After lunch just before I put 2-year-old Nora down for a nap, I sat on the twin bed in her dimly lit room. Nora was snuggled up on my right side, and four-year-old Jane snuggled up on my left. We read, "I'll Love You Forever", an old favorite of mine. I have a hard time not chocking up at the end of the book. I think the enduring and quiet love is so sweet. Reading it now, as a mother, the majority of the book being written in the mother's perspective, I can relate to the things that she does, her little daily sacrifices that go unrecognized and unnoticed. But I think we'll find, like the mother in this book, that if we raise our children in 'love and righteousness' (The Family: A Proclamation to the World), they will notice. They will feel it. They will remember it when they've grown and gone away, and even if at some point in time they've gone astray, they will come back because they'll remember that love and goodness and want to have it in their life.
Now, speaking of love, here are some pictures of the kids. Charles found a giant leaf bug in the back and got it to stand on his stick. He brought it to the screen door to show it to me and it jumped into the house, in our kitchen, just as I was telling him not to bring it too close to the door :).
But it ended well. Scott got the leaf bug back onto the stick (good thing he was here! I might not have been as nice to the bug :)) and took it back outside.
One of the quiet ways I show the kids I love them is by regularly making them nutritious food and helping them pack lunches. The older pack their lunches on their own, for the most part, though I will sometimes help prepare snacks for them to bring or if they're taking lunch in a thermos, I'll help with that. This was Annabelle's lunch one day last week: agave sweetened greek yogurt, home made granola (to put inside yogurt), cheese cubes, grapes and for a snack she had carrots and leftover Honest cheerios we had bought to use as Bingo Markers during General Conference.
Love this girl! She's improving every day with her piano!
Homemade whole wheat, honey sweetened pumpkin muffins. Another 'love' food. The kids like to pack these in lunches or eat them after school for a quick snack.
I love my Janey! She's my helper during the day and I love our alone time during Nora's nap when we get to work on some pre-school type things together and read.
Homemade granola is another act of love. This one is especially for Charles. He LOVES granola and wants it on hand, every day. So I make a huge batch once a week and that's about how often we go through our granola. I recently discovered an easy trick to make the granola stick together more, with more clusters and at the same time being a little crunchy but not burnt! I was so excited when my experiment worked! I posted it on my Real Foods Mom blog which you can see
HERE.
