Our sweet Emily celebrated her eighth birthday today! Eight years old! We packed lots and lots of celebrating into our one little day. When I asked her how she wanted to celebrate she said she wanted to go to either Dave and Busters (restaurant & arcade) or Famous Dave's (BBQ). It took a while, but she finally settled on Dave and Busters.
The kids started the morning off by going to our farmers market - a Saturday morning favorite! - with Grandma and Grandpa. While the four big kids, enjoyed the market, GR went and performed a wedding, while Anna and I made a huge birthday brunch for everyone to enjoy when everyone got home. Per Emily's request, the menu consisted of scrambled eggs (side note, to my sibblings - finally after years of failing, one of my two pans of scrambled eggs turned out like Mom's! yippee!), bacon, sausage, biscuits, cantaloupe, grapes, lemon poppy seed cake, the works, all served on my mismatched collection of china plates, that we only use for very special parties. It was scrumptious, oh so filling and served on time - 10:30am on the dot.
We hoped to miss a busy dinner crowd at Dave and Busters by going for a late lunch/early dinner. Apparently, we weren't the only ones who had the same thought. But we got seated quickly, had a good meal and headed back to the game area. We played for a good 2 hours and the kids racked up some serious tickets - each hitting their own little jackpots here and there - reaching a grand total of 6398 tickets. They each got to pick a big stuffed animal (two poodles, a dragon and a tree frog) and a couple of little trinkets that will hopefully last longer than the weekend before the fall apart or break.
Then it was back to Grandma and Grandpa's for swimming, cake & ice cream and of course presents.
Emily is growing into such a mature little lady. She is an excellent student. She has beautiful penmanship. I love reading her classroom journals. Emily is happy to help classmates who need extra help understanding something, and does it in a kind and compassionate way. Never making the other person feel dumb or less than adequate for needing help. She is also a strong reader. She and Rebecca love reading the same books and often share books with each other, talking about the characters and story lines.
She is a super helper with Anna and Alex. She is very loving and nurturing with them. I ask a lot of her and Rebecca and she is typically very willing to help ... diaper changing, feeding, playing, etc.
Emily is very thoughtful, always wanting to make something to share with someone else ... a friend, neighbor, teacher or family member.
We are so lucky to have this sweet girl in our family! Her beautiful spirit and bright, happy personality add so much to our family! We are so proud of her and the young woman she is growing up to be. She is very excited to be baptized and we are thrilled she has made this choice.
Back in June when our good friends moved to a bigger place and the kids and I spent a couple afternoons helping them unpack. Rebecca begged and pleaded to be allowed to bring one of the huge garment boxes home with us ... I managed to get it into the van and home. She promptly set it up in the living room, filled it with pillows and blankets and climbed in with a book and flashlight. You can only imagine how everyone else felt about that - I nearly had four of them lined up on the basement floor. Over the next couple of days the box got banned from the main floor of the house, migrated down to the basement for a short visit before finally settling down in her room. Until a few weeks ago when I finally put my foot down and demanded that she break it down and put it in the garage. It might have something to do with the fact that she and Emily could barely move in their room - the box took up half of her available floor space and they were having an impossible time keeping what little bit of floor they had left picked up - Oh and that she hadn't even climbed in the box in over three weeks. Yep, time to move on.
Fast forward to this afternoon. The kids got a call from their good friends up the street ... "Do you want to come over and build a fort?!" I don't think they even hung up the phone... Becca grabbed her box from the garage, and a roll of packing tape and everyone headed off up the street to build their fort.
A good portion of my spare time the later part of last week was consumed by this little book.
Saturday was the BBQ contest - GR took 2nd place this year! - and our quarterly Primary Activity. We focused totally on the scriptures for this activity. We noticed that many of the older kids couldn't find a scripture when given the referrence ... they couldn't tell you if it was a Bible scripture, Book of Mormon, etc. And some younger kids were only really familiar with the Book of Mormon, not the Bible or vice versa, and definitely not the Doctrine and Covenants or Pearl of Great Price. Because of time constraints, we focused mainly on the Bible and Book of Mormon, having mini break out sessions (grouped by age - jr/jr, jr and sr) for the Old Testament, New Testament and Book of Mormon.
I taught the Jr New Testament session focusing on the teachings of the Savior by looking up scriptures in the Bible. I had kids in my group Sam to Emily's age and wanted to give them a take home reminder that would further help teach them about the New Testament. I instantly thought of a handout my Mom used in her primary teaching days - My Story of Jesus from a 1974 Friend and reprinted in March 1999. Since they range from new readers to strong, avid readers, I felt my handout needed to "grow" with the kids. I wanted it to be more than just a coloring activity, I wanted it to be something they would keep and use for a while.
I combined the illustrations from the Friend with coordinating text found in the New Testament Stories for Beginning Readers and included the scripture reference. Hoping my new readers like Sam can look at the picture and read the simple text, and my strong readers like Emily, would read the simplified story and both could practice looking up the scripture stories in the New Testament. I also included a couple of pictures from the Gospel Art Book and a few songs from the Primary Song book that talk about the life of the Savior. I am really pleased with how well the book turned out and the kids were genuinely excited about them too.
It is nearly impossible to accurately estimate how many kids you will have at an activity like this. I figured it would be 18-20 for that age group, but just to be safe I made around 24 books. Of course I have extras and the thought of deconstructing them kills me. Would some of you like to have one of your own for your kids church bag?
If so leave a comment between now and Monday morning, I've got at least four copies I can mail out, so I'll randomly pick four names if there are more than four of you who'd like a copy.
By the way ... it's a standard 4x6, inexpensive photo album and all but the last three pages are filled up. So your child can add some of their favorite pictures of Jesus if you'd like.
It's AUGUST. August! Really, August?!I
School starts in 9 days.
Emily turns 8 in 5 days.
Honestly and truly I thought that by now, I'd be totally caught up on our summer adventures, and things would be humming at sweet and smooth pace.
I guess it's time to just fess up and not try to hide the fact that I'm barely holding things together this summer. It's not so much that we have a lot going on ... 'cause frankly we don't. On the family end, it's been a normal, steady pace. We're doing fun things, having a good time, having wonderful summer adventures - at least I hope that's what the kids think and will remember.
I on the other hand ... I feel like I can't breathe, my condensed, bare minimum, let's just get by "to do" list is so overwhelmingly long I don't even know where to begin. My coping strategy right now is to have a Tuesday morning melt down ... full blown, totally overwhelmed, how can I get myself out of this mess, yelling, crying, eat a bowl of ice cream and bite my lip til its over, melt down. I gotta say while it doesn't do a thing to shorten my list, I do feel a bit better when it's all over. And I know that this too shall pass and I will dig my way out of all this 'stuff' that is crowding my life and get everything done in a day that is asked of me. But until then, you just might want to steer clear of this house on a Tuesday morning - maybe I will too. And to the deranged few who still seem to still think I have it all together ... ha, ha and ha! If only you were a mouse in this house!
