Winter Times

It's hard to believe another winter has come and gone!  I've been thinking about how fast time flies, "on wings of lightning" even, which reminds me of a hymn I love:

" Improve the shining moments; Don’t let them pass you by. Work while the sun is radiant; Work, for the night draws nigh. We cannot bid the sunbeams To lengthen out their stay, Nor can we ask the shadow To ever stay away.

Time flies on wings of lightning; We cannot call it back. It comes, then passes forward Along its onward track.  And if we are not mindful, The chance will fade away, For life is quick in passing. ’Tis as a single day.

As wintertime doth follow The pleasant summer days, So may our joys all vanish And pass far from our gaze.

Then should we not endeavor Each day some point to gain, That we may here be useful And ev’ry wrong disdain?

Improve each shining moment. In this you are secure, For promptness bringeth safety And blessings rich and pure. Let prudence guide your actions; Be honest in your heart; And God will love and bless you And help to you impart."

(Improve the Shining Moments by Robert B. Baird)

With the new year, we are excited to start spending our time on some new goals, especially our new children and youth program. I put together an area by our calendar where we can keep track of our goals and have them visually as a reminder of what we are working on. The new program is based on Luke 2:52 "And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man." We have 4 areas we make goals in - intellectual, physical, spiritual and social. It will be great to do these things together as a family and individually and a great way to get our goals into gear! We made a planning board next to our calendar and we all wrote out and one goal for the first part of the year and put it also in our books. Our family goals are to have a Restoration remembrance program to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the first vision for the spiritual category, hike Sioux Charley trail as a family for a physical category, make some planter beds, learn how to garden better and plant and tend to a garden for the intellectual category and have a different family over each month for dinner and games or other event for the social category. Dave and I even got in on the action and set our own goals, and so far we are doing pretty well. Covey is also doing it, though he's not eight yet. So far, the kids are doing very well at keeping up with their goals and sticking to it. I love what they came up with!

We are also jazzed to study the Book of Mormon together. I was thinking of ideas to bring the Book of Mormon to life for our kids. I got the inspiration to make cards with different ideas of things to do each day to bring our scripture study alive. I am going to put it in a Book of Mormon bag. I will also put paper, drawing utensils, playdough, sticky notes, etc. Every day we will pick a different way to learn out of the bag: sing a related song, pull out one word that stood out to you, draw a picture of your favorite character/setting/scene, memorize a favorite line, ask a question and answer, take a minute to ponder together after reading, act out the scene, role play a modern similar situation, write a goal based on what we learned on a sticky note and work on it this week, shape something out of playdough these verses remind you of, mark your favorite verse, look up a footnote, play charades with key words and happenings, etc. We put these in a little Book of Mormon bag I put together. I am thankful for the Spirit which gave me this idea as I was pondering over what to do to help my children learn to love the BofM as much as I do! We had our kick off lesson and put the Book of Mormon in a treasure box and I talked about how much of a treasure it is for me, sang some sons, then we played Book of Mormon bingo and had some brookies with little BofM characters cupcake picks in them. I am thankful for the word of God and can't imagine my life without it! It is like food to my hungry soul.

We tried to get outside to enjoy as much time in the snow as we could!  Our winter started out cold and snowy (started snowing the end of September), but was pretty mild in December and January.  February hit and bam!  Again, lots of snow. We liked sledding and found a new spot to enjoy.  Sledding days are the best!  They also put an ice-skate rink in by the park so we enjoyed trying to skate on our shoes, and when it was too bumpy, we decided to play soccer there instead.  Time spent outside, even in winter, is always time well spent!

It was time for a new car, as our others are getting older.  So we got ourselves a 2015 GMC Yukon Denali XL.  We are loving it so far!  I can't believe how many bells and whistles they have on vehicles nowadays.  It's nice to have so much space and comfort for long car rides.

We took some time to have fun indoors.  Of course our days like ice cream for breakfast are always a hit!  Lucy made cute signs and decorated and everything.  Though some of us got a stomach virus that day and that was no fun...  We also celebrated Chocolate Cake day and What does your name mean? day.  We have had lots of dance parties and some epic board games to pass the time! Trying lots of different crafts with all of our spare time. Emily recently took up finger crocheting with chunky yarn and made a mat for Jazzy and a beanie for her.  Cal and Emma cut up magazines with different eyes/faces/bodies and put them all together and move them back and forth and make up dialogue for them and get a kick of of that.  It's pretty funny! We did some finger painting with homemade finger paint, that was fun!  And one night, Cov and Lucy went crazy with glow sticks in the bathroom.  Looks so cool but kind of a mess!

