Time at the Lake, Part 3

After an evening and night of thunderstorms, we woke up to gray skies and a cool breeze.  The high today was only supposed to get into the 70's.  It's been great to be at the lake during the hot spell, but the cool-off is even better.  With it being Sunday, I asked Doug if he would lead us in a family devotional time (the boys didn't understand what that meant, but they were super excited to find out it meant something similar to "home church").  Doug did a fantastic job.  Here's how it went.  First we discussed Proverbs 26:21.  "As charcoals to embers and as wood to fire, so is a quarrelsome person to kindling strife."  Can you tell with been having some issues between the brothers?  Doug couldn't have chosen a better topic.  Not to mention the object lesson of this verse meant that the boys got to make fire with their Dad!  Doug did a great job of continuing to underscore how easy it was to light the fire and get it going, just like how easy it is to cause strife and anger with a few simple quarrelsome words.  Here's Doug sharing the verse.

All it takes is a little light to the kindling...

And there you have it, a full-blown fire (or anger pot which is what I've been seeing a lot lately between these two brothers!).

We enjoyed sitting around the fire together as a family.  Well, Doug and I did.  The boys liked throwing things into the fire and watch them burn.  Classic!

I did snap a pic of my big boy, Koen as he was lighting the end of his poker stick on fire.  Sometimes I am just so struck of how quickly this little boy is growing up.

I had some loves with Tav who, although he is also growing up into quite the big boy, often strikes me as still such a babe who needs my attention, snuggles and grace.  

Now, Doug had a second part of the devotional for us.  I really appreciated this because it was a positive application of how to live out the first part.  How should we act then if we aren't to be quarrelsome?  Psalm 133:1 says, "How wonderful and pleasant it is when brothers live together in harmony!"  Well, hmmm, we have a fire here.  What could we do to show putting two things together in harmony that could be wonderful and pleasant?  That's right...S'mores!  Now, I'm not a big fan of S'mores myself (or of the thought of my children eating marshmallows for that matter), but for the sake of the Gospel, I went along with it.  Koen totally got the message and Tavin just totally understood that he was getting a fun new treat.  Here they are toasting the marshmallows.

Tav's first taste.  Looks like he's pondering (probably wondering why Mommy is letting him have this at 10am).

And we've got a sticky mess here!

It's official...he likes it and he's quite adorable eating it.

Anyways, hats off to husband for taking care of "home church" or family devotional this Sunday.  It was a lot of fun and I hope the boys learned something (or at least we have something we can refer back to the next time we have to talk about not stirring up anger).  After our fun activity time, the boys headed out on the paddleboat for awhile with Doug.  They brought me back these amazing flowers growing from lily pads.  Aren't they gorgeous?

Later after Penn's morning nap we took a bike ride/walk down to the cute little town.  Doug had another tree photo shoot with the boys.

When we got home Koen wanted to go swimming.  So we let him. =)  Thankfully we don't have to go too!  Tavin and Doug hung out in the paddleboat trying not to get hit by Koen's big splashes.  After Koen was pretty much frozen we had lunch and then we all just hung out before naptime.  The little guys are sleeping now and Koen's enjoying a DVD.  Koen and I will be taking a scooter walk momentarily and then it's the final packing/cleaning frenzy before we head back to the Burgh.  It's been a great time away and we are sad to leave, but thankfully we do always love getting back home to our routine.  It's Koen's last week of Kindergarten amazingly enough, so summer break is fast approaching!