Merry Christmas

The Wreath Is On The Door

The wreath is on the door
And the snow is on the tree
God has laid His holy hands
On all that we can see.

Be quick to raise your voice
And praise what He has brought.
Keep now His love in every choice
And Christmas in every thought.

Merry Christmas

Learning To Ride Her Bike

Five months ago her great-grandparents and aunts on her grandmother's side got her a new bike for her Birthday.

At her house they live on a hill on a main st and it is not safe for her to ride it there and this bike is bigger than her other bike or her tricycle and she finally grew into it.

Her mother brought it over this weekend and said it could stay at our house because she could ride it in the garage or outside since it is flat and the sidewalks are flat.

We have an over-sized garage and there is plenty of room to ride around the truck without bumping it.

She ducked her head when she saw that I was going to take her picture. It's not from shyness, but her mom will do the same thing to keep from having her picture taken.

Each time that she goes around the truck her confidence grows. She can even stand up and pedal all the way around. On each round the smiles even get bigger.

Now here is a face of a ride well done.

Poppy, "I'm doing a great job riding my bike. Maybe soon I can ride it outside.

Can I ride just a little while longer, I'm not cold and you know that I'm having fun.

Sure, you can ride a little while longer since you are having this much fun, I wouldn't want to end it now.

 As she races around the car to beat the previous count she breaks into a smile knowing that she has broken her previous time.

I believe this face say's it all about how much fun she has had riding her bike.

This Is How We Spent Our Black Friday

As soon as Chloe woke up this morning she said that she wanted some bacon for breakfast. I had gone the night before and gotten her some bacon because she doesn't like the Turkey bacon that I eat.

She is such a picky eater that we like to keep on hand things that we know that she will eat and bacon is one of the things that she loves.

As soon as she finishes her breakfast she looks over at me and asks, "What are we going to do now?"
"What do you want to do?," I asked her back. "Well we could play Barbie dolls or color some pictures or go and ride my bike." I answered her with, "How about we color some while we are here at the table. I will get the crayons and some paper and we can draw and color whatever we want to."

"Poppy, I will uses the newer crayons and you can uses the older ones ok and if they break with you that will be ok."

 I love it at these times where as we are coloring or playing she tells me things that she has learned at school for the week as well as the year. Her mind is an open book soaking it all in and she has learned alot of things this year.

 

She colors on her page the stars and the moon and the sun and the clouds. And then she said, "Poppy you know that God made the heavens and the earth. He made the stars and the moon and the sun. You see up here with the stars I put the moon and the night together like he did and down here I put the sun and the clouds and the sky and the ground, just like He did." I wanted to hug her as she was talking, but I knew that if I did, the talking would cease and the subject would change so we continued to color.

"This picture on the bottom is a stable." "Jesus was born in a stable because there was no room in the Inn." It's sad Poppy that they had know room in the Inn, isn't it." "Do you think it was cold out there?" "Were the animals out there as well?" "The best thing was that God was there with them." "You couldn't see Him but he was there." "I want to cut this picture out for the refrigerator, ok!"

 "Here is my picture of the stable and the three wise men and baby Jesus mother. I'm not sure how to draw a baby."

Now Poppy, "I will tell you a story and I want you to draw the picture as I tell it to you and we can see it the story matches the picture. We do this in school sometimes and it helps to complete the story.

This story is about the Garden Of Eden. In this garden there were two people, a man named Adam and a woman named Eve. And for their clothes they wore fig leaves to cover them for clothes. Eden was like a garden, with trees and plants and things to eat. But God told them that they could eat anything except from the tree of Good and Evil. Also in this garden was a snake (he is the devil) but don't listen to him because he will get you in trouble.

Poppy, "You did a good job of matching the picture to the story." I was glad that I knew the story so I could draw it.

Now I want you to draw me a coat and I will color it after you are finished. I'm not sure how to draw a coat and you will know more about that than me. This story is about a coat that was made for Joseph, and it was a coat of many colors. His brothers were jealous of him because of the coat and that his parents loved him very much. His brothers put him in a pit and told his father a story that was a lie. What they had really done was sold him to get rid of him. In the end he saw them again and they all got back together as a family.

Here is the coat after she finished coloring it. I think that she did a great job of coloring it.

She wanted me to help her spell the words as she wrote them under the picture telling about the above story.

Now Poppy it is your turn to tell a funny story and you will draw a picture to match the story and I will too.

After thinking for a while, I told her that my story was a rhyme and it goes like this:

Here comes the bride,
Big fat and wide.
Here comes the groom,
Skinny as a broom.

