Hope for the Weary

sunset

This is not a place where I usually share political views. But I started it as a place for me to share my heart. Thus today’s post.

There was no result of the presidential election this morning that would have caused me to wake up celebrating. The man who will be leading our country makes me sick. (Before you comment, I’m just going to say that I don’t at all want to get into Trump vs. Hillary and which choice was the lesser of two evils. I don’t see any point in debating that anymore.)

Only time will tell what the full impact of yesterday’s choice will be. But today. Today I rock my baby, and I sip my coffee. My windows are open and a perfectly chilly breeze fills my home. Chili is in my slow cooker, wafting its delicious aroma into the room.

Today, like every day, I hug my children and I love them, and I try to teach them to love others and to let their little light shine, because the darker the world feels, the more desperately we need to be the light.

It’s a rare quiet moment here, and I find myself praying. I pray today that God will be near to the brokenhearted as He has promised, because I know that today many of my brothers ans sisters are brokenhearted, hurting, and anxious. The grey clouds in my little corner of the world today feel appropriate. And yet…I’m reminded of one of my favorite Christmas songs.

“O come, Thou Day-Spring, come and cheer
Our spirits by Thine advent here
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night
And death’s dark shadows put to flight.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel”
~ O Come O Come Emmanuel

Please don’t take this as me being trite and saying we should just sing and dance and cheer…I mourn for where our country is right now. I find myself weary, and I think the world is weary, but I am not without hope. Emmanuel is still with us.

I know I’m only reiterating what many have already said, but today we, the huddles masses, need to huddle together. Let’s be the kind of people who sit with the sad and the hurting, and listen. And let us, myself included, look for opportunities to reach out. Let’s invite our neighbor to Friday night spaghetti and meatballs, or bake a meal for a single mom, or whatever we can do to show up in the world and be love…even if our neighbor has different religious or political views.

And with that, my coffee cup is empty and the quiet moment is over, and I’m signing off. 🙂

 

25 ideas to help your Elves encourage kindness this Christmas!

 

25 acts of kindness for Christmas - have your elf on a shelf or kindness elves leave notes encouraging kindness! | Running With Spears #bekind #christmas #traditions #elfonashelf

Hi friends!  We’re about to jump into our second year of having Kindness Elves visit us in December! However, with 4 littles running amok here, I know there is no way on earth I’m going to be able to maintain grandiose acts every day (by which I mean anything that requires me to change out of my pajamas and/or leave the house).  😉

I figured if I was going to attempt to do this thing, I needed a plan. I’m usually a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pantser, so this whole planning thing isn’t exactly my forte. That said, after last years attempts, I was able to determine which of my good decent ideas actually worked for us and come up with hopefully  an even better plan this year, so I figured I might as well share it in case any one else could use some non-elaborate ideas for acts of kindness. And no, these aren’t ready to go printable notes from your elves…I’m not that awesome. These are more like rough draft ideas, so tweak the wording and make them sound good. 😀

1. Bake sugar cookies and give some to a neighbor. This is probably the most involved activity and I’m only including it because it’s a tradition around here so we have  to do it at some point in December anyway.

2. Make coffee for your Mom!  This is my favorite! Last year our elves ended up using this one a few times!!!

3. Send an email to someone, just to say hi!  My kids got their own email accounts through KidsEmail.org earlier this year so sending emails is still pretty novel and fun for them, and who doesn’t enjoy a nice “Hi, I was thinking about you!” email. 🙂

4. Pray for your friends. Some of our friends just started a church in  NYC, we pray for them often but this day we’ll take some specific time to pray for them, as well as anyone my girls want to pray for.

5. Order pizza for a college kid (or other friend). If you know someone in college, find out when they’re having exams and send them a pizza the night before, so they can eat while studying.

6. Donate food to the hungry.  Have your kids raid the pantry and find all the random extra cans you’ve accidentally amassed when you forgot you already had 3 cans of corn so you bought 2 more, and give them to a food pantry. Bonus points if your church does a food drive and you can just take it with you on a Sunday morning! 🙂

7.  Make a homemade gift for someone. Nothing elaborate (unless you want to). My oldest two love sewing pillows and giving them to each other. we already have the felt and stuffing they use, and they can do this almost completely by themselves, so it’s super simple.

8. Send a gift to a friend. Not someone you would usually plan on exchanging gifts with for Christmas. Maybe someone who doesn’t live nearby (if you have Amazon Prime, there are lots of stuffed animals  and other small gifts in the $5 range that you can ship free to someone and select the gift option to have it include a gift receipt and a personal note).

9. Tell an author you like her books. OK so I know this seems pretty random, but I’m currently in the middle of writing a novel that I hope to get published and I know it would make my day (once that has happened) to hear from a fan. So look up the author of the last book you or your kids have enjoyed. They probably have a Facebook page or Twitter or Instagram or something. Connect with them and leave a short note telling them you liked their book. We’ve done this a few times with authors of books my kids love and the authors we’ve contacted always replied which made my girls super happy, too! 😀

10. Make some hot cocoa mix for friends. -Don’t go crazy. Making enough for one or two friends is plenty. And this hot cocoa mix is simple to make and seriously the yummiest ever!

