Birthday Ideas

Gabrielle's 16th birthday is coming up. And she wants a party.  So a party she will get. We are coming up with some ideas, so this is my virtual party planner

I thought of doing caramel apples and then I found this which I am really excited about using.  This is her photo.  Am I allowed to use it as long as I give credit?  I don't know, but it does belong to A Little Tipsy
We also have a Halloween themed recipe booklet from my mother and she found some apple cider cups that she is really stoked about serving.  These look similar: I found them on busy mommy

She also wants to do something inside a gourd.  I haven't found that in the book yet, but I will keep looking

Traintastic

This would be a great wordless wednesday pic, but as the set arrived today, I get to write. My sister in law sent this set as her boys are now over the train stage and Benjamin is in 7th heaven. 

He fell asleep next to them for his nap and for the first time in ever, he asked to go home when we were out and about this afternoon.

Not that I ever have luck with bedtime, but I am sure tonight will be a struggle.  But I guess I always have the threat of putting them away.  That is how I got him to eat dinner tonight.

Patriarchal blessing FHE

Tonight we had a great FHE - late - but great! It was late because I had an auxiliary meeting at church. There was something wrong with the satellite feed at our church building, so we were able to leave early. But when I got back, it still took us quite a while to get around to having FHE.

Benjamin was asleep again, but eventually he woke up (and I write this at 11:03 pm, he is still awake and probably will be for quite sometime)

Song - Larry - he wasn't here, so we sang "I'm so glad when Daddy Comes Home" (which is actually titled Daddy's Homecoming, but there it is)
Prayer - Benjamin (he nodded his head to what we said)
Scripture - Tre - Genesis chapter 29
Lesson - Me - I took it from a year of FHE - a lesson on patriarchal blessings. I was really excited about using this lesson. When I saw the post last week, I knew I wanted to do it. AND my mother had just brought me a copy of my patriarchal blessing, her patriarchal blessing and her mom's patriarchal blessing. Gabrielle is turning 16 this fall, so I thought it was quite appropriate for our family. I am not sure we had talked about it much, so I knew this would be a great time
Game - Gabrielle picked Uno and I won (both times - even though once I put down a wild card and said "blue" when all I had was yellow and red - at least I had a good laugh)
Snack - Peter - gee - guess maybe edible cookie dough
again
for the fourth straight time in a row that it is his turn for snack
then I tried to ask Benjamin whom he would like to have say closing prayer and he said "hide and seek"
A great FHE if you ask me!
Next week's line up is
Song - P
Prayer - D
Scripture - B
Lesson - T
Game - M
Snack - G

Today at church was wonderful - I taught the Valiant class. I have told the Pres that I would do so until a new teacher was called. I am so feeling her pain - she asked if anyone was called to primary positions today and I had to report "no". But I don't mind. Peter is in my class and it was actually quite enjoyable. We did lesson 3o in manual 7 on the atonement. It was pretty awesome. Sugardoodle led me to this awesome fill in rebus of the 3rd article of faith. I just LOVE rebuses from the friend! Their activity page is pretty awesome as well.

gotta love lds.org

Tonight's FHE

We had a great night tonight. But one thing was missing from our FHE tonight - Benjamin had fallen asleep and missed it. But this is what it looked like
Song - Benjamin - we sang "Ring around the Rosy" in his honor. Peter refused to sing so I made him sing a solo - he picked "When the Saints Come Marching In" and eventually we joined him
Prayer - Tre
Scriptures - Me - I read Genesis chapter 18
Lesson - Gabrielle had previously made me go up into the attic in the kids' hallway and find the Book of Mormon videos (since we just got another VCR player - my parents just gave me a television with one built in) and we watched Alma and the Zoramites
Game - Peter - we played rock paper scissors and Shannon won until I beat her - yeah, it was funny
Snack - Larry - he wasn't here until right at dinner time, and actually before that I was not sure when he was going to get here so I decided I would make it for him. I made Key Lime Pie and brownies (since I knew for sure Peter wouldn't eat the pie)

so next week it is:
S - L
P - B
S - T
L - M
G - G
S - P
I had better remind Peter it is his week next week for snack

Today at church it was great! Because it wasn't my month for sharing time!
But I did find something that is super useful and helped me prepare Peter's talk in sharing time (that I didn't get to watch because I was in nursery, but that is okay).
It is a pdf of small talks for the entire year that correspond to each weekly primary theme!!!! How cool is that?
I also found these sharing time cards from Latter-Day Chatter. They sure are cute - the one for this week helped me flesh out Peter's talk.
Okay, the hubs has left me and gone to bed, so I had better go as well. I have a Farmer's Market to go to tomorrow

It's all about Sunday

Today Sharing time went very well. But I think I need to call any and all guest speakers that I have invited the night before. My guest speaker today was also not at church and something amazing happened - I decided I would log real quick onto sugardoodle and I quickly found a "my gospel standards" matching game - I printed up the pages and cut them (they weren't quite half and half, but it worked anyway). There were 12 pages with a gospel standard and a picture so the primary had to guess which picture went with which gospel standard. We played a matching game and it went great!
Thank goodness for last minute decisions.

