My senior mom and I popped into our local Christian Book store yesterday and she bought Easter cards for all her great-grandkids. She has a wonderful ministry of sending different cards to all her great-grandchildren throughout the year, from Easter to Halloween to Christmas and fun times in between. I, on the other hand, tend to stick with eCards and I'm rather erratic even at those.

I am good, however, at working with my grandkids to help them make cute handmade greetings cards and crafts for their parents and others and we all have a good time on these projects. As a matter of fact, my oldest grandson came to spend the night this weekend and with Easter so close, it was a good chance for us to create a special Easter card with sweet sayings, quotes and encouraging Bible verses for his mom and dad.  We focused on the Christian celebration of Jesus Christ and His resurrection and found some adorable Easter clipart from my favorite resource, Trina, like this:

We added colored cardstock, sparkly stickers (recycled nicely from our Valentine package ), cute Easter sayings from Lasting Expressions, and my favorite tiny but powerfully encouraging Bible verses such as:

• The Lord is risen indeed
• God is forever and ever
• God is light
• The Lord is my shepherd
• Trust in the Lord with all your heart.

With all these ingredients gathered up, it was time to start working on our handmade Easter greetings cards. With a dib of this and a dab of that, we worked away. As we worked, we talked about Lent and Easter, Jesus Christ, the excitement of His resurrection, and how important it is to share His love with others in our lives. These little cards are a fun way to help prepare our hearts during the season of Lent, share God's Word with others, and plant God's Word in my grandkids' hearts as they work on them. 

And didn't this turn out cute?

A nice thing is that this is another one of those fun and easy crafts for seniors that our aging parents might enjoy – with the grandkids or on their own.  

It'll definitely make a fun Easter surprise for his parents. It already made a delightful Easter crafts time for this Granny Nanny and her grand-sweetie. How about you? Do you have any fun Easter crafts ideas you like to share with your grandkids? We'd love to hear about them or see pictures of them.

I hope you enjoyed this Pause in Lent. For more:

My grandkids and I sing a cute little song, "Read your Bible, pray every day, and you'll grow, grow, grow. Granted, this is a very simplistic little jingle, yet it's full of an important truth. We need to spend time in God's Word daily in order to grow as Christians and have the spiritual stamina to persevere in our duties as Sandwich Generation senior home care givers and grandparents!

Some of my favorite Bible study ideas that work well with my busy Sandwich Generation schedule requiring a lot of flexibility include all of the Beth Moore workbooks. I personally consider them to be some of the best Bible studies available and they work great with my ever-changing calendar.

I first discovered them in a womens Bible study at my church. We would meet weekly to watch the Beth Moore video that went with our study. Then we'd use the workbooks to do our personal daily Bible studies at home. I learned a lot, grew a lot, and was encouraged a lot. After the study ended for the summer, I decided to buy a different one in the series to work on at home on my own and chose "Daniel: Lives of Integrity, Words of Prophecy." It looked interesting and seemed like it would do a nice job of preparing me for an upcoming series at church on Bible prophecies – End Times, which would include Daniel, Thessalonians, and Revelation.

I was very pleased with this study as well. It did a great job or making me think, dig, and apply the truths I was learning. I could easily have done the study just from the workbook, but chose to use iTunes Podcasts to download  the audio version of the Beth Moore study that goes hand in hand with it. There are four mp3 files per lesson for $3.99 per lesson and they are very interesting. You could get the video instead, but this is cheaper and I can listen to mp3 files on my iPod while driving my senior mom and grandkids all around. To go directly to the first download in the series, just click this cute little button:

Currently I'm working through a different one of the Beth Moore workbooks, "Jesus, the One & Only." This, too, has been easy to dip into when I have time, and ignore when I'm on the run and listening to a sermon mp3 instead – either the Beth Moore audio for this series or one of my other favorite pastors' sermons. You can get to that directly by clicking this button:

I was especially blessed this week when Beth Moore made a great suggestion for those times when we are dealing with a personality conflict of some type, which could include a sick and cranky relative of any age, (something we in the Sandwich Generation may deal with quite frequently   ). She suggested that we should react to their grouchies with our prayers. Quoting from 1 Peter 3, Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult, or [grouchy with grouchy,] but with blessing, (Sandwich Generation version), she recommended that we take the time to pick some verses, write them down (or send them to our iPhone), and then "Scripture pray" these verses for our loved one and ourselves. During a recent bug, I gave this a try, choosing all of 1 Peter 3:8-12 (NIV):

All of you, live in harmony with one another, be sympathetic, love as brothers, be compassionate and humble. Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult, but with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing. For, "Whoever would love life and see good days must keep his tongue from evil and his lips from deceitful speech. He must turn from evil and do good; he must seek peace and pursue it. For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and His ears are attentive to their prayer, but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil."

Isn't that great! Not only did I pray these verses through for my little grand-grouchies, I read them to all the grandkids and had them pray the verses with me. I saw such wonderful fruit, I decided we will work on these as our BIble memory verses this spring and summer, along with their Awana verses. One grandkid already has it part-way memorized! Now that is some awesome fruit of the Spirit! And it's a big encouragement to me to see myself "growing" and watch as that growth has a definite impact on my grandkids' growth as well.

