Wow, this is the longest stretch I've ever gone without posting here! I will be better. Last month I printed out our 2017 blog book so I better get caught up since the New Year!
We celebrated the New Year by taking the kids to a Thai Restaurant. Scott and I love Thai, but we weren't sure if the kids would like it, but they did! And they really enjoyed using chopsticks.
I started the Book of Mormon again, but this time with this Book of Mormon study guide which is over 900 pages. Stacey gifted it to me and I am loving having this to add to my study this time around of reading it through.
Scott and I try to go on dates each week, and usually it's to the temple, dinner or just a movie and treat night at home. We tried out an Indian place recommended by a friend from India called Saffron Valley. Very yummy! This huge cone thing is some sort of crepe that you dip in the sauces.
January 6th, Charles turned 12 years old!!!! 12 is a big age as it means he can do some temple work and receive the priesthood.
Charles had a few friends over to play ping-pong, Madden on the Wii, and watch Thor.
And we had some cream puffs, chips and donuts...Charles' faves!
I love this picture because it shows Nora sleeping while NOT sucking her thumb! She quit the habit!!! It was hard, but she did it! Prior to her deciding she wanted to stop, we talked about how much she was getting sick this year and let her know it was partly because of her thumb-sucking habit, she was putting lots of germs into her mouth every day and getting sick. We told her once she went 21 days in a row without sucking her thumb, we would celebrate. We offered lots of prayers on her behalf and she passed 21 days of no-thumb-sucking! She wanted to celebrate with ice cream sandwiches and a couple of games of hide and go seek.
Our gym is functional and it's been such a blessing this winter! I use the treadmill for walking almost daily (I hurt my IT band and haven't been able to run for awhile).
I am the Primary Music Leader at church which means I teach the children, ages 4-11, songs about Jesus. It's a hard-working but fun calling and I love getting to know all the children. I've been the singing leader since July and I'm still learning names! We do have over 100 kids in primary, plus lots of teachers, but I'm determined to get them down and I've come a long way. This is a game we did recently that the kids loved! We were learning the song "I am a child of God" and a child would come up and go fishing and on the fish was an action (ie clap hands, march in place etc) and under each fish was a dress up item that we would put on one person from the primary presidency, and they would have to keep it on if the children sang the verse well. It was a big hit.
Nora's in half day kindergarten and I love that we get to spend some one-on-one time together each day. Usually once she's home we make lunch (here we're making an Indian rice pudding called kheer), we do her homework and she reads me a book and then sometimes she helps me with prepping dinner or cleaning or sometimes she'll play close by, or we'll run errands or she sees if a neighbor can play. I'm going to miss our lunch dates and reading time next year.
Jane started gymnastics in January and is loving it! She wishes she could go twice a week, and I think we will have her switch to that once we get back from our trip to Europe.
Once a month I'm in a cooking club with mostly friends from my old ward. There are a couple of new faces in the ward that joined and Stacey comes too. It's fun to spend time with these ladies and share healthier recipes and foods.
Stacey and I were late getting to this cooking club meeting because when I stopped by her house to pick her up, my van died! It was a divine orchestration though because had it died at our house, we would've just taken the car in and spent lots of money trying to figure out what was wrong (Scott had changed the battery just a couple of months before so we figured it wasn't that). But Mark came out to jump it so I could take it home and he noticed that when Scott had put the battery in, he hadn't tightened it enough and it was in there very loose and so he just tightened everything up and it started without being jumped and we haven't had a problem since! I'm grateful for the forseeing care and guidance of God over us.
We got free tickets to a BYU women's gymnastics meet so Jane took her bestie Skye and Elisabeth took Bekah and Emma, all of which enjoy gymnastics.
These two girls are the cutest and we sure love Cosmo the Cougar!
Jane tried out ice skating for the first time at a friends birthday party. I rented her one of these seal trainers and after a short while she could skate without it!
Charles' first visit to do temple work was on an early Saturday morning. Our temple gets very, very busy and sometimes the youth have to wait 2-3 hours to do baptisms...unless you go early morning, then you get right in!
Jane received the Reaching Scholar award for her class. All of our kids are excellent readers and we've noticed that when Scott and I read more, they read more, so we're really working on establishing good, nighttime reading habits before bed where we all sit and read for 1/2 hour or so. It can be hard carving out time like that regularly in our busy schedules but it's so important and it will help them in their futures so we're making it a priority.
A couple of weeks after Charles turned 12, he gave his first talk in sacrament meeting and did a great job speaking about what we can do now to prepare to serve a mission.
