::Honesty::

So we just finished up a series studying the virtue of Honesty in Club 252. It was a really great series because I know that we all have questions about honesty. “Is telling a white lie really a big deal to God?” “Is there ever a time when it’s okay to lie?” I told the kids that they had to practice being honest now while they are kids because otherwise lying will become a habit that follows them into adulthood.

Here is a cool game to play with your family to help discuss honesty. I really think your kids are going to like playing this! It’s truth or dare but the truths are discussion starters about the virtue of ‘honesty’. You’ll have to play it around a computer but if you have a laptop and can bring it into the living room it would work just fine! Even if you can’t, just pile around the computer!

http://www.kidstuf.com/truthordare/

Resurrection Eggs

Okay, if you were at our C-Group’s Easter get-together last week you know that I LOVE hiding Easter eggs! We have about 6 little kids in my family and every Easter my cousins and I have a blast hiding eggs for them to find. I can totally see how a kid would come to think that Easter is only really about the Easter basket & the egg hunts though. Here is a cool way to teach your kids about what Jesus did for us and why we celebrate Easter. I wish I had found this earlier but you could always buy them and use them next year. I think you can find them here or maybe even at a local Christian bookstore.

BOGO @ Publix

So, I said in a post last week that Publix has two BOGO sales a week, one from Sunday-Wednesday and one from Thursday-Saturday. Well I was wrong. I don’t really know their schedule but what I do know is that the sales I talked about in that post are still good and will be good until Saturday. I was able to buy a lot with my coupons. So if you were disappointed thinking that you missed all of those great BOGO’s,  you didn’t!

God-Time & Refrigerator Door Cards

We had so much fun at Kidology Live last night! It was so great seeing so many families there worshiping together!! We hope to make Kidology Live something that we do every three months. We believe that it’s important for families to have a chance to worship together and feel responsible to provide you with that opportunity.

As we talked about last night we have God-Time & Refrigerator Door Cards available for our Club 252 kids each week. Use the GT cards as a quiet time for your children and use the RD cards as conversation starters at the dinner table or in the car throughout the week. You can print them off  here at the blog every week.

3.28.10GTcards

3.28.10RDcard

Now the RD cards that you may have picked up at Kidology Live last night were actually for the David & Goliath Bible story we talked about. The RD card that I have here goes along with the story of Judas when he betrayed Jesus which is what we talked about yesterday MORNING in Club 252. Either one would be great to hang on your fridge so just choose which one you want to use this week 🙂

BOGO!

So last week I mentioned that I would post deals I found when shopping for the food pantry. Well here it goes! First of all I always shop at Publix because they have great BOGO sales. Then I always make sure to buy a Sunday paper. Inside the Sunday paper are two really helpful coupon books, Red Plum and Smart Source. Coupons.com is also a good place to find printable coupons. Publix has two BOGO sales a week. One is from Sunday through Wednesday and the other is Thursday through Saturday. I do my shopping on Saturday so I wait until Thursday to check the Publix weekly ad for their BOGO sales. Once I know what non-perishable items are on sale I look through the coupon books for coupons for those items. With the BOGO sales alone I end up saving an amount equal to what I spend and when I add coupons to the mix I end up saving MORE than I spend.

BOGO sales work well when buying for the food pantry because the pantry needs several of the same items. Publix has a lot of good items for our food pantry on sale this week. Here are the ones I found at the Loganville Publix, plus coupons I’ve clipped from Sunday’s paper that can be used in addition to the BOGO sales.

New Publix BOGO sales…

General Mills Cereal + there are a few printable coupons for specific GM cereals at smartsource.com, coupons.com has a couple for GM cereals also.

Classico Pasta Sauce + a coupon for $1.50 off, it’s actually a coupon from the 3/14 paper so you may not have it. I label and save my coupon inserts in a drawer to glance through each week until they expire.

Del Monte Canned Vegetables + a coupon in the Red Plum insert from 3/21 for $1.00 off when you buy 8, but you will actually be getting 16. That’s like $4.50 for 16 cans!

