It's snowing!!!!

There's a blizzard blowing all around our dining room windows :). Yesterday, the children and I made snowflakes together to put upon our windows. How we miss the snow! But the Lord gave us all wonderful imaginations and with some paper, scissors, time, and lots of little hands, we got ourselves a beautiful winter storm.

Only God can make something as pure, beautiful, and white as a snowflake, each one so unique and complex. I told the children how He has uniquely and wonderfully fashioned each one of them as well. And not only that, He takes our sin filled hearts and washes them as white as snow!

Making paper snowflakes was so fun! Nobody wanted the time to end...we cut, laughed, and hung snowflakes together for 3 hours! We ended up making over 100 snowflakes...48 for our dining room windows, a big 3D one for the living room fan, and then the remainder for the children's bedrooms and some for our church bulliten board.

Noah here will show you how easy and fun it is to make a paper snowflake:

You must start out with a square sheet of paper.

Fold it in half diagonally to make a triangle
With the triangle right side up, fold it in half again.
You end up with another triangle.
With that triangle right side up, fold one of the sides half way down middle at the top point
Fold the other side over as well
You should end up with this
Now you simply cut off those two points at the bottom
Which will leave you with this
Now have fun cutting! Cut on all sides and the bottom. Be careful not to cut through both sides at once.

When you are done cutting, carefully unfold your paper and look at the beautiful snowflake you made!

I tell you, we had a blizzard in our dining room! You can always tell when we've had lots of fun around here by the amount of mess that is left! :)

(Note to self: When you take a lunch break in the middle of your snow flake making activity and have everyone sit around the table with a hot cup of noodles, and you have many little ones, some of those noodles will fall on the ground.

And when the ground is already covered with paper, when the noodles meet the paper and get stepped on by little feet, when you go to sweep up the mess, the noodles will have acted like super glue and the paper will be firmly attached to the floor and require the use of a special tool to remove. Next year, weather permitting..which it almost always is here...eat our cup of noodles outside.)

If you make a mess, clean it up! :)

And since I make my fair share of snowflakes, I will clean too. Here, I am realizing that the broom is not effective at removing paper that is stuck to the floor by noodles.
Was all the mess worth it? Oh yes!!!
We also made a chain to count down the days until Christmas. The chain is make of white and red paper. The red links have the name of a Christmas carol written inside, and the white links have a reference from either Matthew 2 or Luke 2. Each day we remove a red and white link. The one who removes the white link looks up and reads the Scripture passage and the one who removes the red link names the song we will all sing.Here is the 3D snowflake I made to surprise the children. The funny thing was that I was making it at the table right along side them while they were making their snowflakes, but it wasn't until I was almost finished that they realized what it was. They were impressed which is really saying something because Mommy is not artistic like Daddy. But I can copy directions pretty well :)
Carlos continues to heal and apart from the normal pain one has after an abdominal surgery, he is feeling well. He's still in the hospital and we hope he can come home soon. Daniel was at the hospital most of the day with him yesterday. When he got home, the children were soooo excited to show him everything we had made.
He sprained his ankle last week playing basketball with some of the youth from church, so it was hurting him from being on it all day. He sat down to rest and put his foot up. I was sitting on the couch holding baby Samuel and I just knew what was coming. This is what always happens when Daddy has been gone all day and sits down to rest.


Today's activity...decorate over at the church.
May each of your days be filled with wonder of God's love.