Our Summer: Part 3

In between all of our summer birthdays, we managed to find time for some great summer fun.

At the beginning of August we all went to the Harford County Farm Fair. We can usually find something there for everyone. The little kids like the tent with all the kid's games along with the moon bounce area. All of the kids enjoyed getting their faces or hands painted. They also have a lot of fun looking at all the different animals and getting a chance to pet the ducklings and get a look at all of the other baby animals.

One thing that the kids especially like is the watermelon eating contest!

These are our contestants this year. Nathan and Mark each placed second for their age group and Chrissy ate her way to a blue ribbon.

After the whole contest was over, Chrissy walked away with her blue ribbon, a reserved champion ribbon and this huge watermelon!

Even Dave got in on the fun at the fair. Besides being involved at the political tent campaigning for Andy Harris, he also took a shot at dunking the current sheriff.

Before we left the farm fair, we were hit by a huge rain storm. We all huddled inside the political tent while the wind blew and the rain poured. We even got a few minutes of hail

One of the kids' favorite paces to hang out in the summer is the little pond behind my parent's house. This pond is spring fed so it's temperature stays pretty constant around 65 degrees. There is a rope swing attached to a huge tree limb above the pond and the kids swing out over the pond and drop into the water. I had hours and hours of fun in this pond growing up!

All in all it was a great summer for our family. God blessed us in so many ways throughout the summer. We are so grateful to Him for His goodness and His mercies which are new every morning!

Our Summer Part 2: Lots of Birthdays

After our vacation we jumped right into the camp season at Beachmont. I hosted a picnic for the summer staff during training week. We served about 50 people that evening under the outdoor pavilion. Except for a huge thunder storm, everything went very smooth.

The kids went to camp for three of the nine weeks of camp. I got to spend a lot of time with Alyssa who wasn't old enough for camp and got to see her grow up quite a bit during that time. The theme this year for camp was the Beatitudes. The kids learned all of Matthew 5: 1-10. They all also got to improve their swimming skills with extra lessons on Monday nights. Even Alyssa got in on the swimming lessons. She actually got to be quite a fish!

In the midst of all the activities of the summer, our family got to celebrate 4 birthdays! First, Matthew turned 6 in July. He was very excited to get his own Lego set!

The next birthday was for Alyssa. She turned three in the beginning of August. She was very excited about her new scooter, but I think the candy came in with a close 2nd!

Julia was next with her 14th birthday. She was absolutely thrilled to receive her own digital camera and has been busy taking pictures ever since! Julia also started her first summer job. She worked for my mom in the snowball stand after camp each day. Unlike a typical snowball stand, they are only open for about 2 hours each day, but within that time they sell hundreds of snowballs to the campers and their families when camp lets out for the day. Like her sister Alyssa, Julia loves candy - especially dark chocolate!

Our last summer birthday was for Jim. He turned 13 this month. Jim loves legos and was thrilled to get his first "big" set. He built this ship in about 3 hours.

We decided that since he was turning 13 he was too old for party hats, so we went for the "party tattoos" instead!

Our Summer Part 1: Our Vacation

We have had such a wonderful but busy summer! So much has been going on that it would be hard to write it all down so....I'll have to do it in several parts!

Our summers are usually pretty hectic with being involved with the ministry at Beachmont but we did manage to go on our annual family vacation to the Outer Banks. We had a very relaxing time spending over a week together. We started out at Busch Gardens and Water Country in Williamsburg and then on to the ocean!

We spent hours and hours on the beach. The kids played with Dave, my Dad and each other while my mom and I sat and talked or just relaxed in the sun.

Dave and the kids entered the sand sculpting contest again this year and they won!

On the way home we decided to take the ferry across to Virginia beach. Most of the kids enjoyed this experience. Unfortunately, Jim was feeling a little sea sick!

We had a great time and came home ready to face our busy summer!

Do Hard Things

Dave and I took our three older kids to the "Do Hard Things" conference this past Saturday. What an amazing time! Brett and Alex Harris have really been inspired to challenge young people to overcome the low expectancies that others have for this generation. I was so blessed to see the amount of teens there ready to be challenged and walking away changed.
It was really cool to see that this tour was completely a family effort by the Harris family. The entire family was present in Gaithersburg and all of them had a part in the conference whether it was on stage or behind the scenes. Kind of makes me wonder what MY family could be doing in a few years...
I look forward to seeing what God has in store for this generation. If the other conferences on the tour were as packed out at the one we went to, then God is gathering up an army to Himself all across America, and I am excited that it is made up of inspired young people ready to totally mow over the expectancy that they are going to fail in life and instead are going to show the world that they can Do Hard Things for the glory of God.

