Bonding Time Is Great!

I'm thankful for the "Daily Fun with Your Little One!" calendar I get from the children's section of Orem Public Library.

One day my little one and I sang "Five Little Turkeys" while counting down on our fingers and practicing rhyming.

I'm thankful for bonding time. Bonding time is great! 

I Learn So Much from the Library

I like to get "Daily Fun with Your Little One!" calendars from the Orem Library. Sometimes we do activities. Sometimes we don't. Sometimes I learn about holidays that I don't have on our Calendar of Celebration.

I learned from that calendar that October 8 is World Octopus Day. Jet and I watched some Wild Kratts videos about underwater creatures.

Later we read a story about how Oliver Octopus doesn't like olives on his pizza then looked at the accompanying picture showing Oliver Octopus holding a slice of pizza with olives on it. Sigh.

 

It was also Fluffernutter Day. We had fluffernutter sandwiches and Olloch the Glutton's Caramel Biscuit Bars. Gotta have something from the Fablehaven Cookbook on Fluffernutter Day. Oh, and our fluffernutter sandwiches had actual marshmallow fluff this time because Jeremy had to stop by the grocery story anyway.

We tried once again to look for the Northern Lights at Deer Creek Reservoir. No lights but the stars looked cool.

Light The World

And just like that, we're in December and pretty much caught up. It makes a difference when we've all been sick again and haven't done as much celebrating. But we're ready to do good, even if a lot of it's done from home. 

Like in years past, I won't post about every act of service going on. Some things don't need to be mentioned on social media. The important thing is we find ways to serve every day- to show love like Jesus did.

So let's Light The World with Love.

 

On Sunday, November 28, we kicked off the season watching a "Witnesses of Christ" concert on the Church's YouTube channel.

And Jr. made us no-bake cookies.

Monday, November 29, the kids and I had a good Family Home Evening discussion about how the Lord has given us everything. When someone does something nice for you, you want to do something nice back to them. Jr. Jr. brought up the scripture Mosiah 2:17 "...when ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God." We can give back to the Lord by serving others. Which brought up the "service angel," a picture of an angel that can be passed around in our home when someone gives service to someone else. Jeremy started making a 3 dimensional service angel out of a paper cup and cardstock a while back. During FHE, I mentioned Nichole could draw a picture based on that and Lucky immediately grabbed a piece of paper and started drawing it himself. Nicely done, Lucky. Unfortunately a little later, Jet got a hold of Lucky's paper and decided to "help" as toddlers do. Lucky did not get very upset, though. He was just disappointed. It's too bad Jet drew on his paper.

The printable calendar for #LightTheWorld started on Tuesday, November 30. "Giving Tuesday." This year, besides the calendar with daily prompts, there is another calendar for children. It has the same daily themes, November 30 is "Freely Give" on both calendars for example, but some of the ideas are a little different. December 4, "Love Thy Neighbor," on the regular calendar says, "Jesus taught us the true definition of loving our neighbor. Have a conversation with a neighbor you don't know well." On the children's calendar it says, "Jesus taught us to love the people around us. With your family, visit a neighbor and get to know them better." The calendar comes with a matching color by number picture so each time you do service, you can color the numbers that fit that day.

In order to "freely give" on Tuesday, I took Lucky's picture that he started and erased all of Jet's marks from it. He was happy about that and was able to finish the picture. We made a copy and Lucky started the service angel picture going around. 

That night, Nichole and I took some bonding time going around the lights outside the Orem Library, and when we got home, she said, "Happy Giving Tuesday," and handed me a Hershey's peppermint kiss. Mmmm. Sweet treat and sweet girl.

Wednesday, December 1, "Let Your Love Shine," and Thursday, December 2, "Wise Man's Gift," I sent texts of appreciation and love to some people. On December 2, Lucky thanked me each time I reminded him of something.