Mott’s Apple Sauce, Ronzoni Pasta, Kellog’s Nutri-Grain Bars, Lipton Tea Bags, Ocean Spray Juice Coctail, Quaker Instant Grits, Quaker Cereal, and Kraft Velveeta Shells & Cheese Dinner are some of the other items on sale BOGO this week. There are no coupons to accompany these items but the fact that they’re BOGO makes them a good deal.

If you’re just not a Publix shopper, Kroger also has a cool sale going on right now called March to Savings. When you buy $8 worth of certain items you get $4 back. You can mix and match these items and there are several to choose from. Just check the weekly ad here. Now this is only for Kroger Plus Card holders, which I hope you are because otherwise you’re getting ripped off! And don’t forget to browse the coupon books I told you about for additional coupons and additional savings!

Oh wait, one more thing. There are a few digital coupon sites linked to the Kroger website. At these websites you can register your Kroger Plus Card and then you can download coupons straight to it. The coupons are then automatically deducted at check out. No clipping required! I’ve found that these websites tend to have the same coupons as coupons.com, but it’s nice not having to clip and sort them 🙂

Hope this helps! And I hope you will donate some of the deals you snag to our food pantry! Try to find a way to include your kids so they can see you serving and learn to do the same!!

Do you have a family time?

Hey Preschool Parents,

I was thinking about this question yesterday, so I figured I would ask you.  There are so many times that I am busy with life and I don’t slow down to spend quality time with Hannah.  Times when she has been acting like a three-year-old, and I have had enough of her (in the most positive way possible :)).  These are the times that I don’t often think about family time.  My outlook completely changes, especially when Hannah is having a bad day, when I stop and look for the ways to connect with Hannah and when I think about if I am showing her Jesus through my actions when I am annoyed with her. 

One thing that Hannah and I do almost every night, though, is to have a time of Bible reading and prayer.  As Hannah has grown, the look of this has changed slightly, but it is something I want to make sure I do.  Hannah and I have gone through a couple of different Bibles that have different Bible stories in it.  Once we finish one, we switch to a different one and then we end up rotating back to it later.  The other part of our nightly routine is prayer.  This has been the one that has changed a little more as Hannah has grown up.  Initially, I would prayer (or really recite) the prayer that my parents used with me when I was little.  As Hannah began to remember this prayer, I started to think about the fact that I was just reciting something and not truly “teaching” Hannah to pray through my actions.  At that point, we added in a time of prayer loosely based on the ACTS prayer acronym (Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication) in addition to our recited prayer.  Within a few weeks, Hannah had named this “Talking to God.”  There were many nights that Hannah would tell me that she didn’t want to pray, she just wanted to talk to God.  Once Hannah got this concept, I started asking her to “talk to God” after I finish.  Now that Hannah is 3, she needs to tell God 3 things.  Most days it is “Thank you God for my day, thank you for my night, and thank you for _____.  Amen.”  Although she hasn’t gotten ACTS idea yet, at least she is on the way!

Do you have a family devotion time?  If so, I would love to know what it looks like!  Take a few moments and leave a comment.  Along those lines, I will randomly draw a winner based on those who comment and will have a special family friendly prize for you to use to have a family time!

Last, I want to encourage you to attend Kidology Live! coming up this Sunday.  For more info about it and to sign up, please check out the post about it!

~ Nicole

God-Time & Refrigerator Door Cards

Mar. 21, 2010 GTcards

Mar. 21, 2010 RDcard

Also, don’t forget about Kidology Live! This Sunday, 6:30pm @ the WH

Sign up to let us know you’re coming by leaving a comment on the blog.

