Kids Party Playlist for Playlist Friday

Maybe you are having a party this Memorial Day weekend.
Perhaps you have to spend some time around the elementary school set at some point this summer.
You NEED kid-friendly dance party music.

Thanks to Matt and I dj-ing the school dance at Asher's elementary school two weeks ago, I am here to save the day.
Two songs I want to point out to you:
1. Hamster Dance
2. Do you like waffles?

Both are required to COMPLETELY change the mood of any morning around our house.

Here we go:

Just Dance: Lady Gaga
Don't Stop the Music: Rihanna
Top of the World: Mitchel Musso
The Hamster Dance Song: Hampton the Hamster (seriously-dumb)
I like to Move It: Crazy Frog

Group Dance Section:
Limbo Rock (Reggae Rock): Chubby C and OD
Hot! Hot! Hot!: Go Diego Go!
Hokey Pokey: Starsound Orchestra
The Chicken Dance: The Hit Crew
The Macarena: Los Del Rio
Born to Hand Jive: Sha-Na-Na
YMCA: Village People
Cupid Shuffle: Cupid
Tonto (Jump on It)
Casper Slide
Hoedown Throwdown: Miley Cyrus

Musical Interlude:
Hey Ya: Outkast

Back to Dance Party Times:
Baby: Justin Bieber
Firework: Katy Perry
Dynamite: Kidz Bop (I hate kidz bop, but some songs have slightly questionable content but popular to dance to when you have to play them in group settings are just safer. AND the elementary set are used to bad sounding songs. So it's not a reflection on you.)
Just the Way You Are: Bruno Mars *not a winner
Fire Burning: Sean Kingston
Forever: Chris Brown
Party in the USA: Miley Cyrus
Pool Party: Aquabats (from Yo Gabba Gabba)
Kung Fu Fighting: Air Fighters
Who Let the Dogs Out: Baja Men
Life is a Highway: Rascal Flatts

Fun Extra Music:
Crazy in Love: Beyonce
Gitchee Gitchee Goo: Phineas and Ferb Soundtrack
Peanut Butter Jelly Time: Chip Man and the Buckwheat Boyz
Do you like Waffles?: Parry Gripp
You Belong with Me: Taylor Swift
Replay: Iyaz
Airplanes: B.o.B
That's Not My Name: The Ting Tings
Free and Easy (Down the Road I Go): Dierks Bently
Eenie Meenie: Sean Kingston and Justin Bieber
Love Me: Justin Bieber


Our kids had a blast at the dance and their friends keep walking up to us and saying, "HEY DJ!" It's hilarious. Matt did a great job leading the group and keeping them actually dancing. Because all they really wanted to do was run laps around the gym. It was something special. Trust me.

Happy Anniversary!

Matt and I are celebrating 10 years of being married today!
I can not believe that it has been 10 FREAKING YEARS.

That.is.a.long.time.
But it really doesn't feel like it.

Maybe because of moments like these:

Life is a little easier when you are married to your best friend. 

Not easy. Just easier. 

And yes, we laugh. A lot. 

That helps too.

Only 40 more years to go. 

Just a small explanation on that video:
We were hiking at Carolina Point, a Young Life property in development and they have a wildlife camera set up to see what kinds of game are present on the property. Matt and Asher used the opportunity to do what they do best. I am so proud.

Lucy Video Monday

I have a series of videos that I have taken of Lucy lately that really make me laugh. There are several reasons for this.
1) she is really funny.
2) she is in preschool, so she is around the house more than anyone else in my world.
3) she is just like me.
4) Thus, she is really funny.


This was after her fourth soccer goal (be still my heart) and yes, that referee is wearing no shoes. Welcome to Asheville everyone.


Asher was trying to mess up Lucy singing the song, she when she got tripped up she had to get through the whole song really quickly to make up for the mistake. This gift is from her father, not from me.


This is at 8am. But you can hear this training going on at 6:30am as well. It is much cuter at a reasonable hour.


well, what can you say about this? Sometimes you just have to be insane.

Raising a Family

When working for a ministry, one of the things that many people give to you when you have kids...is children's Bibles.
When your kids start getting older, one of the things that you struggle to figure out-is how to actually READ those Bibles and to help make them relate to your children's current reality.
This is not unique to those of us in full-time ministry-this is all of us who love Jesus.
However, we have been given a multitude of Bibles. I would say, in quantities above the average family.

And yet, we like most families have struggled over the years to make reading the Bible with our kids a habit.

When Matt and I went to the Marriage Conference in March, there was a section of the conference dedicated to "parenting" and it was facilitated by David and Kelli Pritchard. It was absolutely fantastic.

