Daddy Time

Nature Center Day

May 16, 2013 By Jennifer Lambert Leave a Comment

Mother’s Day weekend is seldom a holiday. For me, it’s race weekend and Kate’s birthday.

On Saturday, we all piled in the van to go up to Ogden Nature Center. Way too early.

Tori ran a 5K with her dad. She’s our athlete.

It’s a statue. Honestly, I stared at it waiting for it to move. sigh.

There’s a great bird sanctuary at the center.

These lovely ladies were cheering on the runners.

My big boy!

Kate turned 6 years old!

Liz’s attitude has improved tremendously lately. Prayer really works. And we just don’t fall for that whole western tween/teen mentality at all. More on that later.

Tori was hurting and didn’t want to finish the second lap.

Perseverance paid off. She was the youngest female in the 5K and got 3rd place for her age group of 1-12 {after 2 10 year olds}!

And she got the coolest raffle prize – this little binocular, magnifier, compass thing. I was in the gift shop looking at these to buy one for her when I heard her name called for the raffle. God cares even about the little things.

In the nature center, they have a new teaching beehive. Super cool. Scroll really quick if you don’t want to see them up close.

Pretty shiny golden darlings. Making yummy honey.

The coolest nature sensory evarrrr! I want it. I want Aaron to make me one. Imbedded with mirrors and magnifiers.

Alex thought the snakeskins were cool.

It was a lovely day.

and we grabbed a nature camp brochure. Alex is in from when he went last year. aw

Filed Under: Daddy Time, Nature Study Tagged With: 5K, outdoors, race, running

Boy School

April 11, 2013 By Jennifer Lambert Leave a Comment

Anything can be fixed with a hammer. Or duct tape.

Dad and Alex make a trellis for the garden. They planted peas!

I’m so proud of my men.

Filed Under: Daddy Time, sons Tagged With: boys, dads, fathers, garden, hammers, sons

Lead Your Family Like Jesus

March 24, 2013 By Jennifer Lambert 1 Comment

I am so pleased to be a part of the Launch Team for Lead Your Family Like Jesus: Powerful Parenting Principles from the Creator of Families by Ken Blanchard, Phil Hodges, and Tricia Goyer.

This is a leadership book.

This is a child-training book. A book on parenting.

And I love how those two things are meshed together and help me to analyze and express how I want my family to look in the future.

It’s all about goals, vision, values, priorities.

You need to see that future picture of success for your family to know what you must do now to get there.

An important question for family leader to ask is, “What do we want to influence?”

The key is specifying what carrying out your priorities looks like.

~Lead Your Family Like Jesus p. 67

By examining your future picture, you can make a plan to implement for success. Jesus must be the foundation for your goals.

A wise man noted that it was only in the past century that the word priority went plural. Jesus had one priority: glorify God.

Everything Jesus did was about…Exalting God Only. It was an act of worship…He pointed those around Him to God.

~Lead Your Family Like Jesus p. 63, 33, 34

My husband, Aaron, and I have been using this book to teach our Sunday school class for a while now and we’re enjoying it and learning so much about leadership from Jesus! We’ve all had some lively discussions. We’re convicted to “put our egos on the altar” and align our attitudes. I adore having some older couples agree with the book’s teachings and describe how they raised their children.

A parent’s attitude, I realized, is the foundation for how every day is lived out. And those days are the building blocks of childhood memories.

~Lead Your Family Like Jesus p. 93

What memories will your children have? Do you need to make some changes in your attitude to reflect your family goals?

We’ve all heard “Do what I say, not as I do.” But we are the examples to our children and actions speak so much louder than words. Does what you do and say match what you believe?

Life, family, and leadership are all about choices. What do you stand for? How have you chosen family activities to match?

~Lead Your Family Like Jesus p. 65

The book has four parts – The Four Leadership Domains – that all interact like a flowchart {Indeed, I made one for my Sunday school class}:

The Heart: The character and the values
The Head: Your viewpoint and beliefs
The Hands: What you actually do
The Habits: How you continually refocus your desire

Throughout the chapters, there are Pause & Reflect sections that invite discussion and real deep down thinking of your motives as a parent.

