the paquettes

For my birthday I received the best birthday present ever from my hubs!  He had me convinced that we could not afford this, and I was perfectly fine with that.  After all, it was a big want, and not a need.  So, as the post title states, I got some new glass for my camera.  A professional Canon luxury lens!  I was speechless.  I told James the last time I felt like that was when he proposed, and I had no clue what was coming.  I played around with it this afternoon because I have a photo shoot tomorrow evening.  Here are some pics of the girls:

making an ella face

a little sass

I took the girls to the pool this afternoon in an effort to finish potty training Asher. What I mean by this is I took the girls to the pool without Asher because he still won’t go poo poo in the potty. He doesn’t get to go in the neighborhood pool until he does (now, I could fold on this promise because it’s not fair during the week to keep my girls home because of Asher, but for now, while the pool is only opened on the weekends…) While we were getting ready for the pool, Asher was putting his shoes on too, and when we told him he couldn’t go, he started crying. In an effort to rub it in, James even walked him to the pool and let him watch the girls and I behind the fence. I, of course, had my camera ready to capture this moment of, how shall we say it nicely? Extreme parenting? 🙂 Listen, I’m tired of buying pull-ups!!!
Here’s him pouting:

if you would just poo poo in the potty stubborn boy!

full out crying=success?  We’ll see tomorrow…

Just for fun, and for a good cause, we had breakfast with the Easter bunny this morning at a local church. Asher almost lost it, but he was able to get down before the actual tears came.
You can see he is not happy that I’m making him sit there.

Here comes the “I’m about to cry” look…

big sister comforting him

poor Asher, the things I make him do in the name of scrapbooking.

Matthew 20:28a  even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve.

Don’t we serve our kids all day everyday?  How can we begin to show our (especially young) children to serve others?  Our missional community group (made up of three families) at church has been thinking on that and one simple idea we had was to pass out bags to the homeless in Austin filled with food, soap, and other goods (James printed out a list of shelters, education centers, rehab facilities, etc. to go in each bag too.)

We gathered at our house last Saturday morning and James is reading to them Matthew 25:31-46

Then we had all the kids make cards to put in each bag (each family made 5 bags to pass out.)

I had to take pictures of some of these cards because they were just precious.

Levi’s card:

From Levi to a homeless person   🙂  Jesus loves you!

inside Levi’s card:  I love you!  Jesus has your heart!

Cole’s card was more thought provoking to the person who reads it:

You can’t see from the picture but it reads, “Jesus loves me?”  🙂

Rilyn’s card (she found and chose this verse herself in the Bible):

Rilyn wrote Psalm 5:3  “Lord, every morning you hear my voice. Every morning,  I tell you what I need, and I wait for your answer.” I love this verse for this occasion!  The Holy Spirit guided her to the perfect verse!

After we made all the cards, we had the kids go around our table and fill the bags.

Ella and Anna filling bags

Then we all drove off in different parts of town as families and gave out the bags.

Was this a particularly impactful service project for the city?  Probably not.  Unless we went out every weekend and started to form relationships with the same homeless folks.  However, our goal was to show our kids ways to serve.

That even as children, they can serve.  1 Timothy 4:12  “Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith and in purity.”

We prayed this over Rilyn this morning before school.  For her to have a servant’s heart.  Ephesians 6:7  “Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not men.”