The Beginnings

At the beginning of the year, when we set our individual and family goals, we talked about how Eliza had the potential to start reading this year.  It dawned on me recently that I haven't done enough to help her meet that goal.

So yesterday afternoon when she was home (since she doesn't have school on Mondays), and Luke was napping, she and I had Learning Time.  We've spent Learning Times in the past going over the first several letters of the alphabet, so I started with that.  We pulled out the fleece letters I made for Jack's Christmas present a couple of years ago and went over the first 10 letters, one at a time, talking about the name of the letter and the sound it makes, with Eliza writing the letter down.  Once we'd gone through to J and then put out all the letters and had Eliza find various letters and put them in order, I decided to try to see if she could begin reading them.  I made several 3-letter words, swapping out one letter at a time: DIG - FIG - BIG - BAG - BAD - HAD - FAD.  I helped her make the sounds and blend them together, and pretty soon she got the hang of it!

We were starting to eat into her screen time, so I asked her if she wanted to stop after a few minutes, and she said she just wanted to keep practicing reading.  Yeah!  Once she was bored with the activity, she started making her own words, then wanted help spelling real words.  She asked me how to spell "HOO" and since we only have one of each letter, Eliza suggested we use a Q for the second O.  Then she grabbed her owl puppet.

Fridge-Raider

General Conference - Day 2

Another great conference day.

We started the day making doughnuts, which I think is what Jack has looked forward to more than anything else about General Conference, haha.  Oh well, as long as he looks forward to the weekend, I'll keep frying dough every six months.  A small price to pay, right?

We enjoyed watching the first session together this morning, then soon after that session was over, Ben took Cat to Salt Lake to attend the second session.  I took Cat to the General Women's session in April, but this was her first time at a General Conference session, and her first time hearing Pres. Monson speak, and her first time hearing the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.  She said she had a hard time sitting still for so long, but that it was "a wonderful experience."

 

It was funny that the whole time Ben and Cat were gone, Jack and Eliza would ask me where Cat was and I would tell them "She's at General Conference." It just wasn't clicking with them.  10 minutes later one of them would ask, "Is Cat downstairs?"  It made me laugh.  Hopefully they'll get the opportunity to attend when they're old enough.

This weekend I was thinking about how so much has happened in the year since the October General Conference of 2013.  We had only been in this house for a couple of weeks and I was still kind of reeling from the reality of coming back to Utah and finding a house and moving in.  We're in a very different place now - more settled in some ways, more unsettled in other ways.  But The Gospel remains a constant in our lives, and we continue to benefit from the messages of hope and direction we receive during General Conference.

General Conference - Day 1

We enjoyed our General Conference Day today, with a wonderful highlight of having my nephew here to watch the first session with us!  His YM Pres organized a trip for some of the Young Men in his ward to come attend conference as well as touring Temple Square and BYU and doing work in the Provo Temple.  Very cool!  And we loved getting to hang out with him!  We squeezed in some time for crepes before the first session started, then we took him back to his group right after the session finished.  It was great to see you, Will!

The kids have been pretty excited about General Conference.  I think our Conference-Themed Scripture Study this week has helped, but I know they also look forward to Conference Bucks and prizes.  They behaved pretty well during the sessions today and were mostly quiet enough for us to listen to the speakers.  Cat was quite attentive, even taking notes for a while.  I loved it when I could ask them questions about what a speaker talked about and they were able to answer.  I hope they also felt the Spirit, and that some of this will stick with them.

The talk that stood out to me more than others was from Pres. Tad R. Callister, Sunday School General President.  He talked about the role of parents as the primary teachers for their children.  Toward the end of his talk he said something that has been on my mind but I hadn't put it into words as well as he did.  "Do our children receive our best spiritual, intellectual, and creative efforts?  Or do they receive our leftover time and talents after we have given our all to other pursuits?"  Definitely something to think about and encourage me to do better.

Looking forward to another Conference Day tomorrow!

Sad.

Some days the kids watch TV. Some days they don't. And sometimes when the kids don't get to watch TV, Jack doesn't handle it well.

I can relate, Jack.

Pumpkin Time

The kids have been asking us to get a pumpkin for weeks.

We held out until October 1st.

Jack has already asked us if we can carve it.

Eliza's First Show & Tell (and a back story)

Eliza finally had her first Show & Tell today.  She was so excited!  I won't be able to attend in the future because it conflicts with the time I need to get Cat and Jack from school, so I was thrilled to be able to see her today, simply because Cat and Jack were released early for parent teacher conferences.  She loved being up front and demonstrating how her whistle sounds, and performing "Jingle Bells" for her class (just the rhythm).  The teacher was so impressed with Eliza's rhythm that she asked her to play it again and let the class sing along, which they did.  It was very cool.

Are you curious where the whistle came from?  Well, I'll tell you.

On Monday, one of our neighbors, who knows of Jack's affinity for tomatoes, brought us a bowl of his homegrown cherry tomatoes.  We are expecting a hard freeze this week so the plants might not survive and he's ready to be done with them.  He invited Jack to come the next day and pick all the green tomatoes he wanted, then we could put them on the windowsill and watch them ripen.

So after dinner yesterday I was washing dishes and told The Bigs that they may take a bowl and go pick tomatoes from our back-door-neighbors' plants.  They had been gone for several minutes, longer than I expected, when I decided to check on them.

Luke and I went to the neighbors' yard and didn't see (or hear) the kids, so we walked around to the front door and found that all of the kids were inside.  Apparently, our neighbor had already pulled up the plants and tossed them away, and felt bad when the kids came inquiring after tomatoes, so he retrieved the tomatoes he could, enough to fill up the little bowl I sent with the kids.

Jack wasn't ready to go right back home, though.  He's learned that the grandmas and grandpas who inhabit our little neighborhood keep stashes of toys for when their grandkids come to play, so he asked about toys.  Instead of getting out the Permanent Toys, though, our neighbors were smart enough to get out little toys that the kids could take home with them.  No mess, no risk of kids having a meltdown when it was time to leave the toys, right?  But my kids all chose the loudest toys they could find: the girls got whistles and Jack got a small plastic flute.  And by the time I'd discovered them and spent a couple of minutes in the beautiful, peaceful, quiet, tiled house, the atmosphere in the home had become one of cacophony.

As you might imagine, I thanked them for the toys and shooed the kids home as quickly as I could.  There, I collected the noisemakers (the toys) and am keeping them high on a shelf in a closet, hoping that the kids forget that I have them at all.

Except that Eliza wanted to bring hers to Show & Tell today.