For example, in the first chapter, we’re asked:

What is Temporary Stuff? What is Important Forever? It encourages us to keep everything in eternal perspective.

Great quotes from other Christian books help drive points home. The authors tell stories of how they dealt with difficult circumstances, how they trained their children, how they modeled Jesus’ upside-down Kingdom values.

At the end of each section are reviews over the Leadership Domain – Points to Ponder. Great summaries!

I believe this book especially appeals to men, to dads. It’s a leadership book. I know my husband’s only reading material is online…or leadership books. This book really targets dads in ways they can understand, especially if they’re not regular readers – with bullets, flow charts, pyramids, headings…all this makes it easier to read and comprehend the material.

It’s a call to action for men to step up and lead. But we wives need to learn to let them and support them, even if we may have a different (not necessarily better!) way. We need to clamp our mouths and listen respectfully to our husbands’ points of view. See Tricia’s video clip below!

Do you help your husband feel comfortable leading your family? Tricia has lots of edifying videos! Subscribe to her YouTube channel so you don’t miss a one.

What’s your family’s vision? It must say who you are (your purpose), where you’re going (your picture of the future), and what will guide your journey (your values). {paraphrased from p.48}

Write it down in your dining room or family room. Get it pretty-fied and frame it!

Rank-ordered values alone won’t accomplish your family’s purpose or turn your picture of the future into reality. You need to translate those values into behaviors.

~Lead Your Family Jesus p.61

Read the interview with the authors:

Click for Part 1 Q&A
Click for Part 2 Q&A

Download and print out this press kit to take to your pastor or Christian ed director. This book is perfect for a sermon series or parenting course! {And I hear they’re working on a curriculum for it right now!}

Check out the Lead Your Family Book Website for more free resources!

Ken, Phil and Tricia will be on the Focus on the Family radio program Monday, March 25, and Tuesday, March 26! You can listen to your local radio station or click the link above.

The book is available now! Purchase your copy of Lead Your Family Like Jesus: Powerful Parenting Principles from the Creator of Families here. It retails for $19.99, but sells for $13.59 on Amazon right now, or $9.99 for Kindle. Download a Sample Booklet to see how amazing it is!

Here’s a great review and giveaway from HEDUA.

Join Tricia Goyer and Tracey Eyster for a Live Webcast event on April 16 at 8 pm EST: Lead, Momma, Lead. Be encourage to “Be the Mom” & “Lead Your Family Like Jesus”! You can register and set a reminder on the Facebook banner below.

And Tricia has joined Good Morning Girls. There’s a Living and Leading like Jesus study going on right now! Register and join me as we read through Luke.

Filed Under: Daddy Time, Living the Word, Mothering Tagged With: Bible study, family, future, Jesus, kids, lead, leadership, parenting

Homeschooling in a Crisis: Deployment

March 14, 2013 By Jennifer Lambert Leave a Comment

Welcome back to 5 Days of Teaching Creatively…

When I hear or see the word “crisis,” I think of something bad, like someone suffering from a disease or having a bad accident. Thankfully, we don’t have any chronic illnesses or special needs in our household. We are blessed to not really experience any crises.

But we are a military family and my husband has deployed and we PCS (move to a new location) every 2-4 years and that calls for crisis-mode. We don’t have to follow a traditional August-June school year in our school and sometimes, we move in the fall, after most schools have returned to their regular routines. We generally school year round to give us more freedom in our schedules, especially during PCS years.

During the purging, organizing, packing, loading, moving, unloading, unpacking, organizing, and set-up that accompanies moves, we only do the barest schooling necessities. I only keep school items that can fit in each child’s backpack since we don’t have much room in planes or the van when we travel from our old home to a new one.

But I think there are many opportunities for life school along the way on these adventures.

