Primary Talks

Both Miriam and Rachel gave talks in primary this month. Poor Miriam was supposed to give a talk on January 17, but a special stake conference was called so they told her to be ready to speak the following Sunday (and moved the children who were supposed to speak that Sunday to the first week of February) but it snowed so church was cancelled come January 24. Miriam finally got around to giving a talk on Valentine's Day and Rachel spoke this week.

Here is Miriam's talk:

My talk is about why Jesus created the Earth. I will tell you why. So that we could get a family and so we can get sealed together and so we could get a body so we could do all the stuff that I just said. 

In family scripture study we recently read Alma 12 and in Alma 12:24 it says that “this life became a probationary state; a time to prepare to meet God.” That means that we are supposed to use our life to learn and grow so we can be ready to go back to heaven. The earth was created to give us a place to be away from Heavenly Father so that we can learn things on our own. This means that we will make a lot of mistakes, but that’s okay because “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” John 3:16.

God sent his Son, Jesus Christ, to atone for our sins, to make it so we can return to live with Heavenly Father. Jesus is the great Mediator of all men and makes it possible for us to choose liberty and eternal life instead of captivity and death.

Because Jesus and Heavenly Father love us they wanted to give us a beautiful place to live while we are away from them, so they spent a lot of time creating beautiful things for us to enjoy, like flowers, butterflies, and sunsets. Heavenly Father wants us to treat the world nicely because he worked hard on the earth. We don’t want to hurt the earth and make Heavenly Father sad, so we have to help take care of the earth.

I bear my testimony that Jesus made the earth.

In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

I'm having a wonderful time but I'd rather be...

I only had to follow Zoë around with the camera for about three minutes to catch her whistling. She'll sometimes do it on demand (as you can see in the video) but she's mostly a spontaneous whistler.

She also really loves the babies we hide around the house for her to play with. We keep them in every bathroom, in the oven, in the doorknobs, in our phones, and in the camera. Any reflective surface is her BFF for life (because the baby she sees is just too cute to resist).

So, here she is whistling (you may have to turn up your volume):

Language Learning

I can't remember where we were when Benjamin picked up a copy of Where the Wild Things Are but we were probably at the elementary school. Maybe in Miriam's classroom. I'm pretty sure that's where. I know it wasn't at the library, still Benjamin asked if he could check it out anyway. I explained to him that we couldn't check it out because (a) we weren't at the library and (b) we have it at home anyway so even if we could borrow it (sometimes Miriam's teacher lets us borrow books) there wouldn't be much point since we own a copy ourselves.

"Can we read it at home?" he asked.

He's really big on commitment patterns lately and asks me to commit to everything from the obvious ("Can I eat breakfast in the morning?") to the foreseeable future ("Can we get this for my birthday?") to undefined moments in time ("Can we have animal crackers one day?").

Side story:

Ben woke me up on Friday morning saying, "It's one day, Mom!"

"Mmmmhmmm," I agreed sleepily.

"So?" he said expectantly, grinning from ear to ear.

"So...?" I repeated.

"One day," he said emphatically. "It's one day!"

"Is that significant?" I asked.

"Animal crackers," he hinted.

"Right. Yes. Okay. Today can be the day we eat animal crackers."

Anyway, as my little side story demonstrated, I can be a total pushover. So of course I said yes.

"Yes, we can read that book at home, Benjamin."

However, as my little side story also demonstrated, I can also be a little absentminded when it comes to all the commitments I'm forced to make and I forgot about reading that story to Benjamin.

Whistling and tongue rolling

We met some friends at Duke Park for a picnic today, which was a nice treat because we don't go to Duke Park very often. Zoë had fun exploring the playground while Benjamin ran around with his little pals.

Fire at the elementary school

The girls had an exciting morning at school on Friday. A light in the girls' bathroom malfunctioned somehow and put the whole school on high alert. I guess smoke was in the hallway and it was really stinky—but they didn't know what was causing it yet, obviously.

The principal made an announcement informing the school that the fire alarm would be going off shortly (I don't know how she knew—though she was probably alerted to the smoke) and asked teachers to have their students quickly grab their jackets and line up. Ordinarily you're supposed to not bring anything with you, but it was cold and she didn't want her entire student body freezing outside.

Some classes heard the announcement and others didn't.

Rachel's classroom didn't hear the announcement and so they went outside without their coats.

