Winter Rain

Today feels like winter, looks like it too.  It has been raining all day yesterday and today.  It is great to get so much where we have been so dry.  The kids went back to school yesterday.  They were so excited when they came home telling me all the fun things they did and how fun it was to see their friends again.  I am glad that they see school in such a positive light.

Last Thursday, after writing that everyone was well, Spencer got sick again.  He got up in the night and said he didn’t feel well.  Then woke up at 5:00 am and threw up all over the bathroom.  Not a nice way to start our day.  Everyone is doing fine again and we hope that we are done with illnesses for a long time!

Thursday evening Neal and I gave the three boys hair cuts.  It was good to get them done.  I wanted them to be all neat to start back to school. It worked for both of us to work at the same time and get them done quickly.  

Ruth shared with me her goals for this year.  She is a smart young lady and learning so much.  One goal is to keep her room neat all the time.  She worked hard last week going through things and has her room looking very nice.  I am glad that she wants to be neat.  She has also made it a goal to read scriptures on her own every day.  I got a chart for her to fill in each day she reads and she likes that.

Saturday was our house cleaning day.  The kids got so excited about helping me.  Ruth mopped the floor all by herself and did a good job.  The kids are getting old enough to really help clean the house and that is nice.  Sister Vance is Spencer’s new primary teacher and she told me on Sunday that they were talking about helping your parents with things at home.  They then played a charade game where the kids were saying ways they help at home and acting it out.  Spencer said he could “dust the base boards.”  She thought that was great that he knew what to do and that I would give him a simple job that he can do.  It is great that the kids are learning the responsibilities of home care.

Saturday I got out my new Sun Oven, a solar oven we bought for Christmas.  It was a sunny day and I thought I could try baking bread.  Especially since our oven isn’t fixed yet.  The bread turned out and I thought it was cool I could cook without using fuel.  I wrote more about this on a blog post.  Neal tried to buy the element for the oven, he stopped by the store but they were closed, even though it was normal business hours.  So he will try again later.  I hope we can get it working again soon. 

Sunday was a busy day.  We changed our ward time to 10:30.  It went alright but was a bit hard on the kids to be at church through lunch time.  I helped teach the Relief Society lesson.  We did a review of President Snow’s life.  It went well.

Monday I asked the kids if they wanted to go to the zoo.  The said no.  I was surprised.  They all agreed that where they wanted to go was the new play ground at the Hewitt Park.  So in the afternoon we went over.  It was about 50 degrees and party cloudy.  I got cold sitting and standing around, but the kids were fine running all over.  They loved the new play ground.  There were a lot of kids over there that afternoon.  I started talking to another mother there and enjoyed the conversation with her.

For Family Home Evening this week I made a wheel chart with assignments on it.  We haven’t done that before for our FHE time.  The kids keep asking for turns to teach the lesson so we decided to make it more organized.  The kids were so excited about the chart I made and had their assignments memorized.  I hope it works to keep them excited about doing it each week.

Yesterday Caleb didn’t want the kids to go back to school.  He kept saying that Spencer was sick and needed to stay home with him.  This morning as the kids were getting in the car Caleb picked up a little toy bag and said he was going to school too.  He was so sad that he didn’t get out when we got to the school.  He is having a hard time being left behind.

Yesterday I helped an elderly sister in our ward with a ride to the grocery store.  That went well and it felt good to be of help.  Today I took Caleb to the library for story time.  He is a happy little helper and enjoys doing things with me.  He is smart too and I enjoy hearing the things he says.
   Today I did a little video with him singing the ABC song, which he loves to sing all the time. He also can count to 10, most the time perfectly.  He did pretty good on the video.  

I am thankful for my family and our life we have here.  We truly are blessed.

Ruth loved running all over the play ground

Spencer and Caleb both enjoyed getting in the helicopter and pretending to fly

Andrew having fun climbing

Spencer found plenty to climb on too!

A view of the new play ground

Caleb was running around so much I had a hard time getting a picture of him.  Here he is on a twirling toy with Ruth pushing him around.

Caleb singing the ABC song and counting.  He is my happy 2 year old.