When we left Georgia for Texas, Elizabeth was only 4. We had such great fun exploring the rest stop museums and learning along the way, seeing Gulf Coast beaches and then desert…and we had no intention of homeschooling then!

When we left Texas for Hawaii, Liz was almost 7, Tori was 2, and Kate was a newborn. We brought some light learning toys with us on the long place ride and left the heavy school books for the packers. I regret that, since it took a long time for our possessions to arrive by boat. We didn’t receive them until well after all the homeschool co-ops began their “year.” We were still so new to the whole homeschooling world. It was such fun being in such an exotic new place.

When we left Hawaii for Utah, Liz was almost 10, Tori was 4, Kate was 3, and Alex was a newborn. The girls all had backpacks filled to the brim with workbooks, school things, snacks, and fun manipulatives to spend quiet activity time on the super long plane ride. It took a few days to recover from the jet lag and receive our van from the boat. And this is the first location where we’ve had any real seasons. That’s been a learning experience!

My husband deployed only a few months into our current tour. My first winter in my entire life, alone with four kids in a strange state, thousands of miles from any family! Again, we used this as a learning experience. Geography and history about the region my husband lived for 7 months. Politics that led up to the conflicts. The kids and I all learned to rely on each other. My girls helped so much with their baby brother if I didn’t feel well. Liz really stepped up and started being so responsible with everything. Thankfully, we didn’t have too many problems. We experienced some illness and I handled it, taking Alex to the ER for a breathing treatment when he looked rather bluish one evening. The girls and I did fine. We took it one day at a time. The home dynamics were so different without Aaron here. I ran this place like clockwork. We were scheduled to a fault, but I knew that I wouldn’t be able to “hand them off” if I got too tired or frustrated, so I made sure I was super proactive about meals, cleaning, school, everything. I see now that I’m just lazy and rely on my husband too much!

I had no help from Aaron’s co-workers or any military wives or our church or neighbors. {I guess no one really understood that I was alone with 4 kids 24/7 for 7 months – homeschooling, cooking, cleaning, functioning, with no breaks and no help. The only offers of help were people who wanted to babysit my kids so I could go out. I had nowhere to go and no one to go with, so that was moot for me. I really just wanted someone to take the kids for an hour each month to get them ice cream or go to a playground to give me a break at home.}

When our basement FLOODED on Memorial Day morning, I learned what true friends we have in our neighbors. I Skyped with my husband, feeling so helpless and frustrated that I could only keep the kids out the way…while the men of my neighborhood put their fishing trips on hold and rushed over to clear our basement (it’s our school space!) and place everything in the garage and removed the carpet to dry. It was over a month before everything was back to normal. We sifted through the garage for items to complete our lessons. Everything was a mess and we did the best we could, completing our schooling in the kitchen and living room and even on the deck since it was late spring.

So, that’s our crisis situation, and I’m glad it was so mild. I know many people have horror stories of their spouse’s deployments and other crises that I cannot imagine.

Click to see how others homeschool in a crisis!

Click the graphic to enter the giveaway!

Filed Under: Daddy Time Tagged With: crisis, deployment, homeschooling, kids, management, military, parenting, pcs, spouse

Math Monday

January 7, 2013 By Jennifer Lambert 1 Comment

Nursery Rhyme math to coincide with our nursery rhyme readings in history! Most nursery rhymes originated during the Middle Ages and Renaissance to help teach lessons to children.

I got this journal free from a TpT shop. She must’ve taken it down now. She has lots of other fun printables though!

We talked the math problems through and they helped me figure it out. I wrote it on the board and they copied it on their papers.

This one is Humpty Dumpty’s men. Five men…how many fingers did they have to help Humpty Dumpty?

The finished page…drawing…words…equation

Music Math!

Dad taught the count of the musical notes and helped them through counting their notes on these fun math pages.

8th notes…counting by twos. they enjoyed having something different in math.

Check it out here…Early Math with Mozart!