Random thoughts...

1.) Our T.V. fast went by really quickly. No complaints at all. It really helped that God gave us beautiful weather most of the two weeks and the kids played outside a whole lot.
The favorite things to do during the fast besides playing outside was to play in the dark with light sticks (Walmart has some great ones in at least 6 different colors!) and read lots of books. Jim finished the complete Lord of the Rings series and the little boys all got into the Star Wars books. In the evenings I would real out loud from one of Brian Jacques books.

2.) School is almost over! We are winding down to the last lessons in our books and the kids are battling spring fever! (okay yeah, so am I!) We are looking forward to our "schools out" trip to O.C.!

3.) The kids have a home school co-op presentation night coming up on Friday, May 23rd at Grace Community Church in Kingsville. There will be an open house from 6-7 where you can view their Art and Science projects for the year and then at 7 they will start their musical presentations. All the children from ages 2 through the 8th grade will be performing.

4.) OBX here we come! Once we are finished with school we are headed to the Outer Banks with my parents again for our family vacation. I'll be sure and take lots of pictures!

T.V. Fast Take 2

Its time once again for the Tritt family T.V. fast. We decided that we benefited so much from the last fast that it was something that we should do on a regular basis. So... this Monday begins another 2 week fast from watching any television, going to the movies or playing any video games.
If anyone is interested in joining our family in our fast I'd love to hear about it!

Our Easter Celebration

Dying Easter eggs is a tradition that all the kids love!

It took 4 dozen eggs this year!

We all went to the Easter Sunrise service at Beachmont.

It was sooooo cold!

Easter morning before the sun came up...

Easter morning after the sunrise!

Hallelujah, He is risen!

The start of our annual easter egg hunt.

Road Trip Part 2

Our weekend adventure continued Sunday morning with an unexpected trip to K-Mart. I was feeling really on top of things and was getting all the girls ready to go ever and get breakfast before heading to the park when uh....my pants ripped.

You gotta understand something about my pants. They are really old. I have this problem with buying clothes for myself. I buy them for everyone else in the family, but for some reason I always put off buying them for myself. Just last weekend I told Dave that I needed to pick up some new jeans for myself before I got in an embarrassing situation with my old ones wearing out to the point that they just start falling apart. I really did intend to get some when I went to Walmart, but they only had the low rise kind in my size and I refuse to wear those stupid things! Why anyone would want to wear a pair of jeans that sits that low is beyond me. They feel like you always need to pull them up because your rear end is hanging out! Anyway...I ended up not getting the jeans and sure enough, I found myself in an embarrassing situation! I sat down on the bed to change Alyssa, and the jeans ripped from seam to seam right across the back of my thigh. UGH! Now I HAD to by myself some new jeans.

So, off to the local K-Mart I went (with my jacket tied around my waist to cover up the lovely gaping hole in my pants leg) and wouldn't you know, they just happened to be having a 25% off sale on their jeans! I bought 2 pairs for myself and headed back to the hotel to pick up the gang and head to the park.

Once we got there we met my parents and then headed out to hit the rides and enjoy the park. We had a great time hanging out with my mom and dad and enjoyed watching the kids have so much fun.

Jim had the unique privilege of working alongside of Italy's master sculptor Antonio Accietto. This man's flowers are amazing, and he invited Jim (who loves art of any kind but especially modeling/sculpting) to try and duplicate one of his flowers. He gave him a lump of porcelain clay and showed him what to do and then when Jim was all done Mr. Accietto let him keep his creation. It looked pretty good, too! Maybe Jim has a future in flower sculpting?

We ate lunch in Germany's Oktoberfest while watching their Festhaus show and then took the kids to the section of the park just for little guys. Each of our older kids took a younger kid and we set them loose for about half an hour while Dave and I got to sit and chat with my parents. Ahhh...I love having older kids!

After having them spend time in "Land of the Dragons" with the little guys riding ladybugs and little dragons with loud irritating noises, we knew it was time for some real rides! So after riding the bumper cars and the big swings, Dave and the 3 older kids headed to the roller coaster "Alpengeist" while I took everyone else on the carousel. Then we switched and everyone rode the train back to the entrance while I got to take the older 3 on the "Griffon" - the park's newest roller coaster. This thing hangs you at a 90 degree angle above the park for what seems like forever and then sends you plummeting towards the ground only to pull you right back up into twists and turns before another 90 degree drop! It is so much fun!

After saying goodbye to my folks and slapping together some sandwiches for supper, we headed out of the park and back on the road to MD! Most of the kids fell asleep on the way home, so it was a pretty uneventful trip.

