Hi all, Dad With a Minivan here. So the holiday shopping season is upon us once again. If you have kids, nieces, nephews, or other children in your life, then that means it’s time to try to figure out what kids want for Christmas. If your kids are like my kids, they’ve probably been dropping some hints already.

If you would like some toy gift ideas for this year, you may want to check out another website that we run over at www.AllTheBestToys.com. We review toys and create lists of toys by age, category and brand. Everything is designed to help parents find the best toys for their kids. This isn’t something that we promote very often here at Momwithaminivan, although we have been running the Toy website since 2008!

Specifically, you may want to check out the list of the Top 20 Hot Toys of 2010 or our newly updated list of the best toys for 1 year old children.

My family and kids are excited to Celebrate all Jesus has done for us and praying your Christmas and coming New Year are filled with this goodness.

I had a great post started only to have something happen and my draft never got saved. (Cue Growling) So instead of re-typing it all over again, I decided to just keep it simple. Today I was reminded of something that can so easily be forgotten when you’re a parent. I’m blessed to be a stay at home mom with my kids. I’m with them a lot! So on Saturday, it can sometimes feel like the other 5 days of the week that I’m with my kids, except that Daddy is home and needs meals too. : ) Okay, it’s nice to have him home and I don’t mind making an extra meal or the extra help.(hehe)

Back to keeping it simple here: I sometimes forget to just take a few moments in my kids days to be silly. Now, i’m usually pretty good about this, but sometimes its more about giving my kids individual silly time or just focused time in general.Sometimes its about me and the redirection that I need to what is really important. Sometimes its my signal that I need to slow down. I like to think it could teach them the same thing in life. It doesn’t have to be much. Just a little something that says, “I’m glad you’re my kid and I love you more than you’ll ever know!”

So my encouragement to you today is, go forth and be silly with your kids. You and them both will be glad you did! I promise!

So some of you may have seen my tweet last night about a “Sticky” situation my 3 year old daughter created.

Tweet:

“My 3yr old sits in the 3rd row of my minivan.how do u other parents handle it when driving ur child says “Here mom, I have a boogie!” ???”

Follow Up Tweet:

A)you pull over and wipe it off of her finger immediately.B) ignore her and shutter at what she is going to do with it or c)tell her to wipe it on something

Now I’m still interested in finding out what all you other parents in the world do in this kind of situation. There are a lot of kids in the world and I’m sure that there has to be parents that face these kinds of situations all the time, right?! If not, please tell me where I went wrong?!

So you wanna know what actually happened?

I was in a panic, I kept saying,”Hold on, we’re almost there!”

This was then followed by a small innocent voice that had conquered the issue. She said, “Mom, it was a BIG one!”

I shreeked, “Ewe, where is it?!

Proudly my daughter says, “Its swimming in my tummy now!”

I snapped, “Did you swallow it?”

Sheepishly she responds, “Nope! It’s just swimming in my belly!”

My 4 year old son the detective says, “Wait, if you didn’t swallow it, but it’s in your belly swimming, how did it get in there? Boogies don’t have legs to walk.”

Lord, Help me!

Last night was one of those nights that my husband and I were forced to realign our game plan as parents. Sounds great, right?! It was, but it did not start off well however. I came home from voting and running to the store where I thought and was hoping to find kids in jammies and waiting to be put to bed. Instead, I found kids half dressed for bed, running amuck, squeeling as if they had finished off their halloween candy and a husband hiding in our bedroom. He was in a state of mind that pretty much questioned why anyone would ever want kids and he himself would be okay never seeing one again. Okay, maybe it wasn’t that bad, but he did say something a long the lines of “they destroy everything and listen to nothing I say!” I left him there to be alone and dealt with the kids.

It was a rough bedtime with them. But it sparked some great convo between my husband and I. Perhaps we are at fault for many of the frustrating things they do. Maybe we have been guiding them into thinking that its fun to make a mess and it somehow always magically gets cleaned up! Their things are always in their correct spot waiting for them the next time. My 3 year old daughter is the worse at picking things up! It has a lot to do with her make up and personality. She’s a sweetie but my goodness the girl knows how to make her messes! But have my husband and I done a good job of letting them know the WHY in why we take care of our stuff. And do they know, do they get , that we are a family and help one another out? We are a TEAM!

There’s several things I could unpack and discuss on my failures as a parent so far. But instead, I hope that you will find encouragement to take time to realign your game plan as a parent. Life gets crazy! Years fly by in a flash. Habits are created so quickly with our kids. They are watching and listening to us. Check your compass and make sure that you as a parent and your kids are heading in the direction that you want to be.

Andy Stanley, in one of my all time favorite books, Principle of the Path says it like this,

“Your Direction, NOT your Intentions, determines your Destination.”