target and devotions

For the past few months, we've been trying to do family devotions with our kids every morning.  It's a nice way to bring us all together before we each go off in different directions.

Now, before you begin to imagine a lovely, Spirit-filled quiet time with our children, I'd like to remind you that we have four kids under four years old.  Not to stomp on your daydreaming but let's head back to reality, okay?

Most of the time, our devotions last 5-10 minutes total.  This 5-10 minutes is an eternity for our kids to sit still and focus.  So.....who knew that Target's dollar bin would come to our rescue?  Right now, they have rugs in cute kids' prints for only $2.50 a pop.  $2.50!!!!

The teacher in me knew exactly what to do with this bargain.  I snatched a shark for Cole and three elephants for the girls....that's right, Laina gets a rug too!  Now, each child has their own space that they MUST sit on while listening to the story for the day.  See how that works out?

 I must tell you that we still don't have the quietest, most concentrated devotion times.  This morning, for instance, Hayden was rolling in her rug and Maurah had to make sure that she was copying Cole's every move, which only egged him on to be sillier.

Still, the rugs are helping us contain ourselves even just the teensiest bit more which makes for a very happy mom and dad.  And they still allow us to have fun as evidenced here!