A is for Autumn (and Anxiety)

Hi, I'm Brooke from The Intentional Momma blog. I want to thank Danette for having me! She is such an encouragement to me, and I'm thankful for her!

As an educator with a toddler at home, I am constantly dreaming up new activities, and today I am sharing my newest educational freebie--my A is for Autumn Color-and-Trace preschool pack! Featuring apples, ants, and acorns in autumn colors, your little ones can practice tracing, counting, coloring, and matching with this super simple printable mini-workbook.

As for me, the A-word that I find myself facing so much as an adult is the word anxiety. I find myself worrying so often! A verse that I must constantly reflect upon is one you probably know. But I'll leave you with this one other printable, also in autumn colors, in hopes that it might be an encouragement to you if you tend to be a worrier like me!

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an Age of Innocence

Have you ever wondered why kids seems to be so much tougher these days?  I work with many students every week and there are a few qualities that most of them have in common.

Most are extremely intelligent.

Most are extremely strong willed.
Most are emotionally stressed.

Most are disconnected from reality.

Most are under motivated.
Most are easily impassioned. 

These characteristics all seem to fall on the post 9/11 generation.

True, this is not your normal memory post spilling over the events of where I was or how I felt or what went through my mind as I watched the second plane fly straight into the second tower.  The only thing that I will say about that day is I was young enough and naive enough to believe that this tragedy had to be some kind a queer error.  No one would openly attack the United States of America.  It was an accident.  A mistake.

I grew up quick that year.

I may have grown up that year, but it seems as if this generation just behind me was born "grown up."

They were born with their innocence lost.  They were born in the midst of two wars.  They were born into a society that fought against itself.  They were born in the age of a cover up. (No, I'm not a truther.)  They were born to see and to question and to doubt.

As the helplessness and godlessness of our culture continues to saturate our society, they are, literally attacked by adults and other students who want nothing more than to destroy their lives.  In my mind I have this mental image of little monsters and big monsters chasing these students around the halls of their campuses and into our homes and just sucking the life and soul out of them.

They have to be strong...or maybe emotionally distant is a better description.  They are under attack.

And that is just...well,...sad.

To think that they will never believe that a humanity has an immense capability to love and to do good.  To think that they will never know what true peace on earth could look like.  They will always question and always doubt.  They will always analyze and look for the cracks in the truth.  They will relate the present heavenly Father's love with the "love" of their absent earthly father.  They will justify their mother's lack of affirmation with the belief that they are worth nothing.

But in spite of these negiative possibilities we must remember this: they are only possibilities.  Maybe God put these characteristics in this generation knowing the challenges of the age they would live in.  Maybe He gave them the strength to stand up against the injustice.  Maybe He gave them the wisdom to ask the tough questions and demand answers that make sense and work.  Maybe He chose this generation to be the greatest of all.

I don't have the privilege of being a parent just yet, but that is a blessing that I often pray for.  When I do have children entrusted to my care, I hope that God grants me the wisdom to see the possibilities of their lives...to see that they are a generation destined for greatness and not calamity.  

May I challenge you with this thought?  When your children are driving you to the brink of insanity with their questions and their strong willed spirit think how God could use that for His glory.  How He could literally change the course of history with one person who is sold out and dedicated to the purpose of restoring justice to the world. 

The events of 9/11 may have robbed be of my innocence, but it will never rob me of my hope--a hope for a brighter peaceful future.  A hope for a world full of life, love, and children.

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Say Hello to Misty from Monkeys and Tutus!

My name is Misty and I blog over at Monkeys & Tutus! I am an Army Wife stay at home mommy to 3 kids under 3! My blog is a compilation of all the fun and chaos that goes along! Here are my 3 crazy beautiful babies!

I am so thrilled that Danette asked me to do a guest post for her! I have been debating on what to share with you all and after my manic Monday I learned some important things about blogging and some great life lessons in return and that's what I'm going to share with ya today.

In the past month I have been working really hard to grow my blog and make it something that people would want to read, a place other toddler mommies can go to find fun ideas and I have poured my heart and soul and a ton of time and money into making it just that.

