Of Peace and Paper Airplanes

that you also aspire to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you, ~1 Thess. 4:11

Easily one of the greatest days ever. Today we all started the day by bundling into the car for the first Christmas pageant rehearsal. It was lovely and sweet. It is going to be quite a year for the Holly Hills Christmas Production Company, I assure you! After that home for lunch and naps. Everyone got naps. This was excellent!

After naps we watched a movie together (Tinkerbelle 2) and had a great deal of fun answering Cadences endless questions about the characters the events and what was going to happen. Soon after this we had a lovely dinner of lasagna (thank you so much MomPom!) and laughed a great deal over dinner. Cadence ate so well. Dinner is not her favorite meal, but she must like lasagna and I think she is coming up on a growth spurt as her diet has markedly grown this past week.

Finn was, as always, all smiles and giggles. And cuddles. Lots and lots of cuddles. We spread a blanket out on the ground and made paper airplanes and threw them back and forth (this mystified Cadence) and laughed when they crashed into things (and often people). Pugsley tried earnestly to sleep through a small barrage of paper airplanes that could not seem to fall anywhere else but onto him.

Before heading up to bed a family cuddle session on the blanket that at times more resembled a "battle royal" wrestling match and tickle torture ring occurred. Everyone went to bed happy. Finn dropped off quickly and Cadence wanted to be read the Little Bear treasury in it's entirety. This is one of my soft spots as a parent, if they want to read more they will probably be up all night. Please do not tell them about this as they haven't figured it out just yet! After a snuggle and a good night kiss I left Cadence to fall asleep, but she came out of her room to ask me if I would pray for her so that the monsters wouldn't scare her. So I did, and evidently God came through again and Cadence fell immediately to sleep.

It's fun to pray for Cadence. I don't really like the idea of telling kids that there are no monsters. I don't feel like I can confirm that, and what kid ever said "Oh, really? No monsters? Okay, I'm off to sleep then!" So it has been more fun for me to tell Cadence that there may be monsters but she doesn't need to be afraid of them because God can protect her and loves her too much to see her come to any harm at the hands of the monsters that may or may not reside in her room.

This may seem cruel, but I don't think so. I spend too much of my time fearing imaginary monsters. Possible scenarios of the future that may not even be likely to occur. I get all bent out of shape about the future and the present and all of the other silly things that are simply distractions. As I enjoyed my pipe on the back porch and watched the snowfall I realized...the monsters really are there, but what can they do to a sheep in the care of the good shepherd?

Big day tomorrow of fellowship, worship, teaching the word and more. This one was a very good day! Thank you for this one, Lord!