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Thursday, December 25, 2008

A Blog for Christmas

What did I get for Christmas? A Blog! My husband, super creative hero that he is, created me my own blog with my own url! My blog will now appear here so please change your bookmark for my blog. :)

We have had a great Christmas. We had both of our families come to our house. It was so nice of them to come, especially since we had SNOW!!! and to be with us.

Merry Christmas!


:)

Sunday, December 14, 2008

Lessons learned from the Book of Ether

I teach Gospel Doctrine (I absolutely love it!) and today I combined the two lessons in Ether (because we have more lessons than we do weeks left in the year). Here is something I put together for my lesson:

Lessons Learned from the Book of Ether

1. Do more than pray - “Pray” is used only once in the book of Ether, by Moroni (Ether 12:36). Rather, the brother of Jared converses with the Lord. He “cries” unto the Lord and the Lord “has compassion” on him and his family. (Ether 1)
2. The Lord gives us the answer/solution sometimes and other times he expects to come up with it ourselves, and then present it to him for His approval. (Ether 2)
3. Do all that we can do - Ether didn’t just grab a handful of rocks - he moltened them and got them as close to perfect as possible (white and clear, even as transparent glass). (Ether 3:1)
4. By Faith all things are possible. (Ether 3, 12)
5. Men are created in the image of God. (Ether 3:15)
6. Whatsoever thing persuadeth men to do good is of our Savior and Heavenly Father. (Ether 4:12)
7. If we come unto Christ, He will show us the greater things and give us knowledge. (Ether 4:13)
8. Faith is things hoped for and not seen. (Ether 12:6)
9. It is only after we exercise faith that we will receive a witness. (Ether 12:7)
10. It is only through Faith that miracles are wrought. (Ether 12:12)
11. We are given weaknesses that we may be humble and to ask for help. (Ether 12:27)
12. We must have both Faith and Hope (Ether 12)
13. Even though we are not perfect, we can still be a tool in God’s hands. (Ether 12:23-27)
14. It is Faith, Hope, and Charity that bringeth unto Him, the fountain of all righteousness. (Ether 12:28)
15. Only the righteous will be preserved upon this land. (the book of Ether)

There are some really great things, and some really sad things, contained within the book of Ether. I love Moroni's commentary throughout.

FYI, I found a really great site this weekend that had some cool posters about Book of Mormon heros... The site is www.realheroposters.com. Check them out - I ended up ordering like 7 of them. :)

Friday, December 12, 2008

My Quest

Every year at Christmas time, my quest is the same: Make the perfect Christmas. This year, my quest centers around a few things:

1) Updating my son's room (done last year for Christmas) from a train theme (didn't last as long as I thought) to a Captain America theme (and superheros in general).

2) Updating my daughter's room to accommodate the new desk (on which we will also set up my old laptop for her) and her budding artistic ventures.

3) Not buying toys that 6 months from now still haven't really been played with and were really too big or awkward to fit well somewhere in their room.


I actually feel like I am doing well with number 3. However, #1 is my biggest challenge with #2 coming in second.

I have spent several hours online trying to find Captain America paraphenilia and apparently it only exists in great limits. There is no bedding to be found, no fabric to make bedding, and almost no toys. There are figurines but they are "to look at, not to touch" which I'm afraid just doesn't suit my son's needs.

I have been struggling with this but today found something that I feel is a reasonable solution to the bedding issue - I found a quilt w/ blue on one side and red on the other side. On the blue side, it has red circles stitched in and on the red side, it had blue circles (i.e. they stitched it with a red top thread and blue bottom thread or vice versa). This is a great alternative to what I was planning last night - creating my own quilt with Captain America's shield in the middle. The circles go very well with the "shield" theme and I am going to not sew a shield on to the quilt - I'll just leave it as is and do a shield on the wall. Furthermore, Target (one of my two favorite stores) also had matching sheets that were white with red and blue stars. (Note: Captain America's shield:)
So, I am quite pleased with this solution for the bedding. I am now working on getting wall art. My husband insists that he is going to draw/paint something on his wall. I have hopes that this will happen, but I am not holding my breath (sorry, honey).

In regards to my daughter's room, I am having a hard time really knowing what a true artist would want. I am a left brained rather un-artistic person and I am just not sure. She currently has an easel that we will be removing to make room for the desk so I want to provide her with some things on the wall that will act as her easel. Pottery Barn Kids has some things like that but I plan on going to the craft store to see if I can come up with some cheaper versions.

If you could have the perfect art room, what would you have in it? Please leave me a comment (I know I don't deserve them because of my lack of attention to my blog over the last month, but come on, this is Christmas!).

On a completely different subject - good news... we did the snow dance and now it is going to snow this weekend!

:)