She thought that this was so funny and it would be fun to draw and match this rhyme.

Here is Chloe's picture to match the rhyme.

Here is my picture to match the rhyme.

Chloe said that the groom should be wide and the bride small and thin. I explained to her that the words didn't rhyme. She said I can fix that, listen to this.

Here comes the groom,
Big as the room.
Here comes the bride,
See how she glides.

Oh how quick that mind of hers is. She thought of that so quickly.

She wanted to draw the last picture of Bell her kitten and her Christmas tree. She loves cats and you can tell from this picture.

Thanksgiving Weekend

We were surprised when Chloe came over on Thanksgiving Day and she was dressed like Pocahontas. She had made the little dress at Learning Tree during the summer and she wore it with pride today.

She had her hair pulled back into two braids and she looked oh so cute. She was so excited to be here and to have Thanksgiving Lunch.

When her mother brought her she also brought over her bicycle that we (our family) had gotten her for her birthday five months ago. She said that she could just now reach the pedals. We put it into the garage so she could ride it later in the day.

She has gotten to where she doesn't want you to take her picture and if she sees or hears the camera she will turn her face away from you or move her hands so it will be blurry. I just need a faster camera and it would solve this problem.

I went out of the room and came back in and bingo she was looking right at the camera. I can see now why she turned her head. Aunt Emily bought her some candy after Halloween and this was one of the pieces that she bought. The sucker is on the reverse side and this looks like a mouth on the outside.

When the door bell rang again we were surprised because we were not expecting anyone else, but when I went to the door I saw who it was. David (our son and Chloe's Dad) was standing there and was going to spend the day with us. This was a delightful surprise to us and Chloe.

Chloe was one happy little girl, she had a day with her daddy and was at her grandparents as well. She said, "It can't get any better than this." You can tell from the smile on her happy face that she was going to have a great Thanksgiving.

 

Mom asked David to come and help her in the kitchen so she could get things on the table, so Chloe came to see what was going on.

She needed some help to open some cans and he was having a little problem as well. Chloe was there to give them some advice.

The was time for some one on one before we ate lunch.....,

And some time for a little horse-play as well...,

 

Bring on the food Grandmother, I'm hungry. She will probably eat some turkey and that will be all that she will eat.

 Chloe is sharing something funny with her dad about the turkey.

She is so excited to be having Thanksgiving with her daddy, she is filling up his ears.

After Chloe had eaten some turkey for lunch and had gotten up from the table, she had gotten quite. This could only mean one of two things. She had either fallen asleep or she was into something that she shouldn't be into. After looking around for her I found her on the kitchen counter looking into the cabinets for something sweet to eat. She likes to open the bottom cabinets and used the drawers as steps to gain access to the countertop and then look thru the upper cabinets for Grand Mother's hiding places.

Happy Thanksgiving 2013

Chloe Teaching Poppy

Ever since Chloe started to school she has told me that if I listen then I will learn. I have heard this message over and over since she first said it.

Every weekend when she come over to our house, I ask her what she learned in school this week and she never wants to tell me. But if I let her be the teacher and I act like I'm her student she will cover everything that she learned that week. This way I know what she is learning and it surely doesn't hurt to hear it again with such a sweet teacher.

Out of the blue she asks me do I know what a noun is. I am so stunned that she even knew the word that I couldn't answer her, when she replied with the answer. A noun identifys a person place or thing. Poppy listen to this sentence and I will tell you the nouns. The boy ran after the red ball. Boy and ball are the nouns in this sentence.

I didn't learn what a noun was until the fifth or sixth grade and here she is learning it in Kindergarten.

The next thing that she ask me is do I know what a Proper Noun is? Again she replied with A pronoun is a word that takes the place of a noun for subject, object, or possessive cases, like Palmer and Kroger's. I was even more impressed and I asked her how she learned it so quickly. She said that her teacher said her mind was like a camera and once she heard it it stayed in her memory. Other kids in her class had to memorize the definitions or write it several times to remember it. I let her know that her daddy was gifted like she is with learning new things just like she does.

Ok Poppy, "Do you know what a Pronoun is?" She then said that it was a word that replaces a noun or substitutes for a noun. Listen to this sentence and see if you can find the pronouns? He ran after the big red ball. He is the pronoun.

Now we will learn about adjectives? Do you know what an adjective is? Again before I could answer she was giving it to me because she thought I might not know. Adjectives are describing words in a sentence, like big and red in the sentence I gave you before.

