Celebrating with Abigail

This past weekend we celebrated with Abigail…we celebrated her Christian birthday. I posted a little about this back in February in this post: celebrating your kid’s Christian birthdays but I thought I would share what we did on her special day this year. We actually celebrated a day early since it fell on Memorial Day this year, that way we had two days of celebration…

Jeff and I spend a few moments the night before writing notes to her on heart cutouts about ways we see Jesus living through her: evidence of her faith, things she should be proud of, and behaviors we hope to reinforce. She loves waking up to these hanging from her doorway…it is a fun way to start her day.

The table is also set (I use my Valentine plates-double duty again). I also use a heart punch to make small heart confetti and write her favorite verses on hearts that I tape to skewers and use as the centerpiece. The main part of the decoration is her album that I made on the night she asked Jesus into her heart. She loves to read through and remember that day. (This is my favorite part of the day). We also always buy her a new Adventures in Odyssey CD to listened to. This is one of her favorite things to do and we love listening to them just as much as she does…it is a win-win. If you have never listened to them I would highly recommend them. They cover a ton of great topics and are great things to listen to with your children and then discuss with them. You can pick them up locally at Northwestern Bookstore or online at Focus on the Family.

The main thing we try to focus on for this day is trying to teach her ways to help her strengthen her relationship with the Lord. We want to provide tools and ideas on ways she can use to help her stay connected to the Vine and grow on her own. So we try to keep most of the activities of the day geared toward Christian activities. We are huge movie buffs so we have numerous videos that she can choose from to watch for our family movie night. We also love board games and have accumulated a few Christian versions of some popular games, and they often lead to good discussion. We played Answer That (a board game having to do with Adventures in Odyssey) before bedtime. We ended the night by reading from a new devotional we got called Did You Know Devotions. It is a devotional right up Abigail’s alley…fun little bits of trivia with a biblical perspective.

I love these celebrations, not only for our girls, but for me. I need reminders of what I should be putting into my mind and how I should be spending my time. I once heard a quote that went something like this, “You cannot impart that which you do not possess.” That is a very powerful statement and makes me really think as a mother how am I spending my day and what I am hoping to impart onto my girls.

I would love to hear your ideas on how you celebrate the everyday with your kids. Share a comment below…

Happy Thursday!