It's amazing how much we look forward to time out and about and at home with friends.  We started inviting over a different family each month to have dinner with us and we have been enjoying that.  I never remember to take pictures though.  We went over to the Ames'/McCally's for Katelyn's birthday.  We have a fun time with friends and are thankful for them!

 

 

Found out Dave and I are 8th cousins.  Kissing cousins... no, just to verify after 2nd cousins you're good and safe.  Isn't the Family Search app fun?

We had a very windy time this winter that had gusts up to 65 miles an hour! It snapped off the welding on one of the poles on our trampoline.  Lots of things in town were damaged, even street signs were pulled out of the ground or bent!  I don't miss that Wyoming wind at all to be honest.  It was a pain to hear it howling all night.

We have been starting up with the new Children's and Youth activities.  Lucy really likes meeting with the boys and girls of our branch.  They have some great leaders.  Emma and her two Young Women chronies are keeping busy and coming up with their own activities.  The youth are the leaders now, so that has been a switch, but they are doing great!  She especially liked paint night and making pillow cases.  Callahan enjoyed the Young Men's Lego temple building activity, carving hiking sticks, and we all laughed so hard with our combined game night.

The kids have been trying to stay busy and keeping us busy!  Lots of face painting going on here.  One night, when Emma was babysitting while Dave and I were on a date, we came back to the kids in their war paint.  ...   It's like that show Inked around here somedays.  The kids love to play pretend and do makeup and face paint and color with markers. We had ....  They also like doing other random face (or other parts of body) painting. 

We had Spirit week and some dress up days around here, which was fun.  I was totally bad with getting pictures, but did get some.  Lucy and Cov got to dress up like 100 year olds for 100's day.  They were pretty funny and Cov really got into character!  For book day, they dressed up like characters from their favorite books.  So Cal dressed up like Voldemort, Lucy was Matilda, and Cov was Dog Man.  At home, Sydnie loves dressing up, especially as Princesses lately.  She's caught the Frozen fever and is obsessed with Elsa!  Emma will dress up from time to time with the kids for fun for dance parties or just hanging out.  She also still likes designing dresses and other fashion items on paper and with fabric. Dressing up days are a time to look forward to!...

Lucy and Sydnie got a new bunk bed which they were excited about!  Sydnie felt it was time to get a big girl bed. We are finally putting things together.  STILL waiting on the dry wall to get fixed in our house, but I'm sick of bare walls so we are putting more things on the walls and out of boxes together to make it feel like home.  It's getting kind of frustrating, but it will get done.  Someday!

We had a great time at our Branch Chili cook off.  We (meaning Cov and I) made a pulled pork chili with Dave's meat and it was the winner winner chili dinner!  The pic I took made it look disgusting but it was very tasty!  Covey was so excited when they tallied up the votes and we took first.  He's getting to be quite the little cook!

 

We love Dr. Suess day!  Cov enjoyed going to each of the classes in Kindergarten and first grade to do a bunch of different activities.  At home, we did some Dr. Suess coloring pages and made a themed dinner.  We had Solla Sollew stew, the Lorax oranges, Suess juice and green eggs and ham dessert (which got cooked a little too long...).  We read books like "I Had Trouble in Getting to Solla Sollew".  I like the message of that book.  We all have problems but are we going to run from them or face them head on?  I like how the kids are getting the underlying messages on their own now.  "Now my troubles are going to have troubles with me!"

The two olders had a great wrestling season!  Emma had a blast with her second year of wrestling and improved a lot, this year with the Stillwater Wrestling Club instead of the school team.  She got to compete in the first ever Montana Girls State Wrestling championships. The atmosphere was pretty electric and I'm proud of this girl for being so tough in many ways! It is International Woman's day and I thought it appropriate that they held this event this weekend.  Emma inspires me.  She's not afraid to be who she is.  She is sweet but tough. She is meek but mighty.  She is smart but teachable. She knows who she is, a daughter of God.  She is a great example to me!  She did a great job and in the end, came out in second place!  Not only has Emma been wrestling, but Cal has been too.  Emma talked him into it and he loves it!  It is one of his new favorite sports.  Unfortunately, lots of the meets were on Sunday, so we were only able to do one on Saturday in Shepard before the Corona virus thing happened, but he did so well and wrestles almost non stop at home with our family.  He won one out of three matches (the ones he lost the kids had been wrestling for 5 or 6 years!) and we were so proud of him!  Emma took third at that wrestling tournament (out of 4, but the only girl in her weight division).  So proud of these guys!  I was never a fan of wrestling until now.  Even more than being good at wrestling, they are always good sports!  We saw some bad sportsmanship, but these two are always good winners or losers.  Good work, guys!  Way to pin the wrestling season down.

It's been a great winter spending our time together. Time together is never time wasted!