Monday while looking at my stats I saw something weird, I had noticed it before but wasn't really sure and when I did some investigation and then got really freaked out. It basically looked like most of page view were coming from a referring sight that turned out to be a Russian Porn site! As you can imagine I had a total freak out mostly because I post a lot about my family, lots of pics of my kidos etc. Long long long story short (you can read full story here) I had that massive freak out only to find out it was just what is known as referrer spam! In the complete haste of my panic I went a little crazy! I deleted every post that had a pic of my kids on it.  I spent hours taking down pics of my kids from everywhere and I was on the verge of shutting down the blog.  I made twitter posts, facebook posts and a blog post saying I had been hijacked by pervs and I was shutting it down.  I felt sick and distraught and thought my blogging life was over.  (cue dramatic music, ha) In my crazy hasty overreaction not only did I delete a lot of important posts, a lot of hard work and spend countless hours worrying I ignited fear in a ton of people because believe it or not, a ton of bloggers have this crazy referrer spam in their stats site.  Luckily I had a lot of amazing support and people that helped me find the solution.  I was overwhelmed with the sweetness of my readers.  I got links, posts saying don't quit and lots of help to calm my irrational fears!


The purpose for me telling you my crazy story is two fold. First, if you notice 'pregolum' or anything like that in your referring urls or sites ignore it! Do not click on it :)  Its just stupid spam. Referrer spam (lots of links and info on referrer spam here) Clicking on it only makes more spam come in and makes it worse. The more you click the more you get. The more you ignore it the less you will see it.

Second, it taught me a valuable lesson about hastiness, mercy and grace!

It is not good to have zeal without knowledge,

nor to be hasty and miss the way. (Proverbs 19:2 NIV84)

Ignorant zeal is worthless; haste makes waste. (Proverbs 19:2 MSG)

Proverbs 14:29 Amp
He who is slow to anger has great understanding, but he who is hasty of spirit exposes and exalts his folly.

Those verses pretty much sum up what happened to me! I was very 'zealous' if you want to put it that way!  I was passionate about the reasoning behind my madness and hastiness.   Untimely I was worried about the safety of my kids but there were a lot of different ways I could have handled it. A lot of easier ways that I could have taken care of things until I had time to do my research.

Proverbs 29:20 Amp

Do you see a man who is hasty in his words? There is more hope for a [self-confident] fool than for him.

The same goes in many areas of most of our day to days.  From small things to huge things, if any of you are like me, its all to easy to jump to the bad conclusion and run with it before knowing the whole story.

Its easy to fly off the handle at someone in traffic, its easy to judge the lady screaming at her kids in the store, its easy to get mad at someone for being late, its easy to think the worst instead of assuming the best in every day situations even when we don't know the whole story.


Did you ever hear the story about the man on the plane with 3 loud rambunctious kids and he is just sitting there not even paying attention to them.  The other passengers are getting angry because the kids are being awful.  Another passenger finally says something to the man about needing to control his kids and he says I am sorry their mother just died and I am still in shock and I have no idea how to tell them.  

Of course the passenger (as well as most people reading this) have a total paradigm shift.

Same goes with someone cutting you off in traffic, someone being unnecessarily rude to you etc.  Its much easier to be hasty and get angry with out knowing the situation. 


I learned a valuable lesson in being hasty and my readers taught me a valuable lesson in mercy and grace.  It would have been so easy for them to just say ok and unfollow and be done with it or to say omg shes crazy and way to over reactive but so many of them reached out and offered support. 


Every day we do things that go against God, be it little or large, we all sin and we all fall short of His glory but He is always right there offering us grace and mercy.  How sweet is it that no matter how hasty we are in our day to days Gods love and mercy are always new.  

Matthew 5:7 Amp

Blessed (happy, ^[a]to be envied, and ^[b]spiritually prosperous—^[c]with life-joy and satisfaction in God’s favor and salvation, regardless of their outward conditions) are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy!

Thank you, Danette for the wonderful opportunity to share some ramblings from my heart!  

Thank you, Misty!  I appreciate Misty and her willingness to guest post.  Don't forget that tomorrow is the launch of the Blue Jay Boutique!  Hope to see you then.

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Parenting Series: Nurturing Creativity

The following is an article written by my mother, Linda Dillon.

Linda has been a mom for 29 years to many children.  Some have been her own but she has raised, or helped raise, hundreds of kids into adults.  Linda spends most of her time serving in the local church where her husband pastors, but, like most women, she enjoys a good pair of shoes, a cup of coffee, and shopping.

Creativity is a lost art in children today.  It's almost sickening to realize that we raise our children to be entertained and to absorb rather than to give and to make the world a better place.  Parents are always telling and asking me about things to do with their kids so they can avoid hearing their children complain of boredom.  (Being bored is a post within itself and I'll have to write about that another time.)  But regardless, of this culture standard to entertain and pander to our kids we are only hurting them and the creative experience.  We can use our influence to impact our children's lives and the lives of children around us.  We can nurture the creative mind that each person is born with.  In turn, that nurturing can help change the world.

