Valentine's Morning

The kids woke up to their Valentine's Day breakfast. This year, breakfast consisted of: heart-shaped pancakes, heart-shaped sausage, heart-shaped strawberries (ok went a little overboard on the heart-shapes) hashbrowns and pink strawberry milk. I was able to wake up early enough to send Dave off with a plate that he ate in the car. :) The kids were so tired! I love their cute sleepy faces.

Book of the Week

Eldest
(February 13, 2012)



I liked this book a little better than the first. The author added three separate stories into this one and that makes the book move more quickly and becomes more interesting to me. I think the book is good. Not great. But good. Other YA fantasy books that have been recommended to me are: the Chronicles of Narnia series and Mistborn. I'm excited to read these in the future sometime when I'm ready to revisit fantasy.

Love this scripture

Doctrine and Covenants 109:8-9
8 Organize yourselves; prepare every needful thing, and establish a house, even a house of prayer, a house of fasting, a house of faith, a house of learning, a house of glory, a house of order, a house of God;

9 That your incomings may be in the name of the Lord, that your outgoings may be in the name of the Lord, that all your salutations may be in the name of the Lord, with uplifted hands unto the Most High—

The Chocolate Factory

My friend, Marilyn, plans really fun Friday play dates for our ward. Anyone can come and it's always a good time. Last Friday, February 10th, we took a tour of the Fannie May chocolate factory. It was so fun!

The LOVE boat

A couple in our ward threw a really fun ward party. It was so cute. The title of the event was, The Love Boat. Everything was set up for a cruise and we were all told to wear our best nautical outfit. Dave was asked to be the Captain of the Love Boat, i.e. the MC. (this was payback to Dave for having Sam Taylor take his spot in the Christmas play at the last minute due to Dave's conflicting work schedule).

Activities included:
Couple Connections
2 Musical Performers
A dance

Here, we learned that Lacey and Austin Cope have yet another talent...swing dancing. How is it possible that so much talent exists in two people?!! It was a really fun night and we love our ward.

A picture of the LOVE CONNECTION contestants.
Congrats to Cicely and Dave for winning!

I caught these cute kids playing chess together in the hall. They were all huddled around the board at one point.

Funny Stuff

I overheard this conversation...

Ashlyn: I really have to get this done.

Corbin: Why??

Ashlyn: Because it's my job to keep the earth clean. You know, to clean when mom tells us to.


later...

Corbin is tiptoeing past me (they always do this when they are trying to hide something they shouldn't be doing) with bundles of blankets and pillows in his hands, headed for the basement.

Me: Corbin, are you making a big mess down there?

Corbin: No, I'm not! (totally innocent and cute voice) I'm just making a little mess.

4-year-old wisdom gets me every time and usually he gets away with way too much. :)

The Peacegiver quotes and information I love

Remember this book I read? Well, when I read it, I bookmarked almost every single page. Seriously. I knew that I needed to go back to some paragraphs to reread and internalize. So I did. And I'm glad I did. Here are some pearls of knowledge I gained:

• The Story of David and Abigail made an impression. Here's how--
• Abigail takes upon herself Nabal's sin and asks David to forgive her. (the same way Christ does for us) She tells David that she doesn't want him to go after Nabal for DAVID'S SAKE , because it will ruin all that David has ever made of himself up to that point. And up to that point, David's heart was good and right.
• Christ loves us despite everything we do
• "We sin when our hearts are sinful." We could do all the kind deeds in the world and be obedient outwardly to every commandment and it wouldn't matter if our hearts weren't right. ex: Pharisees
• "We sin when are hearts are sinful, no matter what we do on the surface." pg. 51
• The emphasized sinner in the story of Abigail and David, is David...not Nabal...because David's heart was about to turn evil and Nabal's heart was already evil.

more on this later...