Review Time!

At the end of January I helped put together New Beginnings for our Young Women. The worldwide theme is "Arise and Shine Forth" based on D&C 115:5. I'd found an idea online that sparked what ended up being our New Beginnings night. The idea was based on an other's brilliant idea of using hot air balloons as the attention getter. We made 'hot air balloons'  out of latex balloons with little baskets at the bottom, each representing a value color. The sun in the center representing 'The Son'. We made some analogies between what actually goes into flying a hot air balloon (weather, circumstance, preparation, rules, etc.) and how they do the same thing every day. It was pretty neat.

You'll notice the table up front. I wish I'd gotten a close up photo of that table. It was my favorite part of all of the decor. Earlier in the month I'd made silhouette pictures of all the young women. During an activity we paired up young women; they were then given silhouettes of two to three other young women that they needed to identify spiritual gifts for. After the brainstorming time, the paired girls invited the individual young woman up and we listened as they told the young woman what they had identified as her spiritual gifts. It was a wonderful night, very uplifting. The framed pictures hold the silhouette of the young women with a vellum overlay indicating her gifts.

Leah was off track for three weeks at the end of January into February (or somewhere along those lines). At the beginning of the third week she informed me that when she went back to school her teacher had said that they would be drawing pictures of the fun things she did over their breaks. "So, Mom we need to do something fun." This was the result. I was really proud of Leah, she actually threw the ball down the lane most of the time, rather than relying on the ramp. It's unusual for her to try something new when it could potentially be embarrassing for her or she could fail at it; so I was really impressed. Leah also helped Parker the majority of the time: helping him get the ball to the ramp and lining it up correctly, then cheering him on.

(what I assume to be) Parker's thought process

1. Oh we're taking pictures.

2. Funny faces? Yes!

3. I like funny faces. 

4. Leah has quite the repertoire.

5. Oh, we're still doing this?

6. Okay...

7. Hm, there's a cookie.

8. Yeah, I'm just gonna eat it.

The operetta, "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs." It was so cute! Running only a half hour, all the kids were well behaved, said all their lines and sang their songs perfectly. Leah wanted so badly to be Snow White (uh huh...) but made a beautiful Flower Singer instead. We also loved seeing cousin, Fisher, as a Mine Worker, "It's fun to work in the M-I-N-E," to the tune of YMCA. 

The first 'sticking' snow of the year (in late January). Parker's first time playing in the snow. Well, really, it was my first time in about 10 years too.

Is it a subconscious rule to keep a random pacifier that your child hasn't used in more than a year? We've (accidentally) done it with each of our kids and they have both found the pacifier at about the same age. Parker thought this was so funny.