.  the hysterical part was the manning ate a lot of my salad!  yes, manning!  the older ladies were just laughing because he was screaming to hold my fork and was trying to 'poke' some salad on his own.  he would not let me eat any until he was done.

so we had to get there early so that i could set up the craft.  the picnic was hosted by a "young at heart" a seniors program at our host church.  i had two crafts planned but the weather moved our picnic indoors and we decided not to make the bird feeders.  so we made our 'stars and stripes' necklaces.  maddux was one of the youngest so the ladies had fun helping him.  then one of the men did a little puppet show for the kids about God being their daddy.  since i didn't have my camera, i only have these blurry pictures from my phone (which blogger did not like and squished into squares).

we left the picnic around 1:30 and in a desperate move, i decided to run over to bjs for some groceries.  amazingly, no one had a melt down and we were able to get in and out fairly quickly so that manning could finally get down for his nap around 2:30.  then a quick shower for me, making dinner for everyone else and then gettting ready for a night out with the ladies from my "good morning girls" group.  one of them is moving away next month and we wanted to have a dinner out before she moved.  we had a really nice time and it was nice to get dressed up and have a night out after such a long and busy day.  love.