Friday, July 29, 2011

Getting to Know Our Leaders

First up is one of our co-directors Christa Margene.  Here is her bio:

Name: Christa Margene
Mom to: Eli (almost 3 years) and Isaac (5 months)
Interests: spending time with friends, playing with our boys, spending time with my husband, reading, watching movies, playing board games and home improvement projects.
Mom Experience: I have been a mom for almost 3 years and have been a member of MOPS since I was pregnant with our first son.  I am excited to start another year of MOPS!
Before Motherhood: Before I became a mom I worked in television production at Scripps Productions here in Knoxville, TN. I grew up in the Detroit Michigan area and also did television production there as well.  I moved to Knoxville after I got married and love calling Knoxville home!

Thursday, July 28, 2011

What comes with my membership dues?

Yesterday all of our members should have received an email from our Co-director Christa Margene explaining that registration is now open for our 2011-2012 MOPS year!  To register please follow the links under "Pages" (found on the left of this page).  You might be wondering what we do with the money we collect so here is a quick explanation:

First, MOPS International charges us $21.95 for each MOPS member.  With these dues MOPS international sends you all of the following goodies:



  • MomSense Magazine                        
  • Weekly Mom-E-Mail
  • MOPS Reusable Shopping Bag
  • MOPS Iron On Appliqués*
  • MOPS Stickers featuring VeggieTales

The rest of the annual $35 fee goes to covering the costs of our meetings, craft projects, welcome packets, etc.  We are also supported financially by our host church, Central Baptist Church of Bearden.  They are gracious enough to cover the cost of childcare for all of our meetings!  Not all MOPS groups have this support from their host church and we are so grateful that they bless our moms in this way.

This year we have a new optional fee.  We have noticed that bringing a main dish to Thursday night meetings is a burden to many of our MOPS moms.  To offset that burden we are offering and optional $15 fee per semester to cover the cost of a main dish at these night meetings.  We will still have a limited sign-up sheet for side dishes and dessert, but moms might only have to volunteer once a semester (or year) instead of once every two or three months.  We are excited about this new part of our meetings and we hope it makes it easier for our moms to attend.

Scholarships are available for those moms who are enduring a financial hardship. For more information please email us at centralbeardenmops@gmail.com

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Who We Are!

In the next few weeks we will be posting bios of all of our current leadership members.  Until then, here is our steering team for the 2011-2012 year:

Co-Coordinator: Christa Margene
Co-Coordinator: Lora Langlois
Finance: Janet Morgan
Hospitality: Janet Lawlor
Publicity: Bridgette Boudreaux
Small Group Leaders:
 - Working Moms: Meg Brown and Jeannie Goodman
 - Stay-at-Home Moms: Jennifer Withrow
 - Special Need Moms: Hedy Collins

I wanted to take this opportunity to also talk a little bit about our group.  There are several MOPS groups in the Knoxville area, but Central Bearden MOPS is the only group that has both daytime and night time meetings.  We began as a combination of two MOPS groups (one that met in the day and one that met at night) and instead of eliminating a set of meetings we just kept both!  This makes our group unique to our area and we hope that the convenience of having two meetings during each month allows easy access for all moms who want to attend.

You do not have to attend Central to attend our MOPS group.  As a matter of fact, at least three of our steering team leaders are not Central members.  If you are a mom of a pre-schooler (pregnancy-Kindergarten) then you are welcome to attend!

Monday, July 25, 2011

New Schedule

Our dates for the new 2011-2012 MOPS year are now posted.  We don't have many speakers in place yet, but the Moms Night Outs have been planned so please add those to your calendar now!  We are looking forward to this next year of MOPS and we hope you are too.

Also, this Friday we will be at McFee splash pad in Farragut at 9:30.  Please join us if you can.

Monday, June 27, 2011

This Wednesday's playdate

Hey ladies!  We had a great time a few weeks ago at West Hills Park.  You can see photos of our playdate on our Facebook page.

This Wednesday we are headed to Tataru's Gym off of Lovell at 9:30.  The cost is $5/hour per child.