I was reminded of this fact a few days ago while I was at work.  One of my young friends, Miss G,  began babysitting for my employer.  Miss G grew up as the youngest of three girls and her mom believed in encouraging creativity and active imaginations in her girls.   Miss G was hired to baby sit for my my employers two year old grandson, Baby M.  Baby M has absolutely everything any two year old could want.  He has toys and age appropriate video games and movies.  His grandmother gives him love and respect.  Seriously, there's nothing more a child could want.  But on this day those toys and video games and movies just weren't quite enough for Baby M.

While watching a movie, Baby M began throwing his toys--all his toys--violently across the room.  Miss G did her best to control the toy throwing, but when she just couldn't anymore, she did the next best thing.  She used her imagination.  She gathered all the blankets in the house and began to build a tunnel all over the furniture.  Obviously, this behavior became distracting to Baby M.

"You're crazy.  You are playing with yourself." he said to Miss G.  He's mind, though young, was not geared or open to this game. 

After Miss G finished she had Baby M follow her through the tunnel.  It was great!  Imagine going through a jungle with monkeys chasing close at your tails or hiding from dinosaurs or exploring a deep, dark cave.  

I was taken back to the days when my four children were little and we did the same thing.  We actually built a tent and slept out all night in the den of the house.  We played circus and had music and dancing.  We threw candy to each other.  Greatest of all was when they were really small getting the pots and pans out and playing them as drums.

Maybe we've lost the art of being creative ourselves.  We depend on teachers, magazine articles, and news recaps to tell us, show us, and inform us what to do.  In same cases they even do it for us.  What about putting your "thinking cap" on and coming up with something great to do with your kids this week that doesn't cost a dime?  And I'm not saying put the kids in the backyard and let them play on the trampoline either.  Spend time with them not money on them.

Dust off the brain and go for it.  Your kids will love your creative side and they will learn to be creative themselves.  You. Can. Do. This.

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Giveaway? Who doesn't love a giveaway...Parenting Week #3

Several of my blog friends are doing giveaways.  I love giveaways.  I really love winning.  I think most people are the same way, but because I love giveaways, I also know it's hard to enter every giveaway that comes up in your Twitter feed.  Most of the time I'm checking into Twitter on my phone and there's no way to enter all of them from there.

http://www.chasingoursunshine.com/2012/06/june-group-giveaway-day.html

http://dalaynadillon.blogspot.com/2012/06/they-really-are-my-friends.html

http://tatertotsandjello.com/2012/06/outdoor-inspiration-and-100-lowes-gift-card-giveaway.html#comment-186556

Today I wanted to share a sermon from Willie George and Church on the Move.  Having grown up watching The Gospel Bill Show, I have long admired and respected Willie George's ministry and the impact that he has on the next generation.

Recently I was snooping on their church website (sometimes I do that), and came across this sermon that he had preached the previous weekend.  As I was watching, I quickly discovered that although this is specifically for parent's he had some encouraging information for people in any kind of authority.

Hope this message helps you because I know it inspired me. :)

In The Zone - Part 5 from Church on the Move on Vimeo.

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Parenting Series Week #2

Recently, I asked Pam King to participate in this summer's parenting series.  Before I share her advice with you let me give you some background on this woman of God.

Jim and Pam have been in full-time ministry since 1976. In addition to their calling of evangelism, they have been active in overseas evangelism, church planting and  development, humanitarian relief, and orphanages. 

Since 1992 the ministry has established over 280 DVD formatted Bible schools, and sponsored nearly 200 new church plants in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. The most recent church plants have been in Israel.

In 1995 the Kings established a humanitarian fund focused on answering the cries of the less fortunate. One result has been establishing House of Joy orphanage in Kahovka, Ukraine. The King’s ministry travels have taken them to places such as Brazil, Cuba, Russia, Siberia, Ukraine, South Korea, China, Israel, Romania, India, North Korea, Turkey and many others.

Their overseas ministry is focused on church planting and development, and humanitarian aid. In addition to their overseas ministry, Jim and Pam are actively committed to an extensive speaking schedule in churches and conferences across the nation. Jim and Pam have hosted scores of teams on overseas missions trips and Holy Land tours.

The ministry maintains offices in Kiev and Kahovka, Ukraine and Tulsa, OK. Jim and Pam have two adult children, Drew and Natalie.

There is a funny thing about us parents.....we think we know more than God.  

