friday fun

My daughter and son were both home on this Good Friday. We had options of what we were going to do, but since both of my kiddos were recovering from nasty coughs, we decided to take it easy at home. Typically, after about 2 hours, we all get on each other's nerves because I've got a long to-do list and the kids get bored.

Today's gift of survival: a bunch of ideas fostered by Pinterest. I went onto Pinterest to search for ideas to do to keep busy and it was a success! For them. For me, not so much. I was hoping to get a bunch of stuff done, but was busy looking up ideas, cleaning pans from projects, helping create, and cleaning up the rooms after the projects. So I did get a lot done... just not what I was planning on getting done.

While researching some ideas, the kids got a kick out of these,
because we are severely lacking in the balloon supply in our house.

We moved on to making play-doh,

because all our other play doh is grey.

Lunch came and since the kitchen table was covered in play doh paraphernalia
the kids had a muffin tin picnic on a blanket in the family room.

I, however, had cold Pizza Plus pizza out of the box and enjoyed it very much!

I got some cups out of the pantry and they got their creativity on.
Pretty soon my daughter was selling ice cream, for free.
(We need to work on the entrepreneurial part of her.)

Making helicopters, or whirlygigs was my favorite!

Watching from upstairs is really cool!
Taking a picture truly does not capture it.

Then we built bridges with boards and furniture and rolled our numerous
little cars down and across the bridges.

We created a resurrection garden.
See the tomb?

We played with baking soda and vinegar and food coloring...

and watched the color fizz!
(This was my kids' favorite activity.)

And I... cleaned the litter box and washed some dishes.
Oh! I did get one more thing done: I have a solid black coffee table that had been picked at by my children, making it a bit unsightly. I decided to sand it down a bit so that I could repaint it. But as I started working on it, I realized that I loved the way it looked after I had distressed it with the sander.
And here's where God revealed to me the purpose of today's blog: We can plan the way we want our lives to go. I have. I know what I want to have happen in the next 10 years of my life. (I don't really want to think much past that yet). However, things usually don't go as WE plan. They go as God has planned for them to go. As irritating as that is (not that God is irritating, but things not going according to how I plan them is irritating), I know that His reason for the direction of our day, our week, our lives is so much bigger than what we've got planned. And the crazy thing is, we might not ever understand why things happen in our life. But God does and I trust Him. And chances are pretty good that if we let him take our plans and turn them into His, things are going to look a lot more beautiful than what we could accomplish on our own; like a day full of fun memories created with my children, or a scratched up coffee table, originally destined to be red but instead, becoming an awesomely distressed black table after all.

KC