Bevell's Hardware Train Display

I was blessed with having the week between Christmas and New Year's off of work and Josh and I spent the whole week between Great-grandparent's and Poppa & Grammy's. David got most of the week off, too so we had lots of family time. It was a good little vacation.

While we were visiting Poppa & Grammy's, they took Josh (and I tagged along) to the model train display at Bevell's Hardware in Blackstone, VA. It was amazing! I don't even know how many hours are spent setting up the display every year (yes! They take it down and put it back up the next year!!) Josh loved it! And the adults enjoyed it, too. Here are some photos and a video from our trip.

The drive-in display. There was really a movie playing!

Baseball game! Josh really liked this one.

Part of the military scene

The circus scene. This was one of my favorites (although he could have left the clowns in their boxes) :)

 The display is in a hardware store so after checking out the awesome train display, we looked around and found a bear! (Well, half of a bear). Josh really like the guns and ammo and asked what just about everything was. Luckily by this point I had passed him off to his Grammy and she had to answer all his questions. ;) I was just letting her enjoy his curiosity. No need to keep it all for myself. ha!

Request for Suggestions

A friend and I have been throwing around the idea of putting together a Bible study/small group for ourselves (and a few other friends) and need some help with deciding what "curriculum" to use (should we decide to use some). I thought that along with our own research, it would be nice to hear from other ladies who may have used certain books, etc in the past, either on their own or in their group, with suggestions on a few good options. One of you out there may know of something fabulous that we don't happen to run across on our own. Any help would be appreciated! Thanks in advance. :)

Prayers

We've been letting Josh ask the blessing at dinner for a long while now. They say grace at school before Breakfast, Lunch and even snacks and say the standard "God is great, God is good…" prayer. It's easy for the kids to learn and teaches them to praise and thank in a prayer, which is important (in my opinion) ;) Josh will say the prayer but all he gets is "God geat, God geat, Amen." Several weeks ago I explained to Josh that when we pray we need to thank God for many things, not just our food and I know he is old enough now to say his own "real" prayers. It's been interesting for sure (it always is when he's around!) and we've gotten to hear some very authentic prayers. I haven't written all of them down (but am going to from now on) so here are some I remember and some I've written for remembering.

"Thank you for our families, for our friends, for our Jesus, our food. Amen"

"Thank you for my mommy, my daddy, my Will, my Jesus, my food. Amen" (Our friend, Will was over for dinner that night.)

"Thank you for my mommy, my daddy, my Jonathon and Sara, for Jesus, my food. Amen" (Jonathon and Sara are good friends of ours. We've become fast friends and Josh LOVES his "wiends"!!)

"Thank you for us families, for Mrs Tanya, MacKayla, Torrey Brown, Marquis, Anthony, our food. Amen." (He prayed this the first day back to school after a week long break for Christmas. Mrs Tanya is his teacher. Anthony is her husband, Marquis is her son (and Josh's favorite name, as he wants to name every new baby Marquis. MacKayla is the other child at his school and Torrey is a former classmate.)

"Thank you for Mommy, Daddy, Gammy, Poppa, Gammy, Jesus, us food. Amen" (He prayed this while at Poppa and Grammy's house. Grammy was happy she got mentioned twice! ;) )

J's end of year interview

I took the idea from my friend, Jennifer, to interview J at the end of 2011 and record his answers to compare to next year and those after that. I wrote down exactly what he said and translated as needed. ;)

1) What is your name?: Josh David White (He always leaves off the "ua" in his first name)

2) When is your birthday?: Next year

3) What is your favorite color?: Brown

4) What is your favorite toy?: Opto Pime (Optomis Prime)

5) What is your favorite food?: Chicken

6) How do you like to spend your time?: Pay (Play)

7) What is your favorite Holiday?: Monkey

8) Who is your teacher?: Mrs Tanza (Mrs Tanya)

9) Who is your best friend?: MacKayla (She's the other child at his "school" and they really are good buddies)

10) What is your favorite song?: Baby Jesus (Away in a Manger; he has always requested this song at bedtime)

11) What is your favorite book?: Baby Jesus (The Nativity Story as read by Grammy on his recordable book from Hallmark)

12) What was your favorite part about last year?: Mines bike

13) What are you looking forward to for this year?: Mines shield (Uncle Matt painted a sword and shield for him for Christmas)

I enjoyed hearing his answers. It will be interesting to see how much his answers change over the years. He also kept asking me what I was doing. Why you ask me dat, Mommy?! :)