Filed Under: Classical, Daddy Time, Elementary, math, music, notebooking, Tapestry of Grace Tagged With: dad, math, music, notebooking, nursery rhymes

What Your Husband Isn’t Telling You Book Review

November 14, 2012 By Jennifer Lambert 2 Comments

A detailed explanation of the book can be found at David Murrow’s site Church for Men.

About the author:

Church for Men is an organization dedicated to restoring a healthy, life-giving masculine spirit in Christian congregations. It was founded in 2005 by David Murrow, the author of the bestselling book, Why Men Hate Going to Church (Thomas Nelson Publishers).
Murrow’s books have sold more than 100,000 copies, and have been reviewed in newspapers such as the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, the New York Times and many others. Murrow has spoken about the gender gap on the NBC Nightly News, Fox News Channel and PBS. He’s a frequent guest on Christian TV and radio programs including Family Life with Dennis Rainey and Family Talk with Dr. James Dobson. He’s a contributor to several Christian magazines, both print and online.
A sought-after speaker, David Murrow delivered the keynote address for the National Coalition of Men’s Ministries, Presbyterian Men, and Lutheran Men in Mission to name a few. He’s spoken for Promise Keepers and at many other men’s events around the world.
Murrow has written two other books: How Women Help Men Find God (2007) and The Map: The Way of All Great Men (2010).
Murrow spent twenty years honing his skills as a communicator, producing and writing award-winning television documentaries, commercials and specials. He’s contributed material to Discovery Channel, NBC, ABC, CBS, Food Network, Travel Channel, Dr. Phil, The Miss America Pageant and many others.
Murrow has a degree in Anthropology from Baylor University. He’s a layman who’s served as an elder in the Presbyterian Church (USA). He’s married with three children. David and his family spend their summers in Chugiak, Alaska and their winters in Conroe, Texas.
My review:
I find this book fascinating! Of course, I realize it’s mostly a generalization, but I think it offers real insight into the minds of men. I highlighted and underlined and dog-eared quite a lot of it:

I quoted several passages from the book for the Sunday school class my husband and I teach on marriage and child training. Jon Acuff also makes fun of popular Christian contemporary music when you can’t tell the difference in the topic, whether it’s a lover or Jesus.

“Men like to sing ‘doing’ songs, but many of today’s praise songs are ‘being’ songs. the old hymns focused on our mission for God, but praise songs focus on our relationship with God. I know a number of guys who arrive late to church every week because they despise ‘Jesus is my boyfriend’ music” (147).

The men were nodding and the ladies laughed, but all the people understood because our church service is old fashioned, playing the old hymns. We know the songs that confuse us on the radio, those “cross-over” love songs to Jesus…or the lover. Women don’t mind them as much as men do.
I told my class about the “scrapbook” men unwittingly have in their minds of every sexual experience or visual of women stored away and the enemy loves to recall these images at every opportunity (Ch. 7). It’s good for women to understand this and help our husbands and sons to flee from temptation by not providing extra fodder for those scrapbooks. Murrow cites it to be like an alcoholic tempted by everything he sees everywhere. It’s available and easy. Sex is everywhere, bombarding our vision on TV, billboards, the Internet, even the way girls dress at church! <—Click to Tweet!
I explained how men communicate and the wives and mothers of sons had a light bulb moment. One homeschool mom mentioned that this knowledge of how men think and pray and speak will help her teach her sons not to try to copy her ways of speaking, but she can now encourage her husband to pray with her sons and teach them it’s ok not to be so eloquent or use the “prayer speak.” This book can be used to help us teach our sons and help them bond with their dads too!
The book is well-written and straight forward. The couples in my class seemed to agree with everything I mentioned from the book. I highly recommend this book for wives.
Here’s a video from David Murrow about the book:

I received this book free from Bethany House Publishers for my unbiased review.

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Filed Under: Books, Daddy Time, Marriage, Prayer, Reviews

Introducing Camo Dad Cooks!

