All You Need Is Love

Emma asked us every Monday night during Family Home Evening through the month of January when we were going to decorate our traditional Valentine’s containers.  We had to keep telling her to wait until it was actually February.  That night finally came and she was thrilled.  We decorated mailboxes this year.

Isaac and Grace joined us for the first time and they got into the decorating just as much as Emma did.

Grace was extremely proud of her final creation.

Isaac was obsessed with the circles inside the O’s.  His mailbox was covered with them, as was his face.

Emma painted fun messages on the outside and inside of her box.

After we decorated our mailboxes we got started on love notes for each other to put in them.

The best part of our evening may have been eating the yummy (and cute) cookies Emma made for us the night before.

After the babies went to bed, we had our “big kid” lesson with Emma.  Lee and I have to give a presentation later this week on The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman so we did a simplified, trial run on Emma.  She was interested in it and really understood it.  She paid attention to what our love languages are and has made an effort this week to show us love in our respective languages.  What a great kid we have! 

This is my favorite Valentine’s Day traditions.  It’s fun to give and receive inexpensive gifts and love notes throughout the week.  Such a great way to show love to each other.  It’s been especially fun to see how excited Isaac and Grace have been this year to see what is in their mailboxes each morning. 

Overheard

This is what I heard at 7:00 in the morning earlier this week:

Isaac: (in a loud, insistent voice) Gracie!!  Wake up!!  Gracie!! Wake up!!

Grace: (in a muffled, quiet, tired voice) No.

Isaac: (in same voice) Gracie!!  Wake up!!

Grace: (in same voice) Nooooooooooo.

After the same exchange went on several times Isaac must have finally realized that Grace still wanted to sleep because he started calling for his Dad. 

Isaac: Dada!  Dada!

Grace: Mama and Dada are at the temple.

This went on for several minutes, Isaac calling for Dada and Grace telling him that we were at the temple (really I was just listening to them and Lee was at work).  Then they started chatting with each other.  It is so fun to listen to them talk. 

Isaac: I want to get baptized.

Grace: Eight. (We’ve been talking about the age they will be when they get baptized, so I guess Grace was telling him that he couldn’t get baptized yet, he had to wait until he was eight.)

That conversation also went on for quite awhile with them talking about getting “wet in the water” (still talking about getting baptized).

I love knowing how much they internalize.  They listen to our gospel discussions, as simple as they may be, and they are learning from them.  They know at an early age that Mom and Dad go to the temple.  I hope they learn to love the temple like we do.  They have learned that Jesus was baptized and that when they turn eight years old they will be able to get baptized too (and get wet in the water).  I also love listening to them when they are alone.  They are becoming good little friends and I just hope they continue being friends and loving each other.

Southpaw

All signs indicate we have a lefty at our house.

Gracie’s physical therapist told me that kids don’t totally settle on one hand or the other until they are closer to three.  But Grace has been using her left hand exclusively for a long time now, we would be surprised if she changes! 

I love how she is singing in this picture!

Gracie takes her coloring very seriously.  She also likes to “write”, often writing the words “I LOVE YOU” (or so she thinks…).

171 to 44

Emma won our Third Annual Mother/Daughter Book Reading Competition.  Again.  171 to 44.  Her numbers weren’t as high as in years past, but it was still impressive.  The vast majority of her books were long ones.  In fact, this year we are keeping track of how many pages we read along with the book count (Actually, we started that last year, but not from the very beginning of the year.  Emma read more than 36,000 pages from where we started.)  It was definitely the year of the series for Emma.  Some of her favorite series were Fablehaven, The Sisters Grimm, Harry Potter, Series of Unfortunate Events, Percy Jackson, Peter and the Starcatchers (she’s not totally done with this series yet), and she re-read the Little House on the Prairie books—again.  It’s safe to say that Emma loves to read.  We also listened to several books this year, but we didn’t read as many books aloud with each other as we usually do.   There isn’t a clear favorite of the 44 books I read.  There were several I enjoyed (The Elegance of the Hedgehog, Saving CeeCee Honeycutt, Velva Jean Learns to Drive, Mockingjay, Esperanza Rising, Hannah Coulter, Sarah’s Key) but nothing I absolutely loved.  I ended the year right though by reading a good classic, Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.  I really liked it and was glad to finally read it.  As her prize Emma got to pick out a book at Barnes & Noble and then get a Blizzard at her beloved Dairy Queen.

After looking at many books…

…and after much deliberation…

…she finally picked a book…

…Tales of the Greek Heroes.   A perfect companion to the Heroes of Olympus series she is reading right now (a follow-up series to the Percy Jackson series). 

After that decision was made we were off to Dairy Queen.  Yum!

I guess it’s ok to lose to my favorite 11 year old, but one of these years I WILL win…

Bag Lady

I ran across these pictures today, I forgot how Gracie went through a little phase where she put her shopping cart to very good use. 

She would pack everything she thought she might need and push that cart through the whole house. 

This little girl and her antics always make us laugh.  We love our little bag lady!

We Love La La!

Our dear friend Laura, or La La as she is known in these parts, has been out of work for the last couple years.  She took a difficult and trying time in her life and turned it into a positive.  We watched as she reached out to many people and used her “free time” wisely by being of service and learning all she could. 

Our family benefitted from her fun personality and her willingness to help.  We loved her frequent visits to our home and the time she spent with us.  We especially love her awesome laugh! 

She has a great rapport with kids, and our kids just know she loves them.  Emma can’t get enough of her, and Isaac and Grace scream “La La!” when they see her. 

There have been many Sundays since the twins were born that I don’t know what I would have done without La La’s help.  She was always there to hold and entertain one of them while Lee was busy with bishopric duties and now High Council assignments. 

The good news is that La La has a new job!  We are thrilled for her, but sad that it means that she will be traveling a lot.  We won’t get as much La La time as we would like anymore, we miss seeing her already (especially on Sundays!!).   Thank you La La for being such a good friend and a good example for us. 

We Lovesha!

Feeling Nostalgic

How have they gotten so

big??

Please excuse the end-of-the-day, rained-upon hair-do and look.

I don’t know if the exhausted look is much better, but the babies are sure cute!

Behind Closed Doors

I’ve thought many times that it’s a good thing one of the first things I did when we moved into this house was put curtains up on these french doors.  What is behind these doors is shocking.

My craft room has gotten really bad again.  It seems that it gets messy every year in October with Halloween costumes and birthday busyness.  Then it only gets worse over the holidays. 

It’s gotten so bad that Lee walked into it the other day and said it was starting to look like my Mom’s computer room.  Gasp!

Then a few days later my mom saw it and said I was starting to to turn into her because it looked a lot like her computer room.  Oh no.  (Love ya, Mom!)

Emma can’t go in there without commenting on how messy it is.

It’s rather embarrassing and not like me to have a room like this.  I’ve got a huge itch to get it cleaned up and organized.  I think I’ve picked out the paint color I want, now it’s just time to get working.  Stay tuned…