11. Feed the birds. For us, we have a birdfeeder but it’s currently empty, so my girls can just fill it up again, easy peasy. Alternatively we could walk down to the little pond in our neighborhood and throw some stale bread pieces to the ducks, or make a simple bird feeder.

12. Hand down some books. Our neighborhood has a little free library, so I can drive up in my jammies and let my girls run over and put in a few books!

13. Put some pennies on the sidewalk for someone to find. Who doesn’t smile when they find a penny?

14. Make a “boo-boo” pack. Fill a sock that no longer has a match with rice, use a hair band wrapped as tightly as you can make it to close off the end, then put it in the freezer. Next time someone gets hurt, get them the cold pack to help them feel better.

15. We set out breakfast for you just to be kind (no strings attached). -I’m thinking some of those personal boxes of cereal because we never  have those.

16. Send a gift to a charity. I noticed when I opened Amazon that they have a page for people to send gifts to a charity called GameChanger that brings cheer to kids in the hospital by providing books and games and such. Just go to their list and select an item to send. There are books as cheap as $4. A quick and easy way to put a smile on someone’s face.

17. Note from elves, “You left some toys out last night so we picked them up for you. We loved helping out. Keep your eyes open for ways you  can help out today!”

18. Kids prepare dinner to give your parents a break. OK, so my kids aren’t actually able to cook completely on their own yet, but I can have stuff for a “snacky” dinner available – cheese cubes, crackers, summer sausage, hummus, baby carrots, grape tomatoes, pre-cut apple slices, etc. and my kids can get it all out, set the table, etc. so it’s still a win.

19. Tell someone something you like about them.

20. Grab a drink (or dinner, or whatever) from Sonic and give the carhop a $5 tip. 

21. Gather a few friends and go caroling at a nursing home. I promise they won’t care how well you sing. Print out a few Christmas carols if you don’t know all the words and go sing. This is a bigger endeavor than most on this list but it’s one of my favorite things to do at Christmas, it spreads so much cheer, and makes great memories for the kids, too.

22. Make a special treat for your Daddy! -For us this means something gluten-free, maybe some fudge or toffee…you could of course make anything. Do this close enough to Christmas Eve that you’ll have some left to set out for Santa!

23. Anonymously leave a bag with paper plates and plastic cups at a friend or neighbor’s front door. Leave a note wishing them a Merry Christmas with fewer dishes.

24. Hand out coloring books at the Christmas Eve Service. If your Christmas eve service, like ours, doesn’t have childcare – take a handful of inexpensive coloring books and crayons and give them to families with little kids (keeping some for your own kids…and asking the parents first, of course). I plan to order this set of 36 for $10, keep a few for each of my girls, and hand out the rest, along with a colored pencil.

25. Wish Jesus a Happy Birthday! -We have a toy cake that we always set out somewhere for the kids see BEFORE we get to stockings on Christmas morning to take a moment to focus on Jesus’ Birthday…I leave it out for them to play with for a month or so then pack it away with the Christmas stuff. 🙂

So there you have it. Now as far as wow awesome I will be at actually doing these…well last year I forgot at night and had to scramble in the morning by like day three, so…yeah. I’m definitely keeping this list of reasons your elf forgot to move handy, because I’m sure I’ll need it! But at least I feel like I’ll have a better chance of remembering if I have a plan to use. What are your favorite, simple acts of kindness? I’d love to have some spare ideas in case it doesn’t actually work for me to do some of the bigger items on this list.

Review of Fun-Time Phonics!™

Boo has been working through Fun-Time Phonics!™ Software – 2-PCs Win Download from The Critical Thinking Co.™ which we received to review. 

What it is:

fun-time-phonics-by-critical-thinking_zps3dxdolkhFun-Time Phonics!™ is a downloadable software designed to help kids in pre-k through second grade learn to read. The software works on Windows Desktops. The product we received can be put on up to two computers and used by one person at a time, but you can create multiple users. It is designed to be a comprehensive reading program that’s also fun and engaging. As indicated by the name, it takes a phonemic approach to teaching children to read.

Fun-Time Phonics!™ is also part of the Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic Before Kindergarten!™ software bundle of 5 Apps For Less Than $40.

