What's Obvious

Hi Friends!
I just wanted to share some thoughts...
The visiting teaching lesson this month was on "Standing strong and immovable in the Faith" Sis. Beck commented on how we need to do the most essential things first. (She had a list of eight things, see this month's VT message in the Ensign). One of them was family scripture and prayer. We used to be good at this. Every night, no matter what, even on vacation, we would have scripture and prayer. We've read through the Book of Mormon three times as a family. Lately I have gotten lazy and half the time we'll just have prayer, because by the time I "get around to it" it's "too late" or I'm "too tired" so I just have prayer with the girls and send them to bed.
Know what is essential to me? Doing the dishes after dinner. Because I can see them all messy sitting there. And the leftovers would spoil. And what if someone stops by and see my mess. And I don't want to have to deal with it in the morning. So I almost always rally the forces after dinner and we all spend 15-20 minutes doing the dishes and putting the food away.
So what is really more essential, dinner dishes or family scripture reading? Well, that's obvious.
So it occurred to me, what if someone could walk into my house and look around and say, "Wow, you haven't had scriptures tonight, have you? What a mess!" That certainly would motivate me to read the scriptures :) So my new strategy whenever I am tempted to send the kids to bed without our family reading (like tonight!) is to think about the dishes. I wouldn't leave my dishes all over the table, because it obviously needs to be done. How much more needed is our family scripture time, even though it's not so outwardly apparent. It is absolutely vital to my childrens' spiritual nourishment, and I (and Mike) are the only ones who can give this to them, they won't get it anywhere else. How vital is that!
Next I need to work on personal prayers with them. Should I still be helping kids at 7 (almost 8) and 10 say their prayers at night? I remind them now and then, but don't really follow up. I am hoping they follow my example, as they see me praying in the evening, but most of the time they are already in bed by the time I pray.
This parenting thing is exhausting!
Speaking of that, Katie and Liz are exhausting me with plans for the 8th birthday party. The theme keeps changing. Right now it's a music party where they play the piano and sing to their guests, LOL. And I'm making a butterfly and a ladybug cake, I've been informed.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Since I directed people on my Christmas letter to my blog - I figure I best get busy and update it!
The best part of Christmas this year was that it was WHITE! Big wet flakes fell from the sky on Christmas day for a few hours, carpeting the already white ground with another few inches of snow. Instead of playing with our Christmas toys, we went outside and played in our Christmas snow. The week before Christmas the kids only had one day of school due to the weather. This has been one LOOOOONG vacation!

Our snow angels!

Katie, Liz, and Ally

Scenes from around the neighborhood: some of these were taken the week before Christmas during our first snowfall(s), then others taken the week of Christmas when we got a lot more snow!


The favorite toys of the season: a remote control tarantula (Liz wanted a real one!), a pogo stick, a complete set of Warrior Books, a metal detector, a doctor kit, a phoenix bird toy, and Webkinz stuffed animals. I had fun making three online books, one for Jeanne and Frank, one for our Arizona Adventure Vacation, and one for Grandma's camp. I am really enjoying my new Settlers of Catan game and also my Romance DVD Collection that includes the long A&E version of Pride and Prejudice. I'm grateful for those snow days so I could have an excuse to watch it already!


Some of our family activities got canceled, like graham cracker house making with the Robrechts. We were sad, but made the best of it and took our candy and crackers over to Chris & Kirstin's house next door and put them to good use. And our Robrecht family Christmas Eve breakfast gathering turned into a slumber party! With lots of snow on the ground and more expected, many of us just decided to spend the night the day before. We had fun playing Settlers (it was so fun because I won!), watching movies, doing puzzles, and playing in the snow fort that Uncle Dan build in Em & Joe's front yard. Thank You so much Em & Joe for hosting the big crowd. Jeff and Janet even made it with their four little ones and a newborn in the falling snow that morning. We are so grateful for family and that we were actually able to get together.


The metal detector proved very useful. A few days after Christmas Frank (Mike's Dad) called me and said a lady was coming in to his doctor's office with "possibly" a needle in her foot. She had kicked something in her carpet the day before, felt a stabbing pain, but couldn't see anything sticking out of her foot. She found a part of a needle in her carpet. Frank didn't want to start digging around in her foot without knowing for sure something was in it, so he wondered if the metal detector could work to see if there was a needle in her foot. I wasn't sure, but drove to his office with the new toy. I turned it on and held it over the lady's foot and sure enough, it beeped, signifying that there was something metal in her foot! Who knew this little toy would prove useful in a real way! The girls are excited for the snow to melt and to go treasure hunting in our own backyard.


We loved hanging out with the Card family - Sterling and Arien arrived the day after Christmas and we spend a fun evening doing the nativity play and opening gifts, and then the next day we had an adventure getting our pictures taken in the snow and rain. Why did I even try to do my hair??? It was really fun to hang out as a family for three days in a row!

Attack of the Tarantula!