Other January Happenings

Our Christmas card wall.

Tired Megan! (And yes, she really is sleeping!)

Kids putting on a puppet show during Family Home Evening. Mom and dad did the initial show, acting out some situations that may or may not have actually occurred in the home and then having the kids discuss how the situation could have been handled differently. The kids thought this was hilarious and wanted to do a few shows of their own. And yes, they were good at conflict resolution. Now if we can just teach them to apply it when a situation (key moment) is actually occurring.....

Megan made this lovely flower with blueberries. She sorted the berries by size and even added a leaf. She was quite proud of her creation.

Dad getting some Matthew snuggles.

Sarah selfie:)

Me and Matthew at January Art Masterpiece. The kids made ice cream cones using sponge stamps and paints.

Matthew's fabulous kinder teacher.

FHE this week

We discussed what it would be like to go on a long journey like Lehi's family did. Everyone picked out five things they would bring. Here's the compilation photo. It's good to know that the kids will all have clean teeth as they all brought a toothbrush as one of their five things.

After, we made apple halwa, a dessert from India, from a recipe in the February Friend. It was yummy!

I Know the Scriptures are True

For our Family Home Evening and devotional theme this year, we decided to use the Primary theme, which is "I know the scriptures are true." We figured that there are so many great resources in the Friend, plus it's what they'd be learning about in Primary, so we should take advantage of that! Our nightly devotionals will take us through The Book of Mormon (although not reading every verse--we are reading some plus also using the picture stories). In addition, Sarah and U are reading The Book of Mormon together (a bonus being that Sarah is reading what her class in Primary is studying so they reinforce each other).

For our weekly home evenings, U and Me are taking one per month to introduce the theme for the month and to do a related activity and then we are having each of the kids teach one time per month as well. They are really excited about this. For our January lesson, we talked about Lehi and his family leaving Jerusalem and travelling through the wilderness. We then built some boats to sail to the promised land.

Here a couple of them are sailing.

For Megan's home evening, she taught about following the footsteps of Jesus. We traced our feet and wrote what we would do to follow Jesus. (Matthew wanted both of his feet traced, which is why there are six feet.)

For Sarah's home evening, she taught about temples and about how our body is a temple, She had a fun activity where Megan and Matthew decided whether things were good and should go into our body (like healthy food, good music, etc) or bad and should go into the trash (like drugs, bad words, etc).

For Matthew's home evening, he and U put on some puppet shows about manners. They taught us good things to do, and things not to do. In case you're wondering, the animals always had good manners while the people did not.

The Greatest Gift

For Family Home Morning this week, we had a bunch of presents under the tree. The kids were all super excited when they came down and saw them there. We opened them and found in each box a gift from God. There were a lot, including family, temples, baptism, the Holy Ghost, miracles, faith, prophets. We talked about what each of these gifts was and how it blessed us. The last box had "eternal life." We discussed how and why that is the greatest of all the gifts of God.

Title of Liberty

Here's the Title of Liberty Sarah and I made a few weeks ago. The squares are "Prayerful," "Be Nice," "Helping," "Thankful," "Be Baptized," and "Family." Sarah was very proud of the baptism one, especially how she painted the dress white.

What is mommy doing?

Apparently all three kids wanted to know what mommy was doing--she was sure making a lot of noise. Answer? I was making banana ice cream. It's really easy--all you use is frozen bananas with a bit of milk (we used rice milk) and blended it up. All three kids ate it right up. Yum!

Sarah's family night

A few weeks ago, Sarah wanted to be in charge of family night. There were three stations: first, we sat on the couch while she told us gratitude and talked about Jesus and how we should be thankful for Him. We then were supposed to think about this for a few minutes (her idea). Second, we drew pictures of what we were thankful for. Finally, we were supposed to write a letter to someone telling them about it.

Here are a few photos of the second station

And the pictures:

Sarah's letter and picture:

To Luke and Andrew: From, Sarah

This is Jeses, the Temple,my house, a beaoutaful day,and a smiley face.I hope you like my picter.

Megan's (with Sarah helping with the writing)

Matthew's

Mine

U's