She Don't Know She's Beautiful...and that's what makes her beautiful?

I love being the mother of a daughter.  In just a few short weeks, I get to add an "s" to the end of that word, and having two little girls has really stirred my heart over something lately- something I can't seem to shake.

When My Izzy Belle was born, she had the most hair I'd ever seen on a baby.  It was past her ears long, and full and thick and dark and lovely.  She was lovely.  Everyone told me so.

Now that she's 2, she is so full of personality that sometimes she just bursts.  She is funny and charming in a way that I've rarely seen in a child.  There is no doubt she is her father's daughter.  She gets her charisma from him.  (I'm awkward and uncomfortable with people...it's sad, really.)  On top of that, she still has her long, beautiful locks that now go down to the middle of her back, big, beautiful and expressive brown eyes, and a skin tone people pay big bucks to try and get.  Plus she's a teeny little thing.

I'm sure you can imagine that she gets complimented on her looks or how cute or funny she is all the time.  For a long time, I took so much pride in this.  "That's my daughter!"  I would squeal with glee in my mind as people fawned all over her.  I would imagine the suitors who wouldn't be near worthy enough for my baby.  I just knew she would find success in this world because she would be the total package- brains and beauty with a personality to boot!

Then one day as I was putting a shirt on over my ever-growing baby bump, looking in the mirror disgusted at the fact that this shirt, too, did not fit, I realized I'd lost it.  I wasn't....skinny....anymore.  Sure, I'd had two kids and another on the way, but I always felt confident in who I was because I had this tiny little body I could fit into whatever clothes I wanted.  That was no more.  In this moment of despair, I found great peace in scripture.  "Charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised." (Proverbs 31:30)  I needn't fret over my failing appearance.  I feared the Lord, and that was above all else.

Uh oh.  I have daughters.

Of course I think my sweet girl is beautiful, and her charm is most certainly appealing, but my prayer for my own heart would be that I would show her that fearing the Lord is so far above both of those things.  I pray I would nurture into her the fact that what this world finds important is fleeting.  I want her to be praised...not envied.

Solids and Liquids.

One of my very favorite thing about homeschooling is that we aren't limited by much.  We get to learn what we want to learn and teach what we want to teach whenever the mood strikes.  This very thing happened this week, and it was such a fun little reminder of why we are doing this.  I mean, what better time to teach something than when our kiddo actually wants to learn it??

Isaiah started asking why ice melts.  Then he wanted to know why popsicles need to be frozen before we can eat them.  Well, hello opportunity to teach.  Nice to meet you.  Of course, the hubs needed to make it more fun...and I needed to make it yummy.  So as a compromise, I led in making chocolates and Daddy lead in making molded crayons.

After searching high and low...and not on the internet...for a mold of the alphabet, I finally found one on Brookside.

First, we needed to make a list of all the names we wanted to make.  We just had to make some for our friends.

I got these wonderful little spots of deliciousness from the same store I got our mold from.  It's the smoothest, yummiest imported chocolate around.  It can also be purchased at the chocolate shop in downtown Broken Arrow...so worth it.  We talked about how the little wafers looked.  We tried to fit the into our mold.  We even tasted them.  Then we melted them in the microwave.  (Be super careful if you try this because chocolate burns really really easily, and once it's burned, there's nothing that can be done besides trashing it...unfortunately)

Once it was all melted, we poured it into the mold.  We noted how it looked and fit into the letters now and felt very different...but it tasted the same.  Okay, so maybe I tasted a bit more than necessary. We let it sit and re-harden.

While we waited on the chocolate to become a solid again, we ripped the paper off of the crayons.  Izzy was shockingly the best at this job...Ultimately, we did the same experiment with the crayons as we did with the chocolate.  Melted, poured, let it sit and solidify.  Awesomeness.

Once our chocolates were set, we popped them out of the molds.  Voila!  Names....yummy, yummy names.