The Best Present

For Christmas, Grandma and Grandpa C. gave my children one gift to share. A medium sized box wrapped and marked fragile. Upon opening it on Christmas morning, we discovered a box of Brownie Mix, 5 fancy glass dessert bowls and a poem. Grandpa C. wrote the poem. In it, he described what we were to do with the present - make the brownies; while they are baking go to the store to buy ice cream and our favorite toppings; put ice cream, brownie and topping in the fancy dessert bowl and eat. On the back of the poem, we discovered one of these:


So for our FHE activity last night, Ryan told us all to get our coats and shoes because we were headed to Albertson's to buy ice cream and toppings. We had Sabrina get a calculator, so we would make sure not to go over our budget. We bought Vanilla Bean ice cream, chocolate syrup (Ryan), Heath bar (Malauna), Oreos (Sabrina), fresh strawberries (Roderic), and strawberry ice cream topping (Hyrum). Our total bill was $20.46 (that included buttermilk for a bread recipe, though).

When we got back home, we had the kids get in their pjs - they were super fast! And then we ate ice cream with these delicious toppings. We'll make the brownies and eat the ice cream with it later this week.

Of course, after have so much sugar at once, all of us were very hyper and the kids started climbing on Ryan.

Jesus Calms the Sea

Last week, Roderic came home from church very excited about a story he was told in Nursery. He has brought it up all week long. Yesterday, I told him that we had a movie that has that story on it (Finding Faith in Christ) and we could watch it. He was disappointed that in the movie, Christ didn't put his arm straight out like he was taught at Nursery, but put his arm to the square instead. (His attention faded soon after that scene because that is all he wanted to watch. As soon as the whole movie ended, he asked to watch it again.)

Tonight, as Roderic was in charge of the lesson, he pulled out the picture "Stilling the Storm" (#214 in the Gospel Art Picture Kit) and told us the story - in all of the glory of one sentence. "The boat is trying to sink and Jesus calms the sea with his arm like this." When we asked what Jesus teaches us by this story he repliled: "Be nice, be cheerful, be prayerful, be a lesson."

So if you're ever wondering if kids are listening during the lesson in Nursery, Susie & Tim, YES Roderic does (sometimes).