Happy New Month!

The holiday season was a very sick one in Virginia. I had a cold and a sore throat lasting 6 weeks, Jessica was sick for a month, and several families were ill too with colds or strep or the flu. It ruined our plans to party hard during the holiday break. So on Dec 31, 2012, after the kids went to bed, our neighbors Dacy & Ryan Ayres snuck over for a few games & a "Happy New Years" at midnight. On New Year's Day we just watched movies as a family:

And a month later on February 1, when everyone was healthier, we invited friends over. We told the kids we were celebrating New Years and they didn't know it was a month late and only 9:00 pm. Ian & Madison Shorter are on the ends; Jessica is in the middle, pouting for some reason; and Savannah, RJ, and Zachary Wight pose here.

Jared & Jennifer Wight, Clay & Jessica Shorter, Michelle and Ryan Samples, and Dave and I all laughed and played games and drank our non-alcoholic sparkling juice to ring in...February.

Family Home Evening 2012: Religion and Family Fun

January - Nephi Sails to America

Our religious lessons for Jessica have leaned toward bible stories (Noah, the creation, the Nativity of Jesus), so I decided it was time for a Book of Mormon story. We focused on the ship and Liahona (compass from God) parts of Nephi's story.

Week 1:

We sang "The Iron Rod", and Dave read the story from the Illustrated Book of Mormon Scripture book. Then we all colored pages for a mini-book of Nephi's travels that I found on the internet. Last we coached Jessica through a high-energy scavenger hunt drawn on liahona-shaped clues. When the drawing was good enough, she would recognize it and run to it (like, her bed) shouting "OH! MATCH!" The last spot had a plate of brownies, and we ended by singing "Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam".

Week 2:

We borrowed the Living Scripture cartoon "Journey to the Promised Land" and kinda translated it into 2 year-old language. Then we had carrot cake and played ping pong, courtesy of Danny & Karen (thanks for the Christmas present, guys!) Dave won, as usual. After a few tries with the paddle, Jessica got bonked on the head and was happy to just be a snacking spectator.

Week 3:

We sang "Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam", and watched the same movie from last week. We stripped Jessica down to a diaper for one of her favorite activities: painting. We water-colored 3 scenes from the Nephi story, then ended with rice crispie "golden plates". We had to break it off when a neighbor kid came over to get math help from Dave.

Week 4:

I borrowed the Nephi flannel board cutouts from the church building and we retold the story again. Because repetition is the toddler way. 

Then we played a game I spent way too much time drawing, which I called "Promised (Candy) Land". We used colored cards from our Candy Land game, but I substituted cards with story highlights for the candy destination cards. Jessica is getting better at taking turns and moving to the correct color. (My baby is getting so grown-up!)

February - Loving Others and Sharing

Toddlers are notoriously selfish, and Jessica is no exception. And since Valentine's Day is in February, we focused on sharing in our February family nights.

Week 1:

We sang “As I Have Loved You” and “When the Family Gets Together” for opening and closing songs. Dave read the illustrated story of Jesus visiting the Americas & blessing the children. We (Dave and I) made Valentines to decorate house (while Jessica was too hyper), and ate candy hearts.

Week 2:

We didn't do anything (as seems to be our pattern of only managing to do 3 out of 4 Monday family nights.) 

Week 3:
We had the Randolphs over for a lesson on the miracle of Jesus feeding the 5,000 and the boy sharing his 5 loaves and 2 fishes (tuna cans, in our case.) Joshua had no choice, as he was the only boy there to play the boy with the food.

We played the hide-and-pass-the-ring-on-the-string-while-the-person-in-middle-guesses-in-whose-fist-it's-in game. We also watched a darling video about kids sharing sandwiches. Then my idea to encourage sharing was to have everyone bring an ingredient for banana splits and discuss whether or not we should share in a big bowl. But the older kids were one step ahead, and were only too eager to dump their part in so they could get a scoop of the final product.

Week 4:

We webcammed with Grandma and Grandpa Robertson. We sang "Love is Spoken Here", had a lesson on loving our family, and played Don’t Eat Pete! They played a duet of “Give Said the Little Stream” on their banjo & harmonica).

March - Creation of the World and Gardening

The first week Dave read the illustrated scripture story of the creation. Then I explained it on the wipe board in calendar terms, which Jessica understands due to her kid calendar in her room. We roasted s'mores for a treat. We sang "Give Said the Little Stream" and "My Heavenly Father Loves Me (Whenever I hear the song of a bird...)".

Week two we borrowed cut-outs from the church to tell the creation story. And we assembled a digital puzzle of the Garden of Eden. We sang "The Prophet Said to Plant a Garden" and "My Heavenly Father Loves Me", neither of which Jessica was there for, as she was on timeout for hitting and spilling water.

Then we planted tomato seeds, (all of which came up, but only 1 of which lived to grow in the garden.) Then we ate cookies 'n' cream ice cream, since Oreo cookies look like dirt (it's a stretch, but it tasted good.)

The third week we watched creation videos on Youtube, and sang "Give Said the Little Stream" and "Popcorn Popping". Then we spent lots of time turning over garden soil in preparation for April planting. For a treat we cut animal and plant shapes out of store-bought chocolate chip cookie dough, which didn't turn out, melting into circular cookies.

April - Easter

We spent every week learning about Christ's final week and crucifixion, which I will write about in a separate blog post. Christ's death is one of Jessica's favorite stories now.