November 2, 2012 By Jennifer Lambert 1 Comment

That Allume Breakfast Buffet ain’t got nothin on my husband’s breakfasts!

Just look at that glorious yummy hash. Look at it!

Red bell peppers (our garden ones just didn’t do well – they all turned out green and tiny), homegrown onions, cubed ham, and French fries (we were out of potatoes!) We work with what we got!

The perfectly scrambled egg. With Freshly Grated Cheese. Cheese, Gromit!

Oh my.

Can you smell the onions and peppers?

Please visit Camo Dad Cooks and send him some comment love if you like what you see! He has tons of fun ideas for y’all to get in that kitchen with your kids and cook up some yummy real food!

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Filed Under: Daddy Time

BLOG LAUNCH: Camo Dad Cooks

November 1, 2012 By Jennifer Lambert Leave a Comment

My husband was pretty smug about his vlog for Allume. He told me, “I’ll make you famous!” as I was packing for the conference.

I don’t think he was wrong.

He wasn’t even disappointed that he didn’t win the iPad.

He texted me, when I was feeling discouraged about some things: “I’m learning my children. Both of us are getting something out of this conference.”

He wanted to help promote me and my blog. He vlogged out of love for me.

So, I’ve been nagging him for a while to start a blog about food and kids. Dads in the kitchen!

He launched Camo Dad Cooks last night.

Will you celebrate with me?

I’m very excited for this blog. My husband loves to cook and I am blessed to “share” the kitchen with him. He has more patience than I to invite the kids to help with the cooking!

So, what sorts of topics would you like to see covered? Do you have questions about cooking with your children? Do you want recipes or techniques? Do you want to see more vlogging?!

Please join me in a glimpse into Aaron’s world of cooking with our children: Camo Dad Cooks!

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Filed Under: Daddy Time, Reviews

Mission: HACK RLL

October 23, 2012 By Jennifer Lambert 8 Comments

This hacking of my wife’s website was a challenge from her as she is about to embark on a week of Web, Women, and Writing experiences at the Allume Conference.

Disclaimer (For all you legal types): All material utilized here conforms to Fair Use Laws.

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Filed Under: Daddy Time, Mom Stuff

Medieval Feast: Tapestry of Grace Year 2 Unit 1 Celebration

October 17, 2012 By Jennifer Lambert 1 Comment

We didn’t do so well on unit celebrations for our Tapestry of Grace studies last year. It was all new to us and honestly, I just didn’t plan them.
So, we planned a medieval feast as our first unit celebration this year. It coincided with Elizabeth’s 12th birthday. She said it was the best birthday ever. Points for mama!
Thank you, Costco, for the awesome knight and princess costumes!
Alex tried on his costume and immediately wanted it off. Yeah, I can’t imagine eating in shining armor either.

Mercy, no dressing these two alike anymore! I can barely tell them apart!

I had this costume from a party years ago and now Liz can wear it. My, she’s getting tall!

Here’s a copy of our menu I made on Publisher.

Here’s the best picture I could get of the table. We set it with our fancy stuff! We don’t have any pewter plates and I wasn’t using bread trenchers! The flowers were for Liz’s birthday. We kinda dug into the “subtlety” after lunch. It was her birthday cake!

We checked this book out from the library. It had lovely examples of medieval menus and recipes galore! We especially loved the copies of actual recipes in Old English and art depicting cooks during the period.

We had cream of vegetable soup. Tori and Katie loved this and asked for thirds and fourths!

Cedar plank grilled salmon filets. We put brown sugar on top and they were delicious!

Roasted herb chicken. We used Jamie Oliver’s recipe. It is delectable!

Creamed spinach. This is Aaron’s mom’s recipe. Liz and I love it, the others, not so much. But it has BACON!

Alex wanted to be like Mama and Daddy and have his grape juice in a big glass!

We’re excited to start our Renaissance history studies! Already working on what we can do for our unit study in 9 weeks. This one will be hard to beat!

Check out the wonderful world of Tapestry of Grace for yourself!