Poppy,? "Did you know that there are seven continents that make up our world?" "There are seven continents and they are: Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America, and South America." I was so proud of her that I couldn't wait to tell Grandmother what she had learned this past week.

She said, "Now class we will sing some songs and I want you to listen so that you can learn the tune and the words to these songs I am going to sing." After singing several songs I started singing along with her and she said, "Poppy I haven't given you permission to sing yet and some of your words are different that what I am singing." "This is why you need to Listen so that you can Learn"

Listen And Learn, Maybe this is why God gave me two eyes and two ears and only one tongue.

Religion Versus The Gospel Of Christ

There is a great difference between the two:

Religion is man-made, the gospel is God-given.

Religion is what man does for God, the gospel is what God does for man.

Religion is man trying to climb the ladder of his own self-righteousness, with the hope of meeting God on the topmost rung. The gospel is God coming down the ladder of the incarnation of Jesus Christ and meeting us as sinners at the lowest rung.

Religion is good views, the gospel is good news.

Religion is good advice, the gospel is a glorious announcement.

Religion takes a man and leaves him as he is, the gospel takes a person as he is and makes him in the image of Christ.

Religion ends in an outer reformation.

Religion whitewashes, the gospel washes white.

Religion often becomes a farce, the gospel is always a force: the power of God unto salvation, to everyone who believes.

There are many religions, but only one Gospel of Christ.

This was shared to me from a friend, I don't know who wrote it. Maybe someone knows.

Sent From: Pete C.

Our Saturday Together

Last Saturday Chloe spent the weekend with us and she told me that she wanted to go shopping. I think that she has learned that when she goes with Poppy, she get more than when she goes with Grandmother. I figure that she is only going to be little one and she will probably be our only Grandchild.

We went to Big Lots looking for a sale item and she found a discount table with Halloween items on it and after digging through it she found a blond and pink wig.

 

When we got into the truck she had to open the package and put the wig on. I had never done this before and I'm trying to help her when she tells me, "Poppy this is a girl thing." and she proceeded to put her hair into the hair net and cover her head with the wig. When I went to take the picture of her in the wig she closed her eyes and wouldn't look at the camera, I asked her why she didn't smile and have her eyes open, and her reply to that was that she hadn't had time to get herself all prettied up before I took the picture. She is six going on thirteen.

 

She loves her Barbie dolls here at our house as well as all of the ones that she has at her house. They all have names and only she know where she came up with these names, and I find it hard sometimes to keep up with their names. She told me that if I watched the Barbie movies then I would learn their names. Most Barbie dolls look the same to me, but she is constantly changing their outfits and this is when I get the names wrong.

 

While at Big Lots she wanted to buy more Barbie doll clothes, not play clothes but formal dresses. We found a box with five formal dresses and five pair of shoes and five purses. She decided that this is what she wanted to buy for her dolls. You already know that Poppy couldn't turn that request down.

 

When we got home she got out all of her dolls and set about changing their clothes. Poppy you can take these three dolls and put these clothes on them and then we can play dolls. We end up playing dolls, coloring, putting puzzles together and then we start the cycle all over again. We end up having a lot of fun and she can't wait to tell Grandmother all that we have done today.

Later on Saturday she wanted to go to Captain D's to get herself some shrimp and Poppy you can get whatever you want for yourself. I asked her was she paying for it with her allowance. She looked at me and said, "Just get up off  that back pocket a little bit and then you can pay for it," She must have heard that said sometime before. Well we go and she orders her food and I order the same except I get a baked potato instead of mac and cheese.

She ate nine of her twelve shrimp and said that she was full and she was going to get a to go carton to take home her left overs for later. I let her go to the counter and get a to go box while watching her as she went. She comes back to the table and put everything neatly into the box and said Poppy I'm ready to go.

The next morning Chloe' gets up early and gets herself ready for meeting and comes to find me to see that she is ready. She has been picking out her own clothes since she was walking. She knows what goes together and matches everything well. We go to meeting and afterwards on the way home she lets me know that she and the Barbies are going to have a photo shoot in their new dresses.

She combs out Mariposa's hair all around her head and let me know that this shot is for a new curling iron and hair products. When I was six I never knew anything about photo shoots.

Laurel Belle is posing in this shoot about a problem with split ends on her hair and the product that will repair them.

Airaposa is showing how sunblock protects your skin from damage by the sun. It helps you keep a flawless complexion.

Airadessa is graduating from college and wanted to show off her new look, a new hairstyle and makeup.

Nicholette  is showing off her wind blown look and her new gown by Devonn.


We later played school, where she was the teacher and I was her student. Watch and this post will be coming soon.