The Blessing Jar

I made mention of our Blessing Jar in my New Year's Eve post and my sweet friend Leslie asked about it in the comments. Since I have been lacking in blog-worthy ideas lately, I appreciate a chance to respond! So Leslie, thanks for asking!

I am sure this idea must have come from the Five in a Row boards because I am a great copycat. Basically, our jar is just a big pitcher. We try to record as many blessings as we can on little pieces of paper (whatever is handy, not pre-cut fancy slips or anything!) throughout the year and drop it in the jar. We read these to each other as a part of our New Year's Eve celebration. It was a joy to remember the free dishwasher and dryer that friends from our homeschool group gave us last January...or the time Jason almost backed over Mary Evelyn in the driveway -but didn't because for some odd reason his trunk was open - and he stopped to get out and close it just as she was running across the driveway...or the time we went rollerskating as a family for Rachel's birthday...or the day Betsie finally reached 20 pounds...etc. You get the idea.

There are little everyday blessings like a child doing school with a sweet attitude that day or another child being very helpful without being asked or hearing from an old friend. Sometimes at family devotion Jason or I will pass out an index card to everyone and we'll all record at least one or two blessings. We do this when we have been a few weeks and kind of forgotten that we have a blessing jar! It's a nice way to keep Thanksgiving going all year long. Afterall, we are told in scripture to give thanks always, not just in November! 2007 was the first year we did this. It was an easy little project that we could all do and we found it to be a blessing in itself.

Happy New Year!

Well, last night we had a wild and crazy New Year's Eve bash. True, there were only five of us, six if you count the dog, and one had to go to bed around 8pm. Still, I heard one guest exclaim, "Mom really knows how to throw a party!" LOL!

We kicked off the evening around 5pm by going out to eat at The Olive Garden. We had a gift card so it was the logical choice...that and it's my favorite. Don't my girlies look ready to party?

And here is Mary Evelyn totally ready to enjoy her dinner. It was a lovely meal unless you count Betsie being whiney through most of it. So we choose NOT to count that!

We got back home just before 7:00. The next hour was for crafts and play dough. We did sand art (from an activity we never got around to when studying the desert!). We also read the pieces of paper we had put into our blessing jar for 2007. This was pretty neat and we agreed that we need to add more in 2008!

No pictures from the 8 o'clock hour. I read aloud to them during that time while Jason got Betsie to bed. We are reading These Happy Golden Years by Laura Ingalls Wilder. They also got to enjoy a chocolate milkshake while I read.

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At 9:00, we stopped reading and pulled out the party games; 2007 pictionary and Twister. For pictionary, I just wrote down a bunch of things that would remind us of 2007 and we took turns drawing and guessing what they were. I was not allowed to guess since I knew the answers. Below, Rachel is drawing "rollerskating." For the record, I did participate in Twister, but somebody has to be the photographer.

At ten o'clock we sat down to watch Ratatouille and eat some popcorn. No pictures from that. Cute movie.

When the movie was over, there were only 8 minutes left in 2007. We headed outside and lit our sparklers, counted down the New Year, then came inside and went to bed. It was a special night and we are excited to see what blessings will come in 2008.

Happy New Year to all of you!

Getting Ready for Real Life Again

Christmas just about did me in. My house is filled to the brim with toys of all kinds (and for all ages). My brain is tired from trying to figure out my palm pilot. (very cool gift from Jason) My heart is full from special times with family.

Now it's time to get back to normal. We have 100 days of school left. I meant to only have 80 days left at this point, but well, uh... Yeah, no good reason except this has been a tough school year in ways I'd rather just ignore for this post. We start back tomorrow with Rachel having lessons from the book, Hanna's Cold Winter. I'm excited about this one because it is set in World War II Europe and we have not studied WWII much. We'll have a chance to learn so many new things together. Mary Evelyn's lessons will come from the book, A Pair of Red Clogs, which is set in Japan. Many, many good lessons in store for our time together this week. These lessons are in addition to the three R's, Bible study, and read aloud time. Speaking of read aloud time, we finished up Little Town on the Prairie last night and will begin These Happy Golden Years tonight. Only two more books in the Little House series. I am going to miss the Ingalls family when we are done...good thing I can read them to Betsie in a few years! If you have a suggestion for what to read next, I'm ready to hear it.

We also have a little family New Year's Eve party tomorrow night. We'll do things like read the blessings from our 2007 blessing jar, play pictionary using 2007 events, play Twister, eat out at Olive Garden using a gift card we received for Christmas, watch a movie, etc. This is the first year the older girls have cared about staying up until midnight so I am trying to make it fun and memorable for them. School the next day will happen, but it will have to be very low key because I am sure we'll all be very tired!

Happy New Year everyone! I'll post pics from our little party later in the week.