Tonight for FHE:
Me - Song - The Oxcart Song (in honor of pioneer day) this time we had my laptop in here and listened and sang along with the MP3 on the lds.org website

Gabby - Prayer
Peter - Scripture - he read the first 6 or 7 verses from Genesis chapter 6 (because yes, unfortunately last week was the last time we had family scripture)
Larry - Lesson - he told the children how they needed to respect adults and to be grateful for everything that we have and how not to complain all the time - you know in true Larry lecture style
Benjamin - Game -we played hide and seek and it was a riot
Tre - snack - chocolate butterscotch fudge - he took a bag of chocolate chips, a bag of butterscotch chips a can of sweetened condensed milk and about 4 tablespoons of butter. He melted it in the double boiler and the butterscotch chips didn't quite melt, but he poured and spread the mixture in a cookie sheet and set it in the freezer. It was delicious!
This week had I Gabby pick someone to say a closing prayer and she picked Larry.
Love FHE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Next week:
Song - T
Prayer - M
Scripture - G
Lesson -P
Game - D
Treat - B

tonight's family home evening

Now that I have decided to do this as a reference for myself I think I will keep a record of more church oriented things like family home evening and how my sharing times went.

My sharing time went great today. But as I was leaving the house, I thought maybe I should bring my laptop with the temple information on it just in case one of my guest speakers did not show. I decided against it. And one of them didn't come to church(due to a completely understandable family emergency) and so I was left reading the back of the Kirtland Temple picture from the library.


Next time I will expend the paper and make additional copies of what I have provided for my guest speakers.

Tonight for the first time in a few months, we had family home evening
G.- song "Love One Another"
P.- prayer
Daddy - scripture - chapter 5 in Genesis
B. - lesson (I grabbed a puzzle of Jesus from my folder of past sharing times and had him give everyone a piece and we "learned" who wants us to work together)
T. - game - he chose milbourne
Mom - snack - I found a recipe online for converting a cake mix into cookies (1/2 cup of butter and 2 eggs - I added some sugar since I was working with a lemon poppy seed muffin mix and white chocolate chips)


so next week will be
song - M
prayer - G
scripture - P
lesson - D
game - B
snack - T

New Calling

Now, most of my posts have been uploaded with the pretense of being there for others to enjoy - even though I know 3 people read my blog
occasionally
when they have nothing else to do
and all their housework is done
and nothing is on television (or youtube for Becky)
and they have finished watching the paint dry on their walls

So, I have decided since I have come to the realization that I read my blog more than anyone else, I am posting things for me - so I don't loose them.

I recently tried in vain to save a page onto my hard drive and so I decided rather than to figure out how to effectively save, I would just post it here.

For me,
my most avid reader

So, now you get to find out why I titled this post as such -------
I just got called as the second councilor in primary! And the day I got called I was told that the previous second councilor had July as her month for sharing time - so here are the references I found for the rest of the month.

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE the new format of the primary program manuals that came out in 2010. This month is "The Temple is a House of God". And, following the sharing time outline, I have asked different individuals to come talk about three different temples, about which I am really excited . I found a website (not an official LDS site, but really interesting) called ldschurchtemples.com from which I got some great info for this week.

I also went to sofiasprimaryideas.blogspot.com and found a great sharing time to fill in if we have extra time.

Next week, I will be gleaning from this sharing time found in a 1997 friend. The sharing time outline is great, but I know next week will need additional "support".

I have seen different ideas for the fifth week ranging from games, videos and super extended singing time - but seeing as how the chorister just got called the same week as I, I thought I would wait a little (until October - when it is my month again and amazingly another 5 Sunday month) before springing a 50 minute singing time assignment on her. So when I found the first sharing time after doing a search of "my gospel standards" on lds.org, I found this other sharing time that has a great craft that the kids can do
So there it is - my plan for this month.
Stay tuned for October (as it will probably be the next time I post)