Miscellaneous Monday

Man has it been a long time since I posted! First I'll post some cool pictures. Paul and I took the kiddos sledding while they were out for Christmas break, and they LOVED it. There were little jumps all over the hill, and the boys were thrilled:


Of course, the landing part wasn't quite so fun. In fact, Tyler had to sit down and take a breather for a while after knocking out his breath and bruising his back. Shayla took full advantage of her brother being down:


She loved pulling him around everywhere. Zachary is probably the most fun to watch. He is so expressive when he's sledding:



And the best thing is that you always see this at the bottom of the hill:


Here are a few more pics of our fun time:




I was thinking of going sledding today since the kids are out for MLK day, but then it poured this morning. Last time we tried sledding on wet snow, it wasn't slippery at all. (Zachary stopped mid-hill one run down. That's never a good sign when sledding. :)

This year our kids have been challenged to read the scriptures everyday. I was so grateful to our primary presidency for issuing this challenge. We were reading as a family, but I didn't know how to get the kids also reading on their own. The primary gave each child in junior primary their own Book of Mormon reader with their name on it, and they are thrilled. They also gave a reading schedule to senior primary. My kids are loving the challenge.

So, as the new year started Zachary did an FHE lesson on the scriptures. He used a lesson from the old FHE manuals. He asked the question they outlined, "Why are the scriptures important to us?" Tyler answered, "Because they teach us about Christ." Zachary looked back in the book and then answered emphatically, "Nope!" It was hilarious. (Turns out the book says they are important to us because they're true and teach us how to return to live with Heavenly Father.) Of course, about this time Shayla started bawling. When we asked her what was wrong, she said, "Zachary, I don't know what to say about the scriptures!" You've gotta love FHE. :)

Actually, I get such joy watching my kids try to teach lessons. I try to help them prepare, like I did with Zachary in choosing this lesson, but sometimes they just want to prepare it all on their own. Zachary once grabbed his conference issue of the Ensign (we've started getting each child their own), and he highlighted specific lines to share with us. I figured it would be fine since it was from the Ensign. The first sentence he chose to read said something like, "I could tell when the couple walked into my office that they were having problems." Then he skipped to another talk and another line. Paul and I bursted out laughing -- it's so hard not to -- and had to cover with saying one of us made a funny face or something. What sweet kids. I don't want them to ever feel like their lessons aren't good enough, but man are some of them funny!

And the highlight of Tyler's life right now is Harry Potter. His grade gets really into it -- they have a sorting hat and sort the kids into houses. Each house earns (and loses) points by their actions and homework completion, etc. They play quidditch every Friday (with a bouncy ball being the snitch). It is soooooo much fun! At the end they're going to have a huge feast where they announce the winning house, eat things like Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Bean and chocolate frogs and drink things like butterbeer. So, I invited myself down to the sorting. Tyler got his first choice, which was Ravenclaw (his teacher is the house head, and his teacher is pretty cool).

After each child was sorted, they were given a scarf with a pin of their house:


They then went to sit at the table decorated with their house colors while the older students in their house (5th and 6th graders) cheered for them to join their house. It is such a cool thing they're doing. Notice his grade shirt with the Deathly Hallows? Needless to say, we're Ravenclaw fans for the time being. They are the smart ones after all, right? :)