Friday, December 3, "The Christ Child," the kids and I watched "The Christ Child" on comeuntochrist.org and talked about it. I could relate to Mary because I've gone through labor five times. Nichole could relate to Mary because Mary was also a young woman at the time. Jr. pointed out how the shepherds went from Aggggh when the angel first appeared to awe at the tidings to awww when they went to see baby Jesus. Then I fell asleep during a discussion about why the wise men were called "wise."

Saturday, December 4, "Love Thy Neighbor," Jeremy gave someone a ride to work. It wasn't even out of the way for him to pick this person up. Such an easy act of service to him but it makes a big difference for this person who would have a harder time getting to work if Jeremy didn't do it. Don't discount the "little things." Service is service. 

On Friday, Nichole stayed after class to continue an art project her sculpture class was working on together. She had the time. After the last class of the day is free time. She had to wait so long before I picked her up anyway. So instead of sitting around reading a book, she helped out to get more done before next week's class. Service is service.

A Crazy Week

Man, it has been a crazy week. My phone died. The car died. Jeremy's phone got close to dying but he managed to get a new phone before losing everything on it like I did with mine. Schedules changed. We had to deal with a rash on one of the kids. I'm still too tired every night to blog. That's why I have a lot of catching up to do. We've had to deal with plenty of other things and will continue to deal with more.

You know the saying, "When it rains, it pours"? We've definitely felt that with things lately. This happens then this happens then this happens, etc. etc. etc. So much stress. But you know what? The saying also applies to blessings. "When it rains, it pours." Prayers have been answered in amazing ways. Heavenly Father has helped me to get ideas (not my own) with how to deal with certain situations. He's sent angels (neighbors and friends) to help us. I have a beautiful family and I love each member. We have a home to live in and food to eat. The older kids have been so helpful with the baby so I can deal with other things. Sure, there are plenty of stresses I'm dealing with right now (and lots of tears) and I'm not going to mention all of them but there are sooooooo many more blessings and I'm not going to mention all of those either.

Soooooo... I've got to do some catching up on my blog. You already know about some of the things we've been dealing with. I lost some pictures and didn't take pictures of all of our celebrating so I'm going to go back to lumping some together when I blog. I'm still trying to get into a routine with our new schedules so who knows how that will affect blogging. If you need you can go back to 2020 where I beat my record for amount of blog posts published in a year. Hooray! But don't worry. I'm sure I'll have plenty to say this year. Especially since Jeremy's parents sent us a new National Day calendar for this year. Thanks, Mom and Dad. 

That added to our Calendar of Celebration, which has other reasons to celebrate (like when Willy Wonka's Factory opened to the five golden ticket holders on February 1), we'll be celebrating plenty and I will share how we do some of that celebrating. Enjoy.

 

I'd love to hear how you are celebrating this year. Please share with me. If you need ideas for a certain holiday, do a search on my blog and there are a LOT of holidays we've celebrated. Some are as simple as watching a Winnie-the-Pooh movie on January 18, Winnie-the-Pooh Day. Some are more elaborate like running around like witches with cauldrons and broomsticks and concocting beverages and watching witch themed movies for Brew a Potion Day, January 19. But please, tell me how you celebrate.

10-10-2020

 I still have to catch up on some of the things we've been doing lately but in the meantime

 "Happy 

10-10-2020

Yay and waa

Covid 19"

Jr. Jr. was a wiggly 2 year old on 12-12-12. He was a wiggly 4 year old on 12-13-14. Lucky is now the wiggly 6 year old on 10-10-2020.

Granola Bar Day

January 21 is Squirrel Appreciation Day. We didn't do anything to celebrate that. January 21 is also National Hug Day. There were hugs going around in our home. That might be why I've picked up another cold. Sigh.

According to the new "national days" calendar our friends gave us, January 21 is also Granola Bar Day. The kids were happy when I told them they could have granola bars and hot chocolate for after school snack.

It's fun to try out a new holiday.

The Calendar Played a Joke on Me

A while back, I was updating our dry erase wall calendar.  Since there's nothing to celebrate on April 1st, I was trying to write the celebrations for April 2nd on that date and skip April 1st.  There were several to write down and I accidentally wrote them down on April 1st.  Whoops