Activity: A photo shoot with your pets

For two weeks I've been covering creativity and your kids. Now I get to share some of the projects we've tackled around here. I told the girls that one day this summer we would have a photo shoot with their pets, complete with props.  The day finally came.

I photograph things for the memories. Photography is not my hobby. So our standards are not high. Perhaps that made letting the girls use the camera and edit the pictures easier? We giggled our way through posing the beloved guinea pigs with different hats and props (the pigs were very cooperative). 

To edit the photos,  the girls had fun using one of our favorite, free web sites(you don't even have to register) called PicMonkey. It is a super intuitive photo editing site. On my blog, I use it to resize images, to add "Pruning Princesses" in the corners, and to make simple edits. The girls like the more exotic special effects like the frames, the text, the odd color variations like Polaroid.  We didn't use the the slimming effect or the airbrushing or the makeup, but the girls love taking photos of people they know and adding their own makeup. 

I highly recommend letting your kids try a pet photo shoot. It was super fun, ate up a whole afternoon and gave me a way to let my girls know that I think their favorite rodents are special too. (Note: We have a charming parrot too, but he won't less us dress him up!) The girls are still trying to decide if they want to make a collage poster or a photo book out of their images. 

Drumroll...Guinea Pig photo shoot staring Astro and Nibbles and my girls.

For fun: To make your girls giggle

Around here, we adore our guinea pigs. They are awesome pets. And we found an awesome video (all this awesomeness and adoring...I must be hanging out with my 10-year-old) with an adorable guinea pig song on You Tube. Probably you don't have guinea pigs, but your girls might laugh at this song. Happy weekend. And around here. Happy Spring Break!

Tell Her When He Answers Your Prayers

Do you ever pray for little things? Little meaning things you don't need-- you just want. And you want to ask God because he knows every hair on your head, every day in your life. Good weather for a picnic, a new dress for a special occasion,  a new kind of pot for the kitchen. I pray little prayers, but since I don't need them, I  forget I prayed them. Until one day the thing I prayed about shows up. And sometimes the thing does that, just shows up in a it-has-to-God way (rather than me acquiring it through ignoring budget guidelines). 

Those little prayers that get answered in a it-has-to-God way are powerful faith builders. We need to teach our kids to pray little prayers. We must share our little prayers with our kids, to teach them that God cares about more than health, difficult circumstances, and poor people in far away countries. He cares about you. And me. And them. And our unessential desires. Not that we expect God to give us everything we want, but that we can tell him about things we want and trust him to provide or erase the desire from our hearts. Consider Matthew 7: 9-11: 

⁹ “Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? ¹⁰ Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? ¹¹ If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!

My Little Prayer
I grew up allergic to dogs and cats. When I hit the need-a-pet stage of childhood, we tried fish and a few lizards, but always they disappointed. I would hold a plastic bracelet over the goldfish bowl, begging those golden fins to jump through it. I knew they could jump since the last one jumped out of the bowl and died. They never learned. 

The lizard lost his appeal the day I captured him by his tail. Tucked in the place of in the brain where images will not erase is a video of a detached lizard tail, still wiggling and changing from green to brown a few times. I thought I had killed him.  

My pet dreams were finally filled in a small cockatiel named Bing. He ate with me, showered with me, chewed on my pencil while I did homework, flew to me when I whistled. He was pet therapy for the difficult middle school years. 

When I got married, my husband surprised me with cockatiel. Duncan was fun and could whistle the Baby Elephant Dance and the Andy Griffth song. I loved Duncan, but when the second girl came, caring for him was a bit of a burden. We had to give him away when we moved across the country from Iowa to Montana and into family housing at a the univerisity so my husband could get his masters. 

My kids grew. We moved from Montana to Michigan. My girls reached the I-need-a-pet stage. I still adored parrots and avoided the pet stores so as not to be too tempted. It had been seven years since we gave up Duncan. I had not met a single parrot owner in Montana or Michigan. But I had prayed a few times, knowing that a real parrot was not in the budget, that if God wanted to have a bird, someone would just give us one. Sometimes I browsed the Internet looking at parrot rescue groups but none were nearby. 

In August we got new neighbors and, well,  I will let you read my daughter's version, in her letter to a her pen pal, 

You know how we got the guinea pigs but not how we got Buster the bird. Well the way we met him was while cleaning the guinea pig cage outside. We heard, "Come here," from  the window and we thought it was our neighbor so we walked to the window. It turned out that the bird had said it and not long after that- about Christmas time- the neighbors offered him to us. My mom said we could have him because she grew up with birds and she loved them. She said she had been praying for a free bird ever since we had to get rid of our bird because we were moving. And here it was- God answered our prayers- the perfect gift! Buster's hatch day is March 15. He turned 6. Not too long ago, when I wrote about it in my journal at school, the person next to me read it and made a birthday card! I didn't really know her that well, but it made me feel good to know that other people were thinking of my bird and I took it happily.

My little prayer, that God answered, is part of the faith building of my daughter. And she is sharing the testimony of how God cares with her friends.  A triple blessing.  
Now, meet my little prayer, Buster:

Linking up today at Getting Down With Jesus. 

Why your daughter might need a pet

In the last seven years, I've made a habit of avoiding pets. Until recently.

I don't like dogs. They tend to stink, lick, follow me around, get hair on clothes, and they have to be let outside at 5 am. I know your dog is the exception. I am happy for you. But I still don't like dogs. I like cats. But I would never own a cat. They are too unpredictable plus the number of people with cat allergies is too high. I love parrots. But they are too expensive, too loud, and tend to poop wherever they want. And the number of people who are terrified of birds is alarmingly high. (Though as a parrot-lover it is hard not to laugh when a 6'4'' man hits the floor when your bird flies to your shoulder and even harder not to laugh when he lands on a bald man's head and promptly poops....horrifying but funny).


When my husband went to grad school and we had to get rid of our pet bird, I was sad. But secretly, I was relieved. Less responsibilities was a good idea with a baby and a 2-year-old.


During one summer in a Honduras, my then 8-year-old got to care for a puppy for the five weeks of our stay. Dear little Copper only confirmed for my husband and I that a pet would not make our family complete. Plus my daughter's pain was so strong when we had to leave the puppy behind to return home.


Then memory struck. I was allergic to dogs and cats growing up. Somewhere around fifth or sixth grade my parents gave in, I could have a bird. A sweet cockatiel name Bing. In the lonely, chaotic years of middle school, that bird was my therapy and lifeline. When no one else understood or liked me, that bird adored me. He showered with me, ate with me, snuggled me, and would fly to me when I whistled for him. His enthusiasm when I returned home from school was extreme and dependable.

So this isn't a cockatiel, but my first bird was 
before digitalphotos. I've owned one like this. 

And you know how parents assume kids won't really care for their pets? I did. Weekly, I  cleaned his cage(which was pretty gross) and daily, I feed and watered him. So I learned a bit of responsibility too.


Sweet Bing died young at only 3 but his life expectancy should have been closer to 15. My little 8th grade heart broke and leaked torrents of tears for days. But, the lose did not eclipse the joy of having the friend.


And as I pondered my pet aversion and these memories, I began to wonder if maybe we should find a pet.  A pet would be cheaper than therapy. And as my daugther says, we are so weird (translation we don't buy many electronic devices) maybe a pet would something we could get that didn't have addicting side effects. But what kind of animal? And how to convince my husband who rightly argued that we travel too much to own pets?


Come back tomorrow for part 2...How we went from no pets to three, in five months.

Photo credits:
All images used with permission. 
Cat: ShivaPrasad Madaiah
Dog: FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Bird: Just2shutter