The Winding Road

With school days lurking just around the corner, I thought I would take the next few posts to share the adventures of my summer with you.

It all began just a few short days after school dismissed with packing, planning, and organizing all of the details needed to spend one month away from home, seventy hours in the van, 4,500 miles round trip with four busy children. With many anticipated adventures before me, I embarked on this journey fully equipped with games found here, stories on CD, activity pages found here, music, and DVDs in hopes of safe and peaceful travel.

Although there were moments of whining and back seat rivalries, sweet bonding took place through laughing at silly jokes, singing crazy songs, discussing deep subjects, listening to great stories, and playing creative car games as the van wound its way through Colorado, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts, Canada, Michigan, and then back home again.

It was an amazing journey, and one I would take again. The memories that were made were worth all of the exhaustion, hard work, and trouble it took to go.


(Each child decorated their own binder of car games and activities and journaled their trip adventures in notebooks that I put together for them. They had a lot of fun with these, especially filling in all of the states on a US map of the liscense plates they saw.)

Books, Stories, the Ultimate Story

In my home, books are beloved possessions. They get handled, read, loved daily. They carry my children on far away adventures, or teach them some new skill. They introduce young minds to the world of art, words, architecture, geography, and so much more. They are ready companions on a quiet day to both young and old alike. The words on their pages jump out and catch the attention of even a very young mind. They make an impact on use of words, creativity, and so much more. How grateful I am for the world of books, for their ability to say something to the soul of a child better than I can.

You see, I believe we are people of story. We love stories. We love to read them, tell them, hear them. We love to imagine our lives in them. Sometimes we love to hear the same story over and over again. For this reason, I love to find books that tell stories with deeper hidden truths. But more than that I love to tell the story of God to my children. You see, His story is the ultimate truth, and we are a part of it. It began in the beginning with His marvelous creation and carries on through time to today. It is a story of how He loves us and interacts with us. It is a story of Him as Creator of our very being, Father of our child heart, Shepherd over our wayward wandering, and Lover of our soul. It is the most amazing story ever told, and it never grows old.

The amazing thing about this story is that I know the Author. I met Him as a young child, and through the years have grown to know Him more. As I have grown to know Him, I have grown to love Him, and now long for each of my children to know Him. I want them to know that He is not a dry dictator full of rules and regulations, but rather the most intimate Friend they could ever have. I want them to hear His story over and over again, not as a tale of events of long ago, but as a living active story that they are a part of today. Then they, too, may love the Author and be filled with passion to share His story with the broken world around them.



I love the idea of sorting books by color. Perhaps then they might get put back on the shelf in the right place by my children. The inspiring collage was found at OhBrooke and the photo at HGTV.

Tiny Toolboxes

With the lazy days of summer once again upon me, I am excited to blog once more. Having just returned from a month long journey East, I look forward to sharing those adventures with you in the days ahead. As for now, I have been perusing my favorite blog haunts discovering so many fabulous ideas. I thought I might share this one from Alpha Mom.




With my youngest son's birthday coming up in a month, this might a fun idea!