Over the past several months, I’ve had the privilege of being part of a group that someone lovingly nicknamed #the500. This is the launch team that was assembled to promote Jen Hatmaker’s newest book, For The Love.
One of the awesome perks of being part of the team (and there have been SO MANY) was that we received early editions of the book. So I have gotten to read it early! YAY! And y’all, it is sooo good. I am so thankful for that – although I didn’t doubt it – because I wouldn’t steer you wrong. If I didn’t like it, I wouldn’t promote it. But that is NOT the case with this.
Sidenote: It has been so much fun to be a part of this amazing group of women and to see so many new relationships formed, just through FB over a book! Of course, I’m just a teensy bit of an introvert, so I have been on the observing outskirts of all of this fun-ness, but I have still gleaned a lot of encouragement, as well as an awesome picture of what real, authentic support and community can look like. So neat to see what can happen when women stop competing and comparing to encourage and invest in others.
I’ll be writing more about the book next week when it is released (so go pre-order today so you can get it ASAP and not have it totally ruined for ya, because I predict, the internets are going to be bombarded with FTL quotes for the next few weeks, if not months). Cause this women are seriously devoted, and passionate, and that mixed together with a really great book, well, it’s just gonna be explosive.
Here are a sneak peak into some of the content of the book:
And to get a glimpse into the personality of the book a little bit better, check out this one as well:
Anyways, so that has been a really fun experience. And for someone that is rather Type-A and tends to take life a little too seriously, it’s been a really good influence on me. Jen’s personality and perspective has really helped me to grasp more of what I have sensed the Lord telling me over the past 3 years – to embrace where I am right now (this current season, not pre-occupied with the next step to the detriment of missing out on the one I am on), to enjoy the ride (the theme my cute bike on my mantle reminds me of daily), and appreciate the little things. And this has been such a timely message to carry me through coming home full-time to be with my two amazing and crazy kiddos, and then to start this homeschooling journey. I need to be able to be where I am – all in, 100%, to enjoy it (please!), and to see the hidden treasures in the mundane moments that I will miss if my eyes are fixed on the next couple of steps, or focused on the past and what I feel I may have missed out on.
All this to say, I could write about tons of moments where I have seen these little jewels packed into my mornings, sitting around the coffee table with preschool supplies strewn everywhere, coffee mug in close proximity, and two little bright-eyed kids, usually with some sort of sticky remnants from breakfast on their fingers. So today I will share a few from a day earlier this week.
We started out the morning like this.
Little prince came waltzing into my bedroom at 6:00AM with his hat on (this is before Jesus got up, I believe, because it is an ungodly hour. Haha…get it….okay, will carry on). He beckons me into the kitchen to feed him, as he is ravenous from a night of sleep, and collects his penguin backpack along the way. So yes, so cute. But so early. Before coffee early. Whew. And so the day continues.
My daughter, Natalie (5 yrs old), who I lovingly refer to as The Sweetness, LOVES numbers. For as long as I can remember, everything has been numbers. We were afraid at one point that she would never learn the alphabet, which she referred to as numbers, and to this day she prefers zero to an “o.” She just does. I don’t get it. But that’s okay. That is one of the many differences between this girl and me, and for that I am grateful. Lord knows we don’t both need to dread math work.
So the other morning, we were doing part of our Mother Goose Time daily work, focusing on the Fable about the Grasshopper and the Ants.
Short Summary: The Grasshopper plays around all summer while the ants are diligently collecting and storing food for the winter. Come the end of summer, the grasshopper has to ask the ants for food because he has been too busy playing his fiddle to work. The ants are kind and share, but encourage the grasshopper to prepare in advance next time.
So part of our daily activity was to help our grasshopper & ant collect (or eat) their corn. The daily materials came with cute little pictures of ants and grasshoppers, as well as number cards they could flip over and then add the appropriate number of corn kernels to their friend.
We started out with the basic exercise with both, trying to encourage Peter to identify the number by himself once it was flipped over, and then I helped him add that number of kernels to his plate.
Peter decided he wanted to feed the grasshopper. The ants were ‘ew, gross.’ (I’m guessing/hoping he will grow out of the ‘thinking bugs are gross’ phase, more for his own sake, since Natalie is the one that kills the spiders around our house these days. Otherwise I am anticipating a lot of teasing.)
Natalie was able to do this independently. Then to give her a little bit more of a challenge, I would give her two numbers to add together to come up with the appropriate amount of corn.
A little bit later, after we had finished our daily agenda, we went back to our table to free play with some of our fun manipulatives we’ve collected over the past 3 months of Mother Goose Time. I had also recently picked up a little pack of Leapfrog Addition and Subtraction cards at the Dollar Spot at Target for such occasions as this, to pull out and have a little fun with. Natalie snagged them and started creating her own equations.
She stuck with adding +0 and + 1 to her equations for a bit, and then I challenged her with coming up with some of my own.
Waiting to see if she got it correct.
She did really well, and as you can see, she loves it. I mean the girl gets excited about math. It’s truly adorable how nerdy she is. I look forward to seeing how this passion develops and God’s purposes for this talent.
And I’ll just leave you with little adorable thing. Can’t be within a ten-foot radius of a paint without getting it on his face.
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