The Tommerdahls: January Family Fun Nights and Colton's 1st Spiritual Birthday

As you all know, each Friday night we have a family night with some sort of theme or activity, in order to be intentional about family time.

For January, our nights were:

Memory Lane
Game Night
Roller Rink Night
Colton Cooks (Colton Spiritual Birthday)

Memory Lane

For our family fun night on New Years Day, we took a trip down memory lane. We hooked up the computer to the TV and looked at old pictures/videos from the blog, taking turns between each kid viewing important milestones. All three kids LOVED it! I did too :).

Game Night

On our second January Family Fun Night, we played Charades for kids, which was the perfect game for ages 5,3,1 and we had so much fun!

Here are some action shots, followed by a short video...

Larkyn was able to participate, as I would whisper a word she knew into her ear (here it was tummy) and tell her to point to it so the others could guess :).

Here is a video of each person acting out one item...

Roller Rink Night

The kids were so excited as they watched this night get closer on our family fun night calendar! We went to Skateville. Larkyn loved watching the lights from in her stroller as she went around the rink. The other two kids improved quite a bit as they practiced throughout the evening and I was so proud of their perseverance! They also especially loved the hotdogs, icees, and mini donuts :).

Here is a video of the "speed" that we skated ;)

And here are some pics...

Colton's 1st Spiritual Birthday/Colton Cooks

We are so blessed to have TWO of our kids trust Jesus as their Savior to date. For both of their spiritual birthdays, the closest family fun night was a chance for them to serve the family and cook for them. Colton had SO much fun with this and literally talked about it for months! We looked at Pinterest together and he chose all new recipes to try: Cinnamon Roll Pancakes, Bacon Egg Muffins, Chocolate Peanut Butter Banana Shake, and Berries, with chocolate cake with green frosting for dessert :). He spent a good 2 hours in the kitchen making each item with me and we both loved the one-on-one time. I will say, it was a LOT of work for me letting him cook...we had to dump a batch of eggs after he dumped quite a bit of salt and pepper in them (haha!) and he poured many of our blueberries down the drain trying to dump them in the strainer to wash them! The dishes piled up as we used quite a few to help him do each thing as much as he could, all by himself. HOWEVER, he literally loved every minute and had such a huge smile as he surprised the family with his delicious meal.

We sang to Colton. We also read the blog and watched the videos from the day he chose to follow Jesus (See blog: February 2nd, 2015). Colton and I discussed many times throughout the week the meaning of his spiritual birthday, the importance of what Christ did on the cross, and more. I love these conversations and I love his heart. Here is a quick video of him at dinner explaining his spiritual birthday.

Each spiritual birthday we try to give the kids one small gift that will encourage them to grow in their faith and knowledge of Jesus Christ. This year, for Colton, we chose a book on the armor of God.

He loved looking through it and we read it together before bed. I am so proud of this little guy and I LOVE our daily Bible time together (right after Larkyn goes down for her nap) as we read from a new Bible he got for Christmas (The Action Bible). We are currently in the time of Moses and I am learning right along with him. This is seriously one of the best kids Bibles we have EVER gotten, especially for boys, so if you are looking for a good one, check it out!