Making Our Home a Haven: Day 2

Happy First of March!! When March arrives it feels like Spring is near. :-)

 This was day two of our week of trying to make our home a haven. I was pretty tired today and not feeling all that wonderful and so I didn't attempt any big projects but it was still my goal to figure out ways to make our home a comfortable, pleasant and loving place to be.

  The picture above is actually one from yesterday but I took it after I wrote my post for yesterday. The kids went outside to play yesterday afternoon and I thought it would be fun to have hot chocolate ready for them when they came in. (Though Mara and Jonathan actually ended up taking theirs outside in travel mugs to give them something to keep warm with while they continued to work on their fort.) The kids all really enjoyed their hot chocolate and it was fun for me to think of a very simple way to please them and make them feel loved.

This morning I was able to get up early again for prayer time and then I meditated on these verses:

"Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of me heart be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer." Psalms 19:14  and A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger." Proverbs 15:1    More great reminders of how I want to use my tongue.

Monica had suggested that we write a note to someone. I chose to write three notes to various people in my life (a friend, an aunt and a cousin) who have all been fairly recently diagnosed with cancer. I just wanted to let them know that I care and I am praying. Writing notes was a nice activity to do while being available for the boys if they needed any help with their math.

Our day was pretty filled with schoolwork and going to an interesting lecture on Antarctica given by a man who had been there 21 times. I was feeling rather wiped out today so I didn't tackle any new projects but did work to keep our main living areas clean.

 The kids had fun taking my outside to tour the fort that they had begun making yesterday.

 It was pretty cold so we didn't stay out long but I enjoyed the tour.

This evening I thought it would be fun to do something to make our supper special. The only problem was I didn't have much energy or time. Then I thought why am I trying to be this super woman who makes our home a special place all "on my own"? Wouldn't it be even more fun to share that fun and excitement with the kids? I asked them if they wanted to work at making the supper table special and the younger 3 thought that sounded like lots of fun.

 They added a tablecloth to the table, a candle to put by everyone's plate (and we ate by candlelight), they wrapped our silverware up in the napkins, we used plates that aren't our usual plates and then Megan made heart place tags to put on top of them. They had a great time getting that down and it was fun to together work to make our home a happy place.

After supper we thought it would be fun to play a game but Ken had a project he needed to get done. We were able to help him do his project and play a game too. That was another fun way to do stuff together and work on having a happy home.

The day wasn't perfect, I was tired and struggled to not be grumpy but God helped us and blessed us in so many ways and helped us to make our home a haven.