May Scripture Story

SAMUEL THE LAMANITE

Helaman 13-16

1. What did Samuel tell the people to do?

2. Why were people shooting arrows at him?

3. Why didn't the arrows hit him?

Easter

We had our typical Easter weekend. We colored eggs on Friday night.

The Easter Bunny came Saturday morning and we found baskets, ate cinnomon rolls and boiled eggs for breakfast.


Then tonight, we had our big Easter dinner with some friends. We had such a fabulous dinner!! I posted the recipes on the family recipe blog, so you can get them there if they interest you.

I didn't want to buy a $30 ham, but Jerry brought us some meat a couple months back and brought a leg of lamb, so we had Herb Crusted Leg of Lamb. We had Twice Baked Potatos which I made up as I went along. But I do that with everthing. We had Deviled Eggs, compliments of Betty Crocker. When we went out for our anniversary dinner, Shane got some Butter Maple Carrots, so I came up with a recipe for those and her really liked them! We had a Fruit Salad and Feather Light Rolls.

We finished with an Angel Food Torte, that was fabulous!!! I have recently become enamored with angel food cakes from scratch. I have always been afraid to make them because they call for so many egg whites. I will never care again! The last time I made a box mix, it was spongy and had a weird flavor, due to the powder egg whites, or something. Anyway, a real one if FABULOUS! My Betty Crocker recipe calls for vanilla flavor and almond. I've replaced the almond with orange. I'd like to replace it with coconut. I also like to fold in shaved chocolate. Leaving the chocolate in chips or chunks is too heavy. But the shavings are wonderful.

All in all we had a great Easter!!

Oh, this week, I also made Toffee, Peanut Butter Eggs, and Cadburry Eggs! Yummy!!

Scripture Stories

I'm late posting this month's scripture stories because we had General Conference, then we were in Casper for a funeral, and then we had Stake Conference. I had to call my friend to get the scripture stories this month.

So first, we are reading

Daniel 6 (Daniel and the Lion's Den).

Then we're reading

1 Samuel 17 (David and Goliath).

We'll probably push David to next week so we can read the Easter story this week too! Lots of reading! The girls are EXCITED!

Shane's TV Center

Some of you may know that when we came home from my brother's wedding last May, we came home to a shattered TV. We had a nice TV stand and the shelves were made of glass. We really liked it. But while we were out of town, the shelf that held the TV shattered, pitching the TV forward and shattering it as well. Shane was DEVASTATED! I was grateful it hadn't happened while the girls were sitting there. Anyway, Shane built a wooden shelf for it and we went on our merry way. A couple weeks ago, our receiver tried to die again. (We have been nursing it for 2 or 3 years now.) Shane was trying to get it to work and another of the shelves shattered. Ugh! The glass is always such a mess to clean up. So, we went receiver shopping and found a nice one. However, we didn't want to spend $400 or $500 for another TV stand. Instead, Shane went to Lowe's and bought some wood for $100 and built a nice TV stand! He wanted to stain it black to match the shelves he made when we first moved here. I told him it would fun to make the shelves a cherry red for a two tone look!

And you know Shane. He loves making things challenging. So he decided he wanted to notch everything and then put in pegs to hold it in. So it looks really neat on the sides, but he says it was a pain, and when it's up against the wall, you can't see it. Oh well. You can look at the picture.

So here's the set up now. Shane wants a different speaker for the top shelf, but I don't get that stuff. And the receiver have its own shelf! Anyway, it's lots of fun and looks neat.

Sunday Activities

Lylli has been eight for almost a year now. One of the fun things that girls this age get to do in Primary is complete projects for their Faith in God award. This prepares them for the Young Women's Personal Progress Program when they turn 12.
One of the requirements for the Faith in God award is to help plan and present a primary activity. (It's supposed to be a quarterly activity, but they allow for modifications.) So, being a primary leader (I do the singing time again!) I told her she could help me do singing time. She was pretty excited! She decided to make a flower and put songs on the back, and then hide the pieces around the room. Then she chose kids to find the pieces, bring them to the board, and they built the flower! She drew and cut everything out!! She loved it, though she said it was a little bit scary! She did a GREAT job and passed off her goal!

In other Primary news, the theme for Primary this year is "I Know the Scriptures Are True." Our primary presidency has started a new thing where they assign two scripture stories a month, and the kids are supposed to go home and either read them individually or read them with their family. We have never been great about reading the scriptures as a family because we have always had at least one or two girls who couldn't read. And sometimes it just gets tedious. We would read scripture books with the stories, but now we are actually reading the scriptures every night as a family! The girls love it!! It's been great for Lylli to have to read out loud, it's been great for Layla who is learning to read! She has improved a lot since we started reading the scriptures. And it's good for Seryn to repeat the words of the verse and hear the language so she becomes familiar with it.
So, if you'd like to follow along, I'll post each month's stories on my blog. We only read about 18 verses a night and then talk about what we read. So we are slow going. But we have all enjoyed it! (Last month we read the brass plates and Nephi building a boat.) So here's this months. We got a little behind so we will be starting Jonah tonight!