One piece of real encouragement that they gave us was to make reading the Bible together as a family a daily habit.
In their family, they read five Psalms and a Proverb every morning before school with their school aged kids.

In our family, our kids are close in age and one has just started school.
So we opted to try reading the Jesus StoryBook Bible daily before school.

Have you read this Bible?
We were gifted it several years ago by our friend Luke Davis and it has been one of the greatest gifts to our family that we have received.

It is written from the perspective that God has written in our hearts the greatest Love Story of all time and it mirrors many children's books of the princess waiting for her prince to come and rescue her. Every story in this Bible points to the prince who is never stopping, never giving up, always and forever love. I choke up nearly every time I read it.

The illustrations really grab my kids attention and the perspective is so much fun. In different stories, you have to change the way you read the book from horizontal to vertical, which makes the Bible much more interactive than a typical children's book, let alone a Bible.

We love this Bible. 

Reading it daily with our kids has been a real gift to us and our kids. 

Now every morning, they ask: Can we read the Bible before we go to school? 

YES. 

It has become a treasured time. 

My favorite encouragement from the Pritchards on this topic was this:

I asked if we need to explain the Bible or lead a Bible study type of time with our kids. It was stressing me out. 

Kelli answered:

Let the Holy Spirit do the work in your kids. Your job is to place Scripture inside their hearts. 

His job is melt their hearts for his purposes. 

It has taken such a load off our shoulders to feel like we need to do "family devotions" on a daily basis. 

Not our jobs. We love our kids and lead them to the Lord in Scripture showing them what we think is truly important. 

We make this a priority now. I love that. 

You can get the Jesus StoryBook Bible here.

Happy Mother's Day

Asher made me a super sweet book for Mother's Day in kindergarten and as they are working on their writing skills (and Asher's are *cough* in development), this was sent home yesterday.

For those of you who can't read what it says:

Mom is as pretty as: she can be

She smells like: potion

Her hair looks like: yellow

Her voice sounds like: an angel

Mom makes me feel like: love. 

Melting. 

On another page, it said: If I had a $100, I would buy my mom: a bed. And he drew a bed. 

Does this kid know me or what? 

(and that picture? So obviously me. Except for the whole blue witches hat thing.)

One thought I will leave you with:

IF my voice indeed sounds like an angels-heaven is seriously going to mess you people up. 

No Mormon Tabenacle choir sound, just a whole bunch of off-key Leslie's sing Holy Holy Holy. 

That's going to be awesome. 

Happy Mother's Day ya'll! 

Hedge of Protection

How many times have I used this phrase when praying?

Laughing my head off:

And more:

Start stacking chairs! Come back when you're ready...
Hilarious.

Quote of the Day

"The new rebel is a skeptic, and will not trust anything...but therefore he can never be really revolutionary. For all denunciation implies a moral doctrine of some kind...Therefore the modern man in revolt has become practically useless for all purposes of revolt. By rebelling against everything, he has lost the right to rebel against anything...there is a thought that stops thought. That is the only thought that ought to be stopped."
GK Chesterton

May Masthead

If you actually visit this blog and don't just use a reader service, you may be asking what in the world is the deal with my masthead? That's the thing with all of the pictures at the top of this blog. FYI.

We had the class pet, Marlow visit our home this weekend and we had to take the stuffed animal everywhere that we went. The last time we did this, Asher got seriously ill and missed school for half-a-week. So you can imagine the excitement when he was presented back in the backpack for this past weekend.

But took Marlow around and he had quite an adventure to tell. Thankfully, I used the collage making pages at picnik.com to help me actually complete the project because you don't think that a kindergartner knows how to upload pictures, write paragraphs and layout scrapbook pages do you? Nope. This is my project.
Again.
So, I am taking you all along for our little journey.
Here are the pictures from the weekend that I had to capture. Enjoy.

 Asher is thrilled to have Marlow come home again. 

 Marlow in the hammock.

 Marlow playing soccer.

 Marlow helping me coach soccer.

 Marlow on the monkey bars.

 Marlow got beasted on the slide.

 Can you feel the love?

 Asher serenading the neigh-borhood. Get it? "Neigh"

 Marlow at church. Yes, I took this picture. Yes, the people next to me moved a little further away from me when I did. Like I might think this horse is real. 

 The pigs in downtown Asheville at the Big Love Fest. 

We had Big Love for Marlow. Why not?

 Marlow at a Pig Pickin' for YL. The irony was not lost on him. 

Wide Open Spaces with Marlow.

Now Marlow is sitting on my kitchen table waiting to get packed up to go back to elementary school tomorrow. 

Tell me I don't have to do 700 more school projects like this. 

Tell me that this is not setting me up to do 700 more projects like this.