Castles & Coasters

Friday morning Kari watched my girls in the morning while I did some things at home and went visiting teaching. It's nice to trade kids with her since we have girls much the same age. After I picked them up, we came home and made bread. We had just enough time to do that before getting Eliza and Libby from school. Eliza had a friend come over and play after school for a while. I feel asleep putting Eliza to bed, so that was it for me on Friday.

On Saturday Brian had to go into work for an appointment, so we did some cleaning at home and played out front. Around lunch time, my brother's family came over and dropped off their son Luke. Then they took off with Brian, Eliza and Libby to Castles & Coasters. It was my niece and nephew's birthday party. I stayed home with Ellie, Hattie and Luke since they were too small to enjoy it. They had such a great time...going on ride after ride after ride. I was sad to miss, but we had fun here at home. That evening, I loaded up the kids and met everyone at my parents' house for pizza and ice cream. What a nice way to end the evening!








Today was ward conference. We made it on time. We are perfecting our getting-ready time and keep getting better every week. The meetings were so great and I heard several things that I needed to hear. Eliza and I sang in the choir...we sang "More Holiness Give Me." A couple things that President Wagner said that I loved...
He talked about why we do certain things and if we do them for the right reason. As part of an example he gave, he mentioned this...(and I wrote it down because I didn't want to forget, but somehow it got thrown away so I'll have to try to remember.) Do we as mothers resent the drudgery of laundry, mopping, diapers or do we see our divine roll as a blessing. He said more but I can't remember it now. I do remember how it made me feel though. It is a good change of perspective for those days when my work at home doesn't seem to end.
He also talked a lot about gossip and how we can't have unity if we gossip and share things about others that shouldn't be shared. He also said that it's up to us to forgive someone if they have done us wrong, even if we know we are in the right. It was just a great talk and I actually got to listen..our girls did well today. I only had to go out during the closing prayer with Hattie. The meeting did go long, so technically she made it through!

Sunday school was equally as good. Our stake theme this year is "Walk Together in Holiness." One of the counselors in our bishopric talked about the theme and broke it up and talked about each word. When he talked about "together" he talked about unity and used the 1984 USA Olympic Hockey team as an example. Then he asked about our uniform...if we were on a professional team, what would our uniform say on the front (the team name) and on the back (our last name). Then he asked what it would say for our "church team." There were several answers--like having the church's name on the front and our name on the back or the Savior's name on the back. It just made us think more about unity and whose team we are on.

In Relief Society, Karen taught about covenants we make and the blessings that come from them. I love the stories that she shared. Overall it was a great meeting and a spiritual recharge that I needed.

Tonight we had Brian's family over for dinner and we had Hawaiian haystacks and Laura made yummy apple pie. The kids had a blast playing together as always.

Just to make sure I get this written down...Ellie loves to sing the primary song "I Lived in Heaven." She sings it so cute...saying "I lived in Heaben...", then she says, "Then Heavenly Father presented a beautiful plant..." LOL. It's really cute.

Oh and today we watched Horton Hears a Who. I think we might have to buy that one--I really enjoyed it. It's such a cute, humorous movie.