Call It What You Want...

The Glorious Day for which we have been waiting for weeks and months finally arrived, and Mark is no longer one hand's worth of years.

Here are the boys this morning before school. One of them was willing to participate in the photo in the spirit Mommy intended.

Yesterday we had a few friends over for a little birthday fun.
First was some outside play:


(Asking only three friends was to improve the chances of no one getting hurt. We still pushed the limits a little...)

Then it was inside for the fabulous LEGO cake, made by the mother Martha Stewart strives to emulate:



Then, after some pictures, a photo of the friends together:


(These boys have been in Sunday School together for years. Aidan (l) and Mark were also in preschool together; Samuel (2nd from r)'s mom and I were joyously pregnant until September together; Logan (r) and Mark have been practically inseparable since he appeared in Sunday School a couple years ago. They are a pretty tight group of boys and all get along great, if not a little rowdy!)

Today, for the actual birthday, I got to pay a visit to Mrs. Spear's Kindergarten class for a little birthday snack. The class sang Happy Birthday to Mark, and got to help serve the snack. He also got a couple little prizes -- a pencil and a Hinkle Creek Elementary School flashlight -- and was, in general, feted in grand kindergarten style.


Here is Mark with 23 of his "best friends" -- two children were absent, and, as Mrs. Spear says, "Miss a day, miss a lot", had to miss the fun. The long blonde hair in the red shirt at the very bottom of the picture belongs to a little girl who lives nearby and who gave me a big hug when I came into the room. :)

There were presents, there is going to be another helping of cake here in a few minutes, birthday calls, and a wonderful visit from Grandma AJ for the week, and Mark became six in style.

Pretty awesome.

This summer, the boys' preschool Sunday School classes have had an Old Testament theme -- which is cool, because I really enjoy the obscure stories of that part of the Bible. Everyone knows about the prodigal son and Saul's conversion and subsequent name change to Paul and so on...

But what about Ehud and Eglon? Jael and Sisera?

I am please to announce that, while steering mostly clear of those stories of blood and gore, the boys have learned about "the hand that belongs to no BODY!" (Daniel and the handwriting on the wall), "the king who was a little boy and who found the Book of God", and, this week, Nehemiah and the broken walls.

In church Sunday, we stayed for Robert's baptism in the 11 a.m. service and the boys heard Mr. Joe talk about whether putting a Bible under your pillow at night when you sleep helps you learn more about God. (The consensus? They're not sure.)

The other morning when I was helping Mark make his bed, I found his Little Boy's Bible Story Book under his pillow.
"Did you put this here to learn more about the Bible like Mr. Joe did?" I asked.
No, he told me. "I kept looking for the story of the broken walls and Nehemiah, and I couldn't find it anywhere. I just kept looking!"

Well. As you might imagine, the Little Boy's Bible Story Book does not have the story of Nehemiah and the broken walls in it. Or anything else about Nehemiah. Not even Zerubbabel. Possibly not even Deborah, and she's not even all that obscure.

It makes me think back to two things from childhood:
 * A Bible story book we had with the most gory pictures. Mom cut out John the Baptist's head on a platter, but there were still soldiers with swords killing babies, Solomon holding up a baby by the ankle with a sword ready to divide it between two fighting mothers, and a Hebrew slave painting the doorposts (that inspired many "protective" activities for our own house). Too bad that one has drifted from our family collection...
* A song has come to mind, but I'm short of the ending, and, possibly, the point:
              Shamgar had an ox-goad
              David had a sling
              Dorcas had a needle
              Rahab had a string...
(The ending, anyone? The point, clearly, is that God can use what we have, and we should use what we have for God.)