We all have a plan for our children.  Well, I should say that I had a plan for my children.  The plan for Drew was to go to ORU and that he did.  He first enrolled in another university that offered him a baseball scholarship.  After accepting and moving his things to Kansas, he quickly realized that was not what God had planned for him.  He packed his things and returned to Tulsa to attend Oral Roberts University.  My plan for Natalie was to go to ORU, meet a nice young man, get married and go into ministry together.

As our children, Drew and Natalie, were growing up, we instilled in them the fact, “You will go to college.”  Drew graduated from Oral Roberts University.  During Natalie’s senior year of high school, she came to us and said, “Would you release me from college next year to go to the Dream Center?”  There is a Dream Center in Tulsa, OK,  so we automatically thought that was what she was talking about.  We said, “Sure.”  We will contact our friend that is over the Tulsa Dream Center.  NO!  She meant the Dream Center in Los Angeles, CA which is located in the heart of Los Angeles where the gangs are, which is a very bad area.  

We decided that we would take Easter weekend, fly out to Los Angeles to show her the LA Dream Center so she could see just how rough an area it really was.  My purpose was for her to see it and realize that wasn’t the place for her.  So, Jim, Natalie and I flew to LA and visited the Dream Center.  We went to church at Angelus Temple on Sunday morning.  There you have the rich and famous but on the other hand, you have the former gang members and homeless people.  As I looked around that morning sitting in the church service, I had a conversation with God.  My conversation went like this, “Now God...my daughter is called to ministry, has a great personality, is fun loving, talented and beautiful.”  “I have a plan for her and that plan is to go to ORU, meet a nice young man, get married and go into ministry together.”  “I’m sure, God, there are other young girls that you can call out here to the LA Dream Center.”  My thought was some other girls that aren’t as talented as my daughter.  I am just being transparent here.  God began showing me the spiritual pride and vanity in my heart.  Yuck!  

Then God started talking to me.  He said, “Haven’t you raised your children to hear the voice of God?”  I replied, “Yes, Lord!”  God responded to me, “Well, Natalie has heard the voice of God and now you are trying to talk her out of it.”  At that moment I knew that God’s plan for Natalie was better than mine and that God loved her more than I love her.  At that moment I released her to the plan of God with full confidence that God’s plan for her was better than my plan and that God loved her more than I love her.  

God gives us children.  We dedicate and give them back to God.  Our job as parents is to give them guidance and teach them to hear the voice of God and follow His leading, as they belong to God first.  

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Parenting Series Week 1

This month I'm starting a parenting series.  These post will be about every other week and will last through the summer.  Now you might be thinking why would someone with no kids want to do a parenting series.  Well, quite frankly, I believe very much in the importance of family and in raising children with both roles of a father and mother.  Further, I look forward to the privilege of child raising with much anticipation and I want to be as prepared as much as possible for when God gives me that responsibility.  (Right now I'm working on the privilege of marriage, but all in due time.)

Today we have a special guest blogger...my mom.  You can read more about my mothering experience with her here.)  Linda Dillon is her name and child raising is her game.  Over the course of her 53 years she has raised 4 children into adults.  But besides her own kids she has been a godly influence in many children and young adults lives.  As a pastor's wife she pioneered a youth ministry for the past 3 years.  That youth ministry is now fully functional and thriving with over 35 students, van ministry, and youth pastor.

Just one quick plug before her advice...Don't forget to enter into "All My Love for All My Days" very first EVER giveaway.  That giveaway will be running for an entire week and we're working on day 2.  Help me spread the word!  Here's a link to the post.

Now I give you Linda Dillon.

"When Danette asked me to write for her something on parenting I was trying to think of some profound saying or statement to make but I realized that some may just be starting their journey as a parent.  Others maybe thinking of planning their families.  Still others possibly are well into the parenting of their kids and may just need help.  So I must go back to the beginning where we started...reading.

No, no.  I'm not encouraging reading information books (while I'm sure they will help), but reading the Bible to the child whether born or not.  My husband and I started reading to Danette as soon as we realized we were expecting.  Each and everyday!  Out loud!  The Word of God came alive in her life at a young age and it helped us also.  It gave us peace in the night when we were up because fo those nasty ear infections.  It gave us comfort when the doctor told us they were running tests for meningitis.  It gave us wisdom to tell her no to things that might have lead her the wrong direction.  And the same was true for all our children.

Reading helped us bond with Danette, Dallas, Destiny, and Dalayna, and God.  We gained the wisdom and understanding we needed to raise our kids to be respectful, loving, kind people.  We also learned how to point them to Christ.  So read to them, the Word of God, and you will not just make it, you will thrive."

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