Laughing it up in Primary -

As you know, I am the music chorister in Primary. It love it! I have a lot of fun and I just love the children and the songs and feeling the spirit....

Today I was teaching the jr primary the song "The Family is of God." We had been talking (and singing) about how we are all part of Heavenly Father's family, and we lived with Him before we came to earth.

Then I asked what I thought (silly me) was a basic question, "How did we each get to earth?"

the responses I got:

"we JUMPED"

"we drived in our cars."

"Jesus sent us."

At this point, I gave them a couple clues. I had Sister B. (8 months pregnant) stand up and rub her belly, and I had Sister W. hold up her new baby.

"WE WAS BORNED LIKE A BABY!!!"

Whew - Glad we got that cleared up! You know what they say, "ask a silly question..."

I LOVE PRIMARY!

A Bryan funny

Tonight we were in the midst of an Aaron homework tantrum (that lasted an hour and a half) and Tim said, "I bet Bryan could figure out that math problem." He brought Bryan up to the kitchen and set out 9 pencils on the table, in sets of 3. ( the math problem was 3 x 3, which Aaron knows and can do, but he was in his stubborn tantrum mode and it was awful!)

ANYWAY, Tim asks Bryan something like, "If you have 3 groups with 3 pencils in each group, how many pencils are there all together?"

Bryan confidently answered, "FIVE."

Tim - "Five? Count the pencils and see how many there are." (now keep in mind here that Bryan can easily count to 13. after 13 he starts to jump around a bit...)

Bryan counting, "1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 5!"

We all just started laughing!

SNOW SNOW SNOW

** if you are in a hurry, just skip to the end and watch the video of Aaron - I think it is HILARIOUS! **

A couple days ago (I think it was Saturday) we took this picture of our back yard with just a light dusting of snow. (as much as I HATE driving in snow, I think it is beautiful and I love looking at it...)

Monday it started snowing, not hard, just constant, and it's basically been snowing since then. The news tonight said we have received 8 inches over the past 2 days, but according to my very scientific RULER measurements, we are up to more like 10 or 11! Here is a picture taken from the same spot today. (notice the little dwarf pine in the left bottom corner is all but covered in the second picture)


As you can see, the birds are happily eating all around the feeder, which leads to the next photo. It is NOT a great picture, but if you look closely you can see the outline of what we believe is a Coopers Hawk. (looks like a peregrine falcon, but according to Tim's Internet research, peregrines don't often come down and hunt at feeders, but it is common for Coopers Hawks to do that...) At any rate, he likes to come perch in this tree and hunt at our feeder. It is SO awesome to watch. In fact, the first time we saw him, he was perched right on top of that post you see in the first photo, the one the bird feeder is hung on... I almost feel guilty, like I am setting a trap for the poor little birds, but I suppose it's all a part of the "circle of life" eh?



After I got home from doing afternoon carpool, the snow just seemed to call to Aaron, he got out of the van and into the snow. Here he is:

The inner child in me (that has been MIA for about 10+ years) came out of no where and decided to get into the action. I did a running leap/somersault thing in the snow. Amazingly enough, I didn't hurt myself. Aaron (after laughing, being amazed, and wondering what alien spirit had come over me) thought it looked fun and wanted to try it. I ran in and got the camera and took this video:

(I was laughing so hard I about wet my pants, and if you listen closely, you can hear Aaron laughing from under the snow.)

The kids talked me into getting dressed up in my snow clothes and playing outside for them for about an hour and 1/2. It was really fun. I mostly used the time to shovel the sidewalk and driveway AGAIN, and to help the two neighbors shovel theirs as well, but it was intermingled with digging snow tunnels and caves, sledding down the hill, making snow angels, and having a snowball fight with the neighbors.

Dinner was late, my hair was soaked, there is a big pile of wet clothes just inside the front door, and we were 15 minutes late for cub scout pack meeting . . . but we had FUN! (and tonight Aaron told me, "I can tell that you love us mom, because you played in the snow with us for a long time!" You just can't beat that)

Joe's goals - for Jeri

Hiya.

If you look on the left side of the page, you'll see a new feature. It is courtesy of http://www.joesgoals.com/. Joe's goals is basically the same type of system I set up on my own last year to track the work I did during the day. The plus about this is that I don't have to do anything but enter the goals, and check them off when I complete them. Plus he provided a little thing (is it called a "widget" maybe???) for my blog.

The spreadsheet I set up for myself had a whole bunch of things that I could earn points for, and I found that I could still get lots of points without doing some of the ESSENTIAL things like prayer and scripture. I am using Joe's site to track the key elements of each of my new years goals. (and having the visual tracker thing here on my blog will hopefully spur me on to do a bit better than I might otherwise do...)

for my "improve my overall health" goal, I am tracking 1) 30 minutes (min.) of exercise 2) 8 glasses of water and 3) NO CHOCOLATE. (my unwritten goal is to lose 25 lbs this year, but I know you aren't supposed to set "weight loss" goals, so I just have that in my minds as the reward for what I hope will be the result of less junk food, no chocolate, and more whole foods, exercise, and water...)

for my "establish a house of order" goal, I am tracking 1) clean the kitchen 2) 15 minutes per day de-cluttering/organizing 3) flylady's daily mission and 4) doing school/learning time with katrina and bryan during the day

and for my "increase testimony and personal spirituality" goal I am tracking 1) scripture study 2) prayer/meditation 3) writing in my journal

in order to accomplish everything I want to do each day and to be healthy, I am also tracking if I am awake and out of bed by 7am

I can earn a total of 10 points each day. (eating chocolate is -1, so if I DO everything right, but give in to my addiction and eat some chocolate, I will only score a total of 9)

I'm hoping this will help me really focus on the basics and get into the habit of doing these things on a regular, daily basis. None of them are particularly difficult, but I sure have a tough time doing them consistently.

So there you have it.

Happy New Year!

I think this year it is appropriate to "reduce reuse and recycle." I am, of course, speaking of my 'new years resolutions..." first I think I'll REDUCE my expectations, then I'll reuse/recycle my goals from last year. (Since I really didn't make much progress at all...) Here's hoping 2009 will prove to be a bit better.

We had a great Christmas and a very calm New Year's Eve. My mom let the kids (except Caleb) have a sleep over at her house. They were so excited. I need to leave now to go pick them up, but it's so nice and quiet I really don't want to...

Hope ya'll had a great holiday season and here's hoping we all have a great 2009!

I'm the MUMMY -

so I guess that's why I spent the past several hours getting all the presents all WRAPPED up. (it supposed to be a joke, go ahead and laugh...

now I know why I usually wrap things as I buy them. it is crazy trying to get everything all wrapped at once.

HO! HO! HO! it's off to the kitchen I go! (to clean it up; so I can then mess it up again, making more neighbor goodies... 'tis the season!)

piano recital

Let's see if I can figure out how to do this... (posting a video I mean)






I did it!!! I wasn't even that hard.

Aaron and Katrina both did a great job on their pieces. (Although not "perfect" - which they were capable of, they had done them perfectly at home many times, but hey, who doesn't get nervous when playing in front of an audience???) I am very proud of them both!