What a refreshing weekend! Now I am ready to get back to schooling and get on with Spring! We have some great field trips coming up and before you know it school will be over and it will be time for summer vacation!

Road Trip!!

Every year Busch Gardens in VA hosts a "passport holders only" day sometime in March. This year it fell on Palm Sunday and we decided that we would make a weekend of it with the family. We thought it would be fun to surprise the kids and just take off and go Saturday after breakfast. We packed the car the night before and tried to act as laid back as possible Saturday morning letting the kids sleep in and letting them hang out in their pj's for awhile before sending them out to play. The two older kids figured out what was going on awhile ago, but they had fun keeping our secret safe!
We ate lunch and drove down through Washington. Dave took us right by the front of the capitol building, the Washington Monument, tons of museums and right by the Pentagon. He often works in D.C. so he is pretty familiar with all of the "important" places.
Once we got through Washington I put on a movie for the kids and we actually got all the way to Williamsburg before the kids figured out what was going on! It was great watching their faces when we pulled into the hotel and told them that we were going to the park the next day. They were very excited!
Since our family exceeds the fire hazard limit for a hotel room, we had to split up for the night. The girls in one room and the guys in the room next door. I couldn't tell you what went on in the guys' room - I'm not sure I would want to know - but the conversation in the girls room was pretty amusing! I'll leave out who said what, but if you picture our room with me (the mom), a teenager, a 10 year old, a 4 year old and a 2 year old, you can probably figure it out. :o)

"Can we watch Disney Channel?"
"Sure."
"Alyssa, get out of the fridge."
"Hey, move your head. I can't see."
"Alyssa, close the fridge."
"I'm hungry."
"Have some chex mix."
"Alyssa, don't jump off the bed!"
"Move your head, please."
"Move over. You are in my personal space."
"Mom, Alyssa is in the fridge again."
"I don't really care if she opens the fridge."
"Mandie, lay down."
"Alyssa, want to snuggle?"
"Hey! My personal space just got cut in half!"
"Can I have a juice box?"
"Your head is in my way again."
"Alyssa, don't put that in the fridge."
"You are taking all my covers!"
"No, I wasn't. I was just rolling over."
"Alyssa! Get out of the fridge!"
"Alyssa, come get in bed."
"When are we going to Busch Gardens?"
"Can you please roll over? You are in my personal space again."
"Well, you have all the covers!"
"Did you all brush your teeth?"
"No, Alyssa, don't eat the ice out of the freezer."
"Is anyone tired yet?"
"I don't want to sleep."
"Can we get a cot?"
"Alyssa, come away from the fridge."
"What time is it? 9? Okay. Turn off the TV. We are going to sleep."
"Alyssa, out of the fridge and into the bed right now."
"Move over away from my space."
"Can you all PLEASE be quiet?"

Well, it went something like that! We prayed and eventually everyone fell asleep. It's not something I would want to do every night, but I would definitely do it again if it meant spending time with my girls!

More Cleaning

I decided to answer the comment on my last post with another post!

The question basically was, "What can little ones do to help with the chore load?"

In my house, everyone has to do their share of helping to keep the house clean. Everyone down to the youngest kid that can walk is responsible for their own dishes each meal. Even a toddler can put dirty dishes in the dishwasher or the sink! Alyssa loves to put the silverware away. I get a stool or chair and pull it up next to the drawer and let her stand there and work on that while I put the other dishes away. Of course, I remove any sharp knives first!

As far as sweeping, we have a small wisk broom and dustpan set that I keep under the sink. Amanda is getting to be pretty handy with that! You could even get a couple of these and let your kids work together on this project - get it done faster!

Instead of wiping the table myself after every meal, sometimes I will give one of the younger kids a wet sponge and let them wipe off the table while I put the food stuff away. It may not get perfectly clean, but it will get most of the visible stuff off for the next meal! I usually wipe the table after dinner and make sure that it gets a good cleaning at least once a day or let one of the older kids do it.

Most of my younger kids like to dust. I either spray for them and then let them wipe everything dry, or if I am trying to get something else done, I get a pack of dust wipes - the ones that are pre-moistened - then tell them where to work and then let them go to work. There isn't a whole lot that the kids could actually ruin with those wipes so it's ok if they accidentally clean something else! I also like the Mr. Clean wipes - the kids can do the front of the stove, dishwasher and refigerator. Just make sure that they are old enough to know not to eat them or wipe their face with them!

If you have a vaccuum with a hose attatchment, the kids can clean the stairs and around the baseboards and in the corners.

Everyone except Alyssa - who is 2 - is perfectly capable of making their bed. It may not be perfect but hey, it's made and I didn't have to do it!