Noah's Ark
Genesis chapter 6-8
1. Why was Noah commanded to build a ship?
2. How old was Noah?
3. What happened to those who did not listen to Noah?
4. What sign does God give us promising he will never flood the earth again?

Jonah and the Whale
Jonah chapters 1 & 2
1. What did God ask Jonah to do?
2. Why did Jonah run away?
3. What happened to Jonah when he didn't do what the Lord commanded him to do?
4. Why did the whale spit Jonah out?

The kids will get more stories next Sunday, so I'll post them! In Primary, they get fuzzies for reading, and they are working toward a water party this summer. It's really a fun idea!
For those of you who don't know, Shane was released as Sunday School President and is now an Assistant in the Young Men's. (Is that what they are called? He helps with the priests and teaches sometimes.) Shane really enjoys this! He loves to teach, and these boys really need his help. They need to know someone cares what happens to them. Today, during Sunday School Shane went and got one young man out of bed to go to YM and picked another one up too. I think he'll be a good role model for those boys. There's only one regularly active priest and there are only 3 total. Anyway, I think it will be good for Shane too. Helping people is just his 'cup of tea!'

Puzzle It!

Seryn put this puzzle together all by herself this morning. She's pretty proud of that fact. Her sisters were at school and I was checking my email. Then she came upstairs and told me to come look at her castle! Such a smart kid!

Where Did March Go?

It's gone!! It just left!!! (The month. NOT my sanity! Okay, well maybe that too.)
I don't know why I've been keeping up my writing blog but not this one. (shaking head) So, since I have been so lax in my blogging, here's an update for the end of February and most of March.

Amy and Iris came to visit one day and Iris' hair was fixed so cute! I thought I'd give it a try. Although, Seryn's hair isn't as long, curly, or thick, I still think it turned out okay. And she LOVED having beautiful hair!

At the beginning of the year, I was looking for a job. (I'm still kind of looking, but I think I might be going back to school instead.) Anyway, if I got a job, I wanted Lylli to have something to do after school so she wouldn't have to go to day care for 2 hours or be home by herself that long. So I told her to pick some of the after school programs that they offer at the school. She chose Spanish Club because she enjoys Spanish and she has several friends in it, and Drama. (It's turned out to be a good thing. She's not nearly as bored when she comes home, and she doesn't have as many fits either!)

I was concerned about the drama thing because she's so shy, and she didn't know anyone in it. In fact the first day, she said she was so nervous she stood outside the door for ten minutes before she got the nerve to go in! Anyway, she played the Widow Marina in The Taming of the Shrew! AND SHE LOVED IT!!!! She did SUCH a good job! (It was a VERY slimmed down version but they performed it in old English.) I'd never have believed my shy little girl would do so well on stage! She's auditioning for the next play too, and I'm very proud of her!

Even though our winter hasn't been windy and snowy, it's cold (for Provo) and generally not pleasant outside. We've all had a touch of cabin fever. But one day, the girls decided to dress up as princesses and have a tea party! (complete with crumpets aka Wheatie cookies and tea aka lemonade)

My mom came to visit last week! That was a lot of fun! Seryn has been complaining about being hot and wanting to wear her swimsuit. While my mom was here, I made the mistake of telling her to put on her swimsuit (it was a joke, but she didn't catch that). So, I had to make good on my word, and Layla and Seryn went swimming in the bathtub, because it's just too cold to swim outside.

Okay. I have to redeem myself. Since I have so many raised eyebrows looking at me, I thought I'd tell you WHY my 8-year-old now has a cell phone.

We don't have a land line and Lylli often has the responsibility to watch her sisters for short periods of time. I don't like that she can't call me if she has problems. Even if I leave my phone home, she can't call me and Shane's usually busy. So unless we are together, it doesn't always work.

On our phone plan, all cell to cell calls (of any provider) don't take up minutes. So Shane dropped our minutes and then added another line for $10 a month. So now, Lylli can have a phone to get ahold of us if she needs to while babysitting. She also will have it if something happens during her after school programs and she gets done early. She has unlimited texting and has enjoyed texting everyone! I don't mind that. We have given her rules, and she's doing pretty well. Although, I have yet to see her without the phone. She feels all grown up now!

Oh, one more little thing. Lylli was accepted into the Accelerated School here in Provo! We (Shane, Lylli, and I) have decided that she will be going there next year. She is SO excited!! They do math for 2 hours a day, and everything revolves around Science, which is her favorite subject! They work on projects of subjects they chose, get to work out in the school garden every Friday, and eat outside on nice days! (She's thrilled about that!) The school is 4 - 6 grade and there is only one class of each with about 25 - 30 kids per class. She will be there for 3 years with the same kids and then move on to another Accelerated Program when she's done with Elementary School. They have a fine arts department and she can choose 3 subjects to study. (choir, drama, orchestra, band, guitar, art, ballroom dance) They learn Latin, and have experts come to their school and visit with the kids frequently. She is very excited but sad to lose some of her good friends. Still, we all think this will be a good thing for her.