Learning my daughters' hearts through STRAWBERRIES

Being a homeschool mom, I do spend a lot of time with my daughters.  You'd think I know EVERYTHING that's going on in their beautiful hearts, right?

I recently learned something...I didn't



We have been volunteering at a Tower Garden Farm (hydroponic garden system) planting seeds & getting strawberry plants ready for the towers.  It's been a once a week adventure of sitting on a porch at the farm with no school assignments, TV, games, books, or music.  Just us putting tiny seeds in holes hour after hour...and we LOVE it.

One of our times a couple weeks back, my daughters just started asking me questions...surprising & deep questions - and I was thinking, "Where did all THIS come from?"  Well, come to find out these are things that have been brewing in their heart, but they had not seen the window of time to talk to me.

You see, I can be a busy-body.  I LOVE spending time with my daughters more than almost anything, and we have all kinds of adventures - but I realized parking my butt to a chair and doing NOTHING BUT listening to the deep things in their hearts seemed to hardly happen.

Working at the farm has been such an amazing time of silliness, growing together, learning, clarifying, and bonding.

Our lives these past few weeks have been extremely busy - we just moved, I look after an ailing gentleman, we school, and I do what I can for the community around me...I know you understand!  What I've learned is that I need to covet much more time to just bond heart to heart with my amazing daughters.

The interesting thing is, this is what God wants from us too...to park our butt down to have a heart to heart with HIM.  You see, my girls shared some concerns, and I was able to help & guide them through.  When I sit and have the same talk with my Father God - He does the same; He helps ME navigate difficult situations and offer to help.

God can't help if I don't take the time to tell Him what's going on and give Him a chance to walk with me & guide my steps...just like my girls struggling to navigate through things without my (or their daddy's) help.

So here's to less busy-body-ness, and more strawberry talks :)

School Project...EPIC FAIL!!!

So here we are into week 3 of school, and we've had a ball (so far).

Today we did a project out of "America the Beautiful" (by the Notgrass company) and laughed so hard while trying to accomplish the impossible.

We were to build an Iroquois Long house out of toothpicks & gumdrops.  You'd think we could find gumdrops anywhere in the state of Florida...nope.  So my husband thought perhaps we could use mini marshmallows instead of gumdrops.

Here's the mission (if we choose to accept it)...

 All smiles and confidence as we start to construct the walls...

We built the smoke stacks for the interior of the structure - Micah even made cotton "smoke"...

 

As the wall assembly begins,

we're still confident in our ability...

Things VERY quickly began to FALL APART...

It was becoming very clear there was NO recovery, 

our mission was crashing & burning

 

So we tried to cut it in half, 

surely it would hold up if it's a smaller structure, right?

A BIG NOPE!  EPIC FAIL!!!!

So we decided to do CHUBBY BUNNY! 

Yep, I give you permission to laugh at our non ability to build a simple longhouse.  Good thing we're not Iroquois or we may be kicked out of the tribe.

I decided to do this project this morning, because although our school spirits have been high, some tension was brewing a bit.  The girls had to do some work over the weekend to complete last week's assignments. They chose to play one afternoon - and were warned they'd have to complete their work before Monday; they agreed until the time came to finish.  They were NOT impressed, but I don't want to fall behind.

Nothing reduces stress faster than silliness, so giggling over our inability to do a longhouse was JUST the medicine needed to start the week.

A cheerful heart is good medicine,

but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.

Proverbs 17:22