It's amazing how much fun kids can have while cleaning! Little people love to play with sponges and rags and see how much dirt they can wash away, so I say take advantage of it and give them something to clean!

Hooray for Clean!

My schedule has relaxed a bit this year with my wonderful mother helping me out by schooling our three older children. That leaves me with 3rd, 2nd and 1st grade as well as some preschooling. I have found that I have more time for household projects and keeping my house clean in general.
However, I tend to look at my disorganized mess of a house and not know where to start and I end up cleaning the same messes over and over again while the rest of the house disappears in piles of toys, books, and the whirlwinds that often frequent our address. (We like to call them Amanda and Alyssa!)

Quite a while ago, my mom gave me a book by Emilie Barnes called "More Hours in My Day". When I first got the book, I was excited to see what great organizational skills I would acquire from reading it. She is a good author and I have been inspired by some of her other works.

Anyway, as it happens with many kids and a busy schedule, the book got put aside for quite some time and I sort of forgot for a while that it was sitting on my book shelf!

Well, during our TV fast (which, by the way, went extremely well) I rediscovered this book. In it, it has some wonderful tips for scheduling your household chores. I have since adopted some of her scheduling tecniques and believe it or not (I'm not sure I believe it!) my house is beginning to resemble a smooth running and (most of the time) clean place to hang out!

In this book, Emilie suggests making lists for your various jobs to be done. She lists them daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, semi-annually and annually. I decided that for now, I would work on daily, weekly and monthly. My schedule sort of looks like this:
DAILY -
wash dishes
bathrooms
kitchen/dining room counters and sweep floors
tidy my bedroom
WEEKLY -
Mon. - laundry
Tues. - water plant and do girls' bedding
Wed. - scrub floors and do boys' bedding
Thurs. - water plants (this is a light day due to co-op)
Fri. - scrub the microwave
Sat. - do windows and pay bills
MONTHLY-
Week 1 - refrigerator
Week 2 - walls and baseboards (our walls get pretty yucky cause of all the little fingers!)
Week 3 - cupboards (clean and/or organize)
Week 4 - Oven
Week 5 - basement (will it ever be clean?)

For the monthly planning, she says to take 15 minutes a day to work on that week's project. Don't try to do it all at once. By the end of the week it looks really nice!

We also have the kids doing more of their share of the cleaning. We have chore cards that they have to take each day, and so that frees me up to do my scheduled cleaning. This is working out really well. We talked about this in our family counsel and so there isn't ever any complaining about doing chores...so far!

I am very excited to be putting this schedule into practice. I have a sense of accomplishment at the end of each day and am happy that Dave can come home to a cleaner than usual house.

"She looks well to how things go in her household, and the bread of idleness she will not eat." Proverbs 31:27

Our two week challenge

Almost two weeks ago Dave and I sat down with the kids for a "family counsel" meeting. This is where we talk to the kids about some things in our family routine that need to change or problem areas that we need to work on. Usually we have to remind them to do their share with the chores around the house or maybe give out new chores with the changing of ages. Sometimes we talk about incorporating new things into our routine. Last year Dave and I started alternating weeks taking out the kids one on one. It can be easy to lump them all together sometimes and we wanted them to feel like they were special individually. This has been great for all of us.

That brings us to this year's big change. Even though our family probably doesn't watch a lot of TV comparitively , we felt like the kids were often choosing their electronic companion over each other and we felt like they had become disinterested in finding constructive things to do with each other. Perhaps we discovered an idol?

So....we have been abstaining from any and all TV for almost 2 weeks! That means no TV, no movies (on TV or in the theaters) and no Nintendo. The kids took the announcement pretty well - especially when we told them that Dave and I would be included in this TV "fast".

The kids have rediscovered how fun playing with each other can be as opposed to playing against each other in Nintendo! They found out that Play-doh, puzzles, Legos and coloring are just as entertaining as watching a movie.

I thought that it would be a lot harder to do this, especially during school hours when I can put on Leap Frog movies for the little girls and have some quiet time to school the boys, but they have been really good about sitting and coloring or doing puzzles together and it hasn't been very hard at all.

This has been really good for Dave and I as well. We have been getting to bed earlier which makes getting up for quiet times easier and have even gotten in a game or two of cards!

I have been so blessed to see my kids becoming better friends and our family drawing closer through this time and I know that it has been glorifying to God. We have been so blessed by this that we plan to take a 2 week TV fast every 3 months - that would mean that for 8 weeks out of the year we won't be sitting in front of the TV at all!

If you feel like the television has become somewhat of an idol in your home, I would challenge you to take a TV fast - it might just bless you!