jenthemom.com

Have I mentioned lately that Jason will be getting the priesthood soon? I haven’t? Oh well, in April my boy becomes a deacon and will be serving the sacrament and preparing the sacrament and learning the responsibilities of a priesthood holder.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how I want to have strong, faithful children. I have tried to so some things like having the kids write their own primary talks by reading scriptures that pertain to the topic and talking about stories from our family that might help and then praying as they get up to the primary pulpit that they don’t refer to all the yelling mom did as we ran out the door late to church again.

I’m starting to feel like there is so much more that I can be doing for the family but also for me personally. I feel like I have drifted pretty far from my Savior while still feeling grounded in my faith. I need to get better at the daily things that help bring me closer to the spiritual. We use to be really good at FHE and scripture reading but we’ve slowed down a lot. So, for FHE tonight I talked to the kids about how we behave different when we’ve been reading our scriptures and when we’ve been playing on the computers. We have taken up a family (kid) challenge to not watch tv or go on the computers for a WHOLE MONTH! That’s going to be a real struggle for Jason and Laurelyn especially. Jason loves his computer games and Laurelyn loves her movies. We can do it though!

I have also printed off some reading charts and we have a family challenge to see who can personally read the Book of Mormon first. We’re in Mosiah as a family but we’re all starting at the beginning again and racing to the finish. Whoever gets to the end first gets to choose their prize! (Without reason of course. Jason immediately asked for $100, the booger.)

I’m hoping that getting our determination together on family scripture study, fhe, and personal scripture study that we can start to feel closer to the Spirit, all of us.

I don’t know what happened but Mother Nature decided that she hates us. She must have gone on vacation or forgotten her distaste for canada because we have been having a fantastic winter. Then Mother Nature threw minus 50 at us. Seriously! It was fifty degrees below freezing. I have never felt anything so cold in my entire life. We didn’t leave the house for a week. All of the kids’ activities were canceled and many stores in town shut down entirely because they didn’t want to go to work and they knew that no one was out shopping.

When the weather finally broke we were anxious to burn off some energy and no one wanted it more than Daisy. The poor girl didn’t need to be inside so much since her winter coat keeps her plenty warm. We decided to go to one of the dog parks today. I have become somewhat addicted to the dog parks. I love to watch Daisy run around and play with the other dogs and I enjoy talking with dog owners. Everyone is so friendly and easy going as they’re walking along with their pets. I try to go every day or two and on this day we decided to try a new (to us) park. It turned out to be deserted except for two awfully behaving dogs that I didn’t want anywhere near my dog. Thankfully the owner just kept on trucking right past us.

The kids and I had a blast even though we were alone.

Don’t let all that snow fool you. It was great weather. We ended up stripping out of almost all of our winter gear. I always make the kids carry it around though because Alberta weather can change on a dime.

We didn’t quite get the basement finished for Christmas like we had hoped. We did get to move in the week after Christmas though. It’s been so busy though that we haven’t been able to move into the rooms all at once. We’ve been moving in piece by piece. Right now Jason is sleeping on his mattress on the floor until Chuck and I get his bed built.

With a soft mattress on the floor Daisy has taken to sleeping with the boys. Right on top of Jason’s mattress. I think she might be a bit of a blanket hog though. Jason’s not complaining so I’m not going to worry about it. Daisy is going to be pretty sad once we get that bed put back together.