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David & Kelli Pritchard's Blog

Another Movie At School

Here is a question from one of our readers:

I do have one question for you - - How do you handle the issue of the movies shown in the classroom?  My boys are K and 1st grade. Both have excellent teachers, but it is standard practice to use movies on rainy days and during testing cycles. Some of these movies are not what we would generally allow (although they are G rated) and we sometimes deal with nightmares as a result. The school does not give us ...

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Meeting Our New Kids

On January 31, 2012 the Pritchards became a family with 11 children!! Mesellu, Asefa and Dejen officially became part of our family!! After a twelve hour flight from Washington D.C. to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on Monday, January 30 we drove 2 hours to the orphanage in Adama to meet our children. We went to lunch with them, bid them good bye and drove back to Addis to spend the night. Tuesday morning started early with breakfast at our ...

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Age Hierarchy

Another question from a reader:

 

The siblings enjoying some time together decorating the Christmas tree

For those of you reading this that have never heard us speak of “age hierarchy” you might find the question, let alone the answer at best strange and at worst wrong. We’d ask you to consider holding off your conclusions until you’ve heard a little more about what we teach. Also, we have put out a CD called Sibling Affection – raising kids that love each other. I’m not trying to promote our CD, ...

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The Family Meeting Gone Awry

A couple that recently attended one of our parenting seminars sent us this question: We’ve implemented Family Meetings. The first one went fantastic, but the second one not so much. Our 7-yr old and 9-yr old sons would not engage, were silly and distracted, and made the time insufferably difficult and long. We had scheduled a few fun things into our meeting—a game 1/3 of the way through and a fun snack 2/3 of the way through. But ...

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What a Summer!

While the northwest didn’t experience the greatest summer as far as weather goes – God certainly had some incredible plans for us during that time. What a privilege it was to minister to couples and families at five different locations, covering thousands of miles and two different countries! We trust that God used us in small and big ways with these families – we KNOW that God used those families in our life. We learned a lot… we ... << MORE >>

Focus on the Family

Sorry to have our first post in 87 days be an announcement - but we did want to put the word out to our friends (I'm assuming if you are reading this you are our friend!). This Wednesday, August 17th, we will be appearing on the Focus on the Family TV show. It is primarily an online webcast, but I believe it also airs on a couple of Christian stations. It airs at 2PM EST this Wednesday. ... << MORE >>

Rite of Passage (for our daugthers)

Many of you know, but Kelli is with her mom in Florida as she deals with some medical issues. It delayed her getting this first installment for the daughter's rite of passage. We would covet your prayers for Kelli and her mom during this time! She will post another installment to cover the other two rites of passage for the girls.

We have talked much about rite of passage and the meaning it carries for our children. Today I want to share with you what has evolved for our girls as we raised our children. With our ...

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To the Moms

Yesterday was Mother's Day and I had the privilege of delivering the Mother's Day message at my church - what a privilege and honor. It also prevented me from writing something here to honor all of you mom's out there. First, even though it's a day late, let me say Happy Mother's Day! Thank you for answering the call to motherhood, regardless of how you got here. Preparing to preach certainly gave me ample time to reflect on my own mother and mother-in-law and to be ...

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Rites of Passage (Part 2)

Last week I shared a story about Tavita’s first Rite of Passage. It was an event we created to mark his transition from boyhood to manhood. He was 13 at the time and much training took place after that ceremony, but he was forever different on that day 10 years ago. One of the great resources available on this topic is “Raising a Modern Day Knight” by Robert Lewis. It helped us with ideas and structure for what we did. We typically do ...

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Rites of Passage (Part 1)

We were at Malibu serving for four weeks as Camp Manager. Our oldest son, Tavita, was 13 years old. It was day 5, which at Malibu meant ropes day – the entire camp of 300 campers would go through the ropes course in one day. It is a long day for our assignment team (the group of adults assigned to Malibu for the month) and for the property staff. But it is also a rewarding day as we help many kids overcome fears and insecurities and get front row seats as they beam with satisfaction over doing something ...

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