We hope to see you then!

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Central Bearden is on Facebook

Did you know that we are on Facebook?  We are trying to post all of our summer activities on our Facebook page, so if you are on Facebook too, be sure to "like" us.  That way all of our updates will show up in your news feed.

Our next activity is a play date on Saturday at Anchor park.  We hope to see you there!

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Several MOPS announcements

Hey MOPS moms,

Here are a few summer announcements:

1. VBS- you can sign your child up for VBS at Central Baptist Bearden.  It is June 6-10.  Sign up forms and additional information is available at www.cbcbearden.org.  It is for children age 4-6th grade. There are details about age limits on the registration forms.

2. Survey- For anyone who has not completed the end of year survey, please do so.  I have only had 4 people give their responses.  I would love to hear from as many of you as possible about what you thought about MOPS this year.  Please click the link and take a few minutes to give us your thoughts.
https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dGFtVDlFek1tdnFITDlaVGdlLS1CSFE6MQ

3. Summer Playdates!  Below are some dates to add to your calendar to come out and play together.  I have made them starting at 9:30 because it gets so hot during the summer:)
June 14th- West Hills Park- 9:30am
June 25th- Anchor Park- 9:30am
June 29th- Possibly Tataru's gym- 9:30am (I will need to confirm this location- a small fee will apply, usually $5 per child)
July 11th- Hedy's Neighborhood Pool- 9:30am
July 23rd- Carl Cowan Park- 9:30am
July 29th- TBD
August 9th- TBD

4. Leadership Positions.  The following leadership positions for next year are still unfilled.  Please let me know if you would like to become a MOPS leader.
Publicity
Moppets (snack and activity)- two people can share the Moppets together if desired
Service Project (Formally known as craft)
Stay-at-Home small group leader
Special Needs small group leader 

Please let me know if you have any questions!
Thanks,
Christa

Friday, January 28, 2011

"How to Pray for Your Kids" with Julie Sanders

Even though today's title was "How to Pray for Your kids" I think the take home message was really how to teach your children to pray.

We had a great time today listening to fellow mom Julie Sanders.  Here are just some of the many points she made it today's talk: (I know Julie could write these much better than I can, but here were my notes)
  • We are not always going to be with our children.
  • Fears (for our kids) can motivate us to pray, but they shouldn't consume our prayers
  • When we are afraid it is okay to share that with our children, as long as we then react in the proper way by going to our heavenly Father
  • Prayer can be one of our biggest ministries to our children
  • We need to pass on prayer to our kids, but we can not impart what we do not possess
  • The verse Psalms 56:3 is a great one for our children to memorize, "When I am afraid, I will trust in Him."
  • Any situation can be inserted into the above verse, "When I am ______, I will trust in Him" For example, "When I am in the dark....", or "When I am at a new school...."
  • Other good verses: Psalms 86:6-8, Psalms 145:17-19 and Jeremiah 29:11-12
  • An acronym to remind us how to pray with our children is CHIMP:
    • Comfortable - use words children can understand
    • Hallowed - teach your children to pray to God with respect
    • Impulsive - pray anytime, anywhere
    • Meaningful - pray about things that matter to your children
    • Personal - use names in your prayers
  • When we face our fears, we can pass our prayers
Thanks to Julie for coming out today!  A great resource she shared was her "Not Afraid" book.  You can download a copy as a guide to make your own or email me at boudreauxb at gmail dot com and I can help you make one with your childrens' pictures in it.  Julie had three different sizes of the book; one for at home, one for in the car, and a small one for a diaper bag or school bag.  I love the visual nature and personal quality of the book.

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

More food for thought...

The speaker at our last meeting was great and in addition to the things she mentioned in her talk on "Raising Children in a Futuristic World" I wanted to share this blog post about how we create a legacy our children will remember.

Sunday, December 5, 2010

Advent Conspiracy

If you were at our last meeting you heard a little bit about Advent Conspiracy.  Here is a link to their site and a video that you can watch and then share with others: