Pinewood Derby

This year was Austin's first Pinewood Derby. It was a lot of fun. Jeff worked very hard "helping" Austin with his car. In all fairness, I will say that I overheard many conversations between Austin and his dad over what the car would look like. Austin did draw out what he wanted, and picked the colors (painted after the Dallas Cowboys). And of course, every great race car has to have a name, so we named it "Cowboy". Anyway, even though Austin's car didn't win, it did great, and we all had a very fun time. And our Committee Chair, Sue Roberts, did an outstanding job on giving awards to all of the boys who participated, and making them all feel special...so thanks to Sue.

Proud Papa with his baby (and Austin too!) hehehe

Cowboy posing in front of the 1st place trophy for luck!

KT wishing her big bro luck...(she's the best cheerleader)

Here's the competition!

Cowboy is the front row all the way to the left...dark blue w/ silver stripes

It is awesome to see what some of the boys came up with!

Cowboy being loaded up in the right lane!

Austin won an award for best paint job which included a cool race car sun catcher.

Tyler hardly cared about the races, he wanted the cupcakes!!!!

He crammed 3 cupcakes into his mouth before I even got the camera out! PIGGY!

Refreshing Behavior!

So, this morning I get up, and for the first time EVER, Austin has gotten up, gotten himself dressed, made his own breakfast, did his own hair, and did everything for himself before I even got up....WOW!

I realize that for a lot of you moms, 8 may seem like a late age to do this, but I've never forced my kids to be that independent, I've always done everything for them...pick out their clothes, do their hair, make all their meals....so this was a very big deal to me! Especially since, Austin and I have had some run-ins over his behavior lately. It makes me feel really good to know that this great kid is still in there, and I hope I can remember that the next time...... :)

Valentine's Schmalentine's!

So, for Valentine's Day, we didn't get to go out or anything because Jeff has been waaayyyy too busy. So, we decided to just make a nice dinner at home. So Jeff made some very yummy steaks, and we had baked potatoes and the kids had fettuccine noodles, and french bread toast. I decided to do the table all up in pink and red, and put the sparkling cider on the table, and told the kids it was our fancy champagne....my bad....they didn't even want to try it saying "mom, we can't drink alcohol, I don't want to drink alcohol." I guess that's great that they have that ingrained in their brain, but it took me a while to convince them that it was just apple juice. Katie didn't like it anyway, but they all loved having the table all decorated (and yes, all of you Martha Stewarts...that is a decorated table for me with kids, okay? That's as fancy as I get with little ones!). My Valentine bought me these! :)

Delicious Rewards!

So, at the beginning of last year, I found this idea on some website (I think it was the idea door), for learning your Articles of Faith. I wasn't sure what I expected when I started on this endeavor with the kids being 5 and 7, but I am amazed at the results. So, the idea was to print out 13 ice cream scoops (1 for each article) and a cone. Every couple of weeks, we would learn a new article of faith, and put the scoop on the the cone. I promised the kids that when we finished them all we would have an ice cream party.

It was a hard thing for me to teach, because they have some pretty big words and concepts in them, and even though memorizing them was my goal, I wanted my kids to have "some" understanding of what they meant. So, as we learned each line, I would explain what it meant (the best I could), and then we would come up with actions for the words. So, we made up sort of a sign language to remind us what the words were.

Anyway, 3 weeks ago we finally tackled the mother of them all --- #13! "We believe in being true, chaste, benevolent, virtuous, and in doing good to all men, indeed we may say we follow the admonition of Paul; we believe all things, we hope all things, we have endured many things, and hope to be able to endure all things; if there is anything virtuous, lovely or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things." (whew) I wasn't sure if they would be able to do this in one FHE....but they wanted that ice cream party so bad, they did it!

I can't believe how well they know all 13. Austin can pretty much do them all without any help. Katelyn, surprisingly at the age of 6 can pretty much do them all with only a helping word occasionally (mainly on #13). It is so impressive to me what these sweet little children can memorize. I started this because in Kindergarten both of my kids were taught the preamble to the constitution, and I figured if they could learn that, then they could learn these! So, it took a little over a year, but it is done! So, we finally had our ice cream party at Cold Stone. The kids had a blast! They loved getting to pick what they wanted in their ice cream! So, this year's goal is going to be either memorizing the Family Proclamation, or maybe their Scripture Mastery Scriptures.