"Jesus was born on Christmas Daddy."

Big A, Little A, what begins with A?

The local church where we attend our Bible Study Fellowship meetings have pre-wrapped Christmas shoe boxes set up on tables for people to fill for Operation Christmas Child. Blessed to participate, I took a box to fill with Creed. Since 1993, more than 100 million boys and girls in more than 130 countries have experienced God's love through the power of simple shoebox gifts from Operation Christmas Child. Samaritan's Purse works with local churches and ministry partners to deliver the gifts and share the life-changing Good News of Jesus Christ. National Collection Week is Nov. 18-25. I want Creed to have a servant's heart just like his Mama and Daddy. I'm excited to have him help pack a box for a child who would otherwise not have anything on Christmas, explaining the entire time what Christmas is about, not only our Savior being born, but imitating his giving nature, loving heart. Creed saw the wrapped present and said, "A present for me?!" He wanted to open it and I tried explaining that there was nothing in there, before having to show him. When we came out of the grocery store the other day he saw it again asking about it. I said, "There's nothing in it, but you can help Mama fill it. We're going to fill it with toys for children who don't get any presents for Christmas." "Do you know about Christmas, " I asked? (He's just listening in his car seat while daddy is loading the groceries.) I explained Christmas the best I could so he could understand. When Daddy got in the front seat ready to go Creed said, "Daddy, I need to talk to you." Daddy answered him, "What do you want to talk about?" "Jesus was born on Christmas Daddy," he said. "Really," he asked? "Thank you for telling me Creed," he said. We smiled at each other as he was pulling out of the parking lot. I love these magical moments. For more information about Operation Christmas Child visit: http://www.samaritanspurse.org/what-we-do/operation-christmas-child/.

Fun with the "tube tumbler"

We shall spend this week catching up what we've missed in the last two weeks, wrapping up review for this month. Creed spent some time tracing the mechanics of the alphabet late this morning before taking another stab at writing the alphabet. He seems to be a little more interested now, but gets easily frustrated as does mama. So after an "itty bit" we took a break and he played some educational games on the computer. There was a magical moment where I watched him in awe drawing a big A, and little a, all by himself, as well as big E, and big F.

We played for a while using the shoots on the wall, we made last week. I love to hear the beads tumble from tube to tube ultimately landing in the cup at the bottom, before dumping them in the back of the truck. More importantly, I'm happy that something this simple can provide so much entertainment!

View from the top of the corn maze.

View from the back of the barrel train.

Feathering our adventure hats.

We had a lot of fun with Daddy over the weekend visiting the zoo and local farms. We collected leaves for a fall project while also collecting different kinds of feathers. Among the feathers in our adventure hats were female and male peacock and flamingo. The zoo was beautifully serene and mostly ours as we showed up at opening hours. After the zoo we decided to visit a local farm on the way home. There were a lot of long lines and the rides were incredibly dusty, leaving us all sniffling, sneezing noses, dry eyes and sinus pressure. Despite all this Creed enjoyed it tremendously. I was tempted to skip the corn maze, but I'm glad I didn't because I would have missed Creed interacting with Daddy taking turns reading the map. As the sun was setting I wondered when we would ever see the end. Finally I said, "I wanna go home!" Daddy started running with Creed close behind while Mama trailed along catching their heels at every turn. With a bound we were out and I was relieved. Home sweet home couldn't have sounded any sweeter.