Miriam's class was in the lunchroom and her teacher herded them quickly back to the classroom to retrieve their coats, which wasn't the quickest route to the safety of the out-of-doors, but I guess since the principal made the announcement about coats they figured it was more along the lines of a drill rather than an actual emergency.

The kids were quite surprised when a couple of fire engines roared onto the scene and firefighters jumped out, fully clad in their firefighting gear. Ladders were propped up to the roof and a couple of firefighters went to check the roof out. Others went inside the school to see if they could find the cause for all the concern. Soon the principal was escorted into the school. And soon after that the firefighters packed up all their gear and the children were allowed back inside.

So, it was just a malfunctioning light, which took several hours to repair, but was ultimately no threat of eminent danger. The girls' bathroom was cordoned off while repairs were being made and there was a lingering odour all day. The bathroom happens to be just a couple doors down from Rachel's classroom so she was right in the heart of all the excitement.

It was all anyone could talk about when I was in there on Friday afternoon and I'm sure the girls will have vague memories of this in the future (like I think I have a memory once of having a to evacuate the school for a fire alarm and it turned out someone lit the paper towels on fire (punk middle schoolers)). I figured I'd write it down so they can reconcile their memories later (since I can't seem to get them to write in their journals no matter what I do).

Snowy days, wet nights

Monday was President's Day here in America, and as such was slated to be a school holiday...until it snowed last month. February 15th was declared our first snow make up day so we were prepared to slug through the entire month of February without one measly day off...until it snowed on Valentine's Day, and then we knew we wouldn't be going to school on Monday after all.

At first we were put on a two-hour delay because a storm system was in the forecast. We told the girls that if it started snowing before bedtime that they could stay up late so they spent dinner and family game time on flake watch. We ate and played with the blinds open so they could be on the lookout for snow. We didn't see any so put the kids to bed like normal.

But then I checked Facebook and my friend Addi said that we had a good half inch of snow and that school was now cancelled, so I ran to the window in disbelief and, lo, there was a half inch of snow on the ground!

We're so used to getting ice pellet storms here that we half expect a snow storm to be noisy, I guess, but this snow fell so softly and silently that we didn't even notice when it happened.

The girls got out of bed to celebrate (Benjamin had already fallen asleep) because, naturally, this meant there would be no school the next day!

Chin Karaoke

We made a video for family night, which we thought we'd distribute as our valentine for our families. Enjoy!



It was a perfect family night, it had it all: tears, laughter, and even some biting at the end there.

Limericks

On Wednesday night I was finalizing a limerick writing activity for Rachel's class Valentine celebration. I don't know that they ever got around to finishing their limericks because our party was cut short by the assembly and their morning was cut short by the fire "drill" excitement so they were having a crazy day. Whatever the case, getting ready for this activity sure got me in a limerick-y mood. I started composing limericks in my head throughout the day as I dealt with Benjamin and Zoë and when I had theirs mostly finished I figured I should write poems for everyone else, too. So I did. 

I made little bookmarks out of them and busted out a few books for them to enjoy tomorrow. 

Andrew doesn't get a book. He gets the little set of kitchen gadgets.

Valentine mail

Getting the mail has been rather exciting the last couple of days. Yesterday there was an envelope in the mail for Rachel and Miriam and today there was an envelope for Benjamin and Zoë, each containing valentine cards and a little bit of spending money. The kids were thrilled to get them and were very excited about the pictures Bumpa drew for them.

Valentine Miracles

On Tuesday Miriam said the dinner prayer.

"And please bless that Zoë will sleep through the night on Thursday," she said.

Andrew and I peeked at each other with one eye to silently communicate that we both thought this a strange—and oddly specific—request.

"...So that Mommy will feel up to coming to my class Valentine party on Friday," she finished.

I made it to her Valentine party today.

Zoë didn't sleep through the night because she certainly woke up every two hours to eat. However, she fell asleep before 10:00 and only woke up to eat, never to party hardy, which in our house is basically sleeping through the night.

Rachel had to be to school early for Science Olympiad, so Andrew drove her to that while I helped Miriam finish getting ready for school. She was beyond excited for Valentine's Day—she handmade cards for everyone in her class, she picked out a 95% pink outfit (her socks were brown with monkeys and hearts on them), and she was praying so hard that everything would run perfectly smoothly the whole day. So I put a little heart braid in her hair for good measure.