Family Devotions

Okay, first let me confess, I enjoy the show ’19 Kids & Counting.’ I never thought I would and now I’m eating my words because I actually record the show on my DVR. I know, what a dork!  To my defense, I love some good TV time and have found lately that my normal shows just aren’t doing it for me anymore, so I branched out and found this wonderful family. My husband doesn’t understand why I like the show and truthfully I’m a little surprised as well. I don’t share their convictions about birth control and WILL NOT be birthing 19 children but I just love how much that family loves each other! Yesterday I was watching and the Dad, Jim Bob, does that name crack anyone else up?,  was at home with like 6 of the little kids while Mom and all the older girls were out shopping. Jim Bob 🙂 made lunch for the kids with all 6 of them crowded around him. He didn’t look stressed at all, but just seemed to be thoroughly enjoying having them there helping him. When the kids brought their food to the table and were being somewhat still for a few minutes he grabbed his Bible and began reading to them. The kids were listening and answering questions that he probingly asked. It looked totally natural and not the least bit uncomfortable.

We don’t have kids but I always imagined that when we do and try to do family devotion time with them, that it will be kind of awkward. Maybe because we never had family devotion time when I was growing up. This encouraged me though! It was apparent that he was good at spotting a good time to teach his children from the Bible. Nothing forced, or against their will. They were just sitting and eating and engaged with what their Dad was telling them.

I hope when Ryan and I have kids that we 1) enjoy them as much as the Duggars enjoy their children and 2) are able to spot those kinds of moments and take advantage of them.

If your family has family devotions tell us what they look like.

Focus on the Family Podcast

I like to check Holly Furtick’s blog throughout the week. Today she posted about her favorite Focus on the Family podcasts. If you don’t know what a podcast is, it’s just a free online download in iTunes. Podcasts that I download are Crossroads Church of Walton County (for the Sundays that I don’t get to go to service), Andy Stanley’s sermons from North Point Church & Steven Furtick’s sermons from Elevation Church. I’m obviously a fan of the Furtick family.

I don’t know how many of you have iPods, or if you do have an iPod you may not know how to download a podcast. I’m not trying to belittle your techno intelligence, I’ve just been hearing a lot lately “I’m not computer savvy enough to check and comment on the blog.” Well, your kids will know how to do it if you don’t, so ask them. That goes for the podcasts and the checking our blog 🙂

So check out her post here.

Family Tithing Habits…

Ryan & I have been married for six months now. Yay! I love being married to him! He is my favorite person!

Normally I am the one who does most of our budgetting and bill pay. Ryan knows how, and he’s good at it. But I tend to be the one who spends the money most, so I like knowing where our money goes. I am also the one to write the tithe checks on Sunday mornings, usually during tear down when Chuck is already well into counting the money 🙂

One Sunday morning I asked Ryan how much he made that week so that I could quickly figure our tithe and he gave me a number that I knew sounded kinda high. Surprised, I told him that I did not normally tithe that much and he said that we needed to be tithing our Gross Pay. Well that makes perfect sense, God gets His before the government gets theirs, but I had never thought about it. I just look at the automatic deposit on our online bank statement and then tithe 10% of that. I don’t even pay attention to the amount in the “Gross Pay” column. It would just make me sad to know how much we didn’t get of our pay.

After Ryan said that I was convicted. I thought about it for a while and talked to him about it. We decided that we would continue tithing our net pay and then spend another agreed upon amount on groceries to donate to our church’s food pantry each week.

I’m learning to shop using coupons. It’s my goal to make the amount we have decided to spend on the groceries to donate go as far as possible by using coupons. Trust me, the amount is not large. But it will be my aim to donate a trunk full of groceries each week.

I wanted to share this with you because I know there are several moms out there who are VERY good at couponing. What a cool thing this would be to do with your family each week. Or once a month. Or whenever you have free time and money 🙂 Plus, our food pantry would never be empty again! You and your family would literally be providing food for families who are having a hard time finding money for groceries during these tough economic times. Explain that to your children and they’re sure to get on board!

I will try to post deals that I find when shopping for you to see periodically, although know that I am simply using the couponmom or hip2save website.

For all your moms who are coupon pros, please feel free to post the deals you find in the comment section anytime!