May - Service and Ammon (Book of Mormon story)

Four families in our church congregation had babies this spring, so we made treats and visited them. We also learned about Ammon's defending of the king's sheep. So our theme didn't turn out too baa-aa-aa-aad.

First week we watched our Ammon cartoon, and made Sheep cupcakes with coconut. The next week Dave read the picture story of Ammon to Jessica. I used my new loaf tubes to make a flower-shaped slice we could turn into a sheep. We delivered the heart-shaped loaf and a jar of honey to the Youngs.

The third week we made peanut butter teddy bears and delivered them to the Greers. We eventually made dinner for the Gentrys, who had the last baby in the bunch.

June: Gratitude for Our Bodies

This theme was partly inspired by my new interest in health, and my desire to get Jessica potty-trained. I Netflixed a National Geographic movie Inside the Living Body. We also got a movie about bodies from the library. And with our body chart book, we had some lessons on health and anatomy. We focused on the story of Shadrak, Meschak, and Abednego. We used chalk to trace our bodies on the sidewalk, including one of Smokey the cat.

July: Understanding the Sacrament 

Jessica had been too demanding, playful, and messy during church. So Dave and I did some lessons on the importance of taking the sacrament and reverence. We decided she was old enough to stop playing with toys and getting snacks or drinks during these first 20 minutes of our Sunday meetings.

The first week we played "church". We had a podium, and took turns weating the tie and announcing prayers, songs, and the sacrament. The other 2 in the audience did the singing and praying. Jessica thought it was awesome. She even copied us when we told to say "Welcome to church", "The opening song will be...", etc. Dave hammed it up by asking for a vote for Jessica to be nursery class president. Then we let Jessica pick pictures of Jesus to put in sheet protectors in a folder to take to church. It also had a little chart of 6 things we do in church before she gets to play with toys. It totally worked too. Now she flips through her pictures and understands the rule about no toys, drawing, or treats until after the sacrament.

The next week we watched Jessica's favorite short video of the crucifixion: To This End Was I Born. Then we went out to the garage and cut up some puzzles I made from religious pictures months ago. (I think I'm going to really like our scroll saw.) I cut, and Dave & Jessica assembled and bagged them, so she have more religious-themed toys in church.

I'll update this blog with more pictures as we have them.

Family Olympics

For a summer Primary (church kids group) activity, our presidency wanted something everyone in the family could do, and something involving water. So for July we combined a water gun/balloon war with a "Family Olympics", composed of picnic games and Minute-to-Win-It games. It was pretty fun. 

Each person chose a country to represent, and colored that flag on a name tag. We wore the soccer jerseys Dave bought on his mission and played for Brazil. Here Dave stacks 6 dice on a Popsicle stick in his mouth.

Here Dave put Vaseline on his nose, and transferred as many cotton balls as he could from one plate to another in one minute. When I saw only one other child in Jessica's age category had attempted the cotton ball game, I coached her through it, and she took the "bronze" medal.

I also did the 3-legged race with Jessica, as well as with Ashley Bonney. We biffed it on our first try, but we took the bronze when we tried again. I also lost the water-balloon toss, but it was just fun.

There was also a really hard game with ping pongs balls that I couldn't complete, and Dave kept cheating to finish. You strap a tissue box to your back, add 10 ping pong balls, and time how long it takes to shake them out. It's a real calorie burner and spectator sport. We also had a team Cheetos-and-shaving-cream-on-the-head toss, gallons of water for keeping cool, and a tug of war, for which I was on the losing team three times.

The very competitive Leech family, with only 1 child, still won the most medals, and the grand prize: a chocolate Olympic cake made by our Primary president, the amazing Kristina Randolph. We brought home several silver and bronze medals (made from salt dough), and a fun memory. I loved the activity because it didn't require too much planning, clean-up, and there was lots of help, so it wasn't stressful. It geared us up to watch the 2012 London Summer Olympics.

Orlando Vacation Part 4: Kenny and Megan in Jupiter, FL

After playing at the theme parks and Jessica's baby blessing and temple sealing, all the family left except my brother Kenny and his wife Megan. They loved board games too, so we played several. Megan won "The Totally Insane Card Game" which s like Uno, but with 40 weird action cards.

We went to the free small Busch Gardens wildlife rehab center right across the street from our house. Apparently Jessica thought the black bears were funny.

We also walked through the new turtle rehab center in Juno Beach.

I drug everyone out to hunt for letterboxes. Dave's sister Melanie made us a kit for Christmas, and I wanted to try it. I looked online, and found out some waterproof boxes had been hidden by letterboxing hobbyists in nearby Riverbend Park. We walked the trails through old settler grounds and abandoned orange orchards. We dug through the overgrowth to find the 2 boxes, and stamped a windblown girl and a Batman in my notebook as proof of the deed.

Our third attempt was unsuccessful, starting with a really hard rain. But Kenny & Megan were as determined as I was, so we got soaked jogging around a pond in a park. We followed the clues to the correct spot, but it wasn't there. The letterbox planter had stuck a magnetic box inside a drainpipe on the top. It was obvious from the water pouring out, that it had been washed away a long time ago. Oh well, we thought it was fun. Dave stayed dry by volunteering to follow us with the car.

We also took Kenny & Megan snorkeling in our favorite lagoon off the Jupiter inlet.

I love this pic of Jessica "reading" our fish identification book. (We eventually gave away all of our snorkeling  gear when we moved from Florida a year later in September of 2011. I loved snorkeling and I will miss that part of Jupiter.)