How about you? What are your favorite Bible study ideas and workbooks? We'd love to hear. And by the way, Family Christian is offering a great deal for us.

Kaye

Smiles and laughter are vital for all of us Sandwich Generation senior home care givers and grandparents, as are words of encouragement from inspirational Bible verses. I was looking for a picture that would illustrate this passage from Psalm 148:

Praise the LORD ! Praise the LORD from the heavens ; Praise Him in the heights ! Praise Him, all His angels ; Praise Him, all His hosts ! Praise Him, sun and moon ; Praise Him, all stars of light ! Praise Him, highest heavens, And the waters that are above the heavens ! Let them praise the name of the LORD, For He commanded and they were created. He has also established them forever and ever ; He has made a decree which will not pass away.

Praise the LORD from the earth, Sea monsters and all deeps.

I found this guy – he doesn't look like a sea monster but he's definitely from the deeps of the ocean. Doesn't he look like he might be an elderly fish – maybe a grandpa to a whole school of grandkids? He put a smile on my face and I hope he will give you a big smile as well.

Happy Word-Filled Wednesday. For more photos and inspirational Bible verses to encourage you as you go about your Sandwich Generation day, caring for the elderly parents in your family and helping with your grandkids, be sure to visit Lori at All You Have To Give.

As members of the Sandwich Generation caring for elderly parents and and helping with our grandchildren, we need all our wits, faculties, and body parts with us in good working order as much as possible. When I was laid up with a broken ankle for several weeks a few years ago, it impacted my senior mom and my grandkids almost as much as it did me. It was not a fun time!

Last month, after writing about Glaucoma Month, my eyes were giving me some grief. After one eye doctor visit and two Ophthalmologist visits, I am happy to report I am just fine. Just some floaters that need to be watched, but not serious. For a few days, though, I was doing a LOT of praying as I thought about all the different things that could be going wrong with my eyes. You know how a worried mind can operate. I was even thinking things like, "Will I have to learn Braille?" and "I'll have to learn how to use Dragon Dictation so I can keep working on the computer." (Did I mention I have a very vivid imagination!  )

Those silly thoughts are funny to me today, but last month, they were stark and serious. I remembered those moments when I read a letter from Diana today. She was writing to let us know that this week is World Glaucoma Week. She wrote, "Keeping your mind and body active and eating the right foods are important factors in ensuring a long and healthy life. But another factor to this equation is your eye health.  Have you ever imagined what life would be like if you couldn’t see?  What about if you could see, but images didn’t appear as they once did?" Scary thought, isn't it! 

She also told me that, "John Patrick Shanley, Academy Award Winner for Best Screenplay for Moonstruck and playwright of Doubt, was diagnosed with advanced glaucoma twelve years ago and has experienced significant vision loss."

As he puts it, “Although glaucoma runs in my family, I took my sight for granted until I was faced with the harsh reality that I could go permanently blind from this condition,” Shanley says. “Fortunately my timely diagnosis and treatment has allowed me to live my life fully and to continue doing what I love.” Isn't that encouraging! You can hear Mr. Shanley's story and why he encourages everyone to receive regular eye exams for glaucoma. There is no "glaucoma cure," but, as Mr. Shanley pointed out, early diagnosis and treatment can stop further loss of vision.

There are no eye problem symptoms to watch for when it comes to glaucoma, so it's vital for all of us to be tested regularly. If we are at higher risk because we are over 40, are of African-American or Asian descent, have a family member who has it  (some of the types of Glaucoma are on the list of hereditary eye diseases), or fit one of the other risk criteria, we should be even more proactive at taking preventive measures. That means me, and everyone else in the Baby Boomer Generation for starters, not to mention all of our elderly parents! I was encouraged to learn that in worst case scenarios, laser surgery for glaucoma can help stop eye pressure problems. But, according to the Glaucoma Research Foundation, "it cannot reverse vision loss."

With it being World Glaucoma Week, it's the perfect time to call your elderly parents, make a lunch and eye doctor date, and go have some yummies for the tummy, some great conversation, AND get everyone's eyes and eye pressure tested. Then mark your calendar for next year (or whenever your optometrist says) to make this a regular occurrence.

As for me, with my fun little floaters keeping me company, I'll be in to see my Ophthalmologist more often than normal, so I'm doing good as far as Glaucoma goes. But I'll also make sure my senior mom gets her eyes tested every year AND pass the info on to my adult kids to make sure they and my grandkids get checked, as glaucoma can even happen in children!

When did YOU last get your eyes checked? Don't forget now. And don't forget to sign up for the FREE SandwichINK email for more news updates for Sandwich Generation senior home care givers and grandparents.

• Rick Broida wrote an excellent article on using Google and other applications and your Smart phone to make life simpler for all of us Sandwich Generation senior home care givers and grandparents!
• I love Slandr.net application for Twitter on my cell phone 
• Encouragement-For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder…Isaiah 9:6a
• Thurs. 12/11/08-is the U.S. postal svc. deadline for mailing priority overseas. 12/15/08 their busiest day of year. 
• Fellow Karen Kingsbury fans-Her new book, This Side of Heaven, is due out Jan 6. Advance orders now being taken at bookstores. Looks good!
• The Alzheimer's Store has a number of new items that would make excellent holiday gifts for elderly parents with dementia.