How we use it:

Boo has been working through this program, beginning with section one that introduced beginning and ending sounds, vowel sounds, and rhyming words. I immediately noticed her making great progress in saying a word slowly and being able to discern the beginning and ending sounds for the first time.

mad

The activities very quickly progressed from simply helping her pick out the correct beginning of ending sound to giving more challenging options. For example, when trying to select a word with the same ending sound as bed  she had to choose between dish, radio,  and mad,  being careful to not only listen for d  but also make sure she didn’t select an option besides the d  as the ending sound, which  sometimes tripped her up, especially when she had  just  been working on beginning sounds a few minutes before. There were also super tricky pages like choosing between shade, dive,  and crab.  So Boo had to not only remember that she was listening for the ending sound now, not the beginning, but also not confuse the sound b  with the d  sound. Other examples of tricky pages included not confusing th  and f   or b  and p  which even I had a really hard time telling apart just by listening to the sound I heard when she clicked the speaker.

sadhe-dive-crab

These tricky options tripped her up enough that she didn’t pass the ending sounds  lesson the first time and had to re-do it. On her second time through she had the exact same questions so she was able to remember which options she had chosen before and choose a different one instead, so I’m not sure if she actually gained any greater mastery or not, but she did pass the level and get to move on to a lesson where she had to find the two words that had the same beginning sound (and later, the same ending sound). She once again failed the first time and had to repeat the lesson which was the end of her having any desire whatsoever to use the program. From then on it was a huge fight to get her to do the lessons, and now that our review period is over I’m going to let her take a break from this program.

What we think:

Despite a promising start, Fun-Time Phonics!™ just isn’t the right fit for Boo at this time. I imagine a child who is already confident with discerning the beginning and ending sounds of words would find the more challenging exercises to be good practice. Despite tons of work all of last year to try to help Boo learn to read, she’s really just now recognizing a handful of sight words and making good progress with sounding out simple words like cat and dog. I hope this program might be beneficial to her a little later on after we’ve nurtured her tiny little budding confidence for awhile so that it’s not so quickly crushed by things like not passing the lessons on her first try.

Be sure to check out what other reviewers think of this program as well as other products from The Critical Thinking Co.™ over at the Homeschool Review Crew link-up.

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Stocking Stuffers your kids will still love after Christmas is over!

There’s nothing cuter on Christmas morning than little teddy bears with santa hats peeping out of your kids stockings – but what do you do with them when it’s time to pack away your Christmas stuff and your kids haven’t touched them in a week? Put them in a box for 11 months to (maybe) be played with again for a few weeks next December?

My husband and I Santa (of course) decided some time ago to instead focus on non-seasonally specific items for my girls’ stocking. Lately he’s been kind enough to also take into consideration items that will help Christmas morning go more smoothly, too. 🙂

See, when we do Christmas day with my parents and siblings, my girls are the only littles in the mix, and everyone else has no interest in awakening at 6:30 and opening gifts. I try to keep my girls content till 7 or 7:30, but I mean, they’re kids on Christmas  and that’s pretty much the highest level of excitement there is! So last Christmas we decided to let them go ahead and check out their stocking while everyone else lollygagged about. 😉

To give myself the longest stretch of sanity while my girls enjoy their stockings,  their contents need to have the potential to keep them occupied for awhile.

10 stocking stuffers that aren't "Christmas" themed (and thus stuffed away in a box for 11 months out of the year. Bonus - these 10 items will help your kids stay happy while they wait to open the rest of their gifts! | Running With Spears #stockings #giftideas #Christmas

Here are the stocking stuffers top hits  for our girls ages two through nine:
1) Special art supplies like Kwik Stix. For extra sparkly fun I’d go with Metalix Kwik Stix (check out my review if you’re not sure what these are, my girls LOVE them!)
2) Small notebooks  – I like  these cute Frozen ones!
3) Individual packs of a favorite snack like Goldfish – since my girls are always way too caught up in the festivities to stop and eat breakfast.
4) Cute water bottles like these sturdy but adorable Contigo ones. Gets my girls having fun hydrating that morning, and can continue to be used all year long!
5) Candy – because it’s Christmas. But I’ve honestly never spent extra money to get special Christmas shaped chocolate or anything and my girls are still super happy.
6) Packs of  Crayola Model Magic or other soft clay or play dough.
7) A fun, engaging card game like Letters to Santa. Yes it’s Christmas themed but we love it and play it all year (or you could choose regular Love Letter, or Sushi Go, or whatever you want!)
8) Sticker books. OK so I know I started out bashing Christmas themed items, but these are consumable and will be used up that day anyway, so I let it slide here. I love this Dover Nativity sticker book! If you expect your kids to play with this longer than a day, you can always get a different theme. My girls love their silly face and make-a-monster ones!
9) Bible verse color-in note cards and and a pack of crayons. Even my 2 year old has a great time coloring these…probably just because she likes to do whatever her big sisters do. If you just have a toddler, she might get just as much enjoyment out of a pack of colored index cards, mine loves them!
10) Washi tape! All my girls love it. They can use it to decorate pages of their notebooks along with their Kwik Stix,  or use it to hang their favorite masterpieces on the wall.

What stocking stuffers are favorites at your house? If all my girls were about 8 and up or so, I’d Santa  would probably include some nail polish, but right now my 2 year old would be dying to use it immediately which wouldn’t be practical. I think Santa will probably give my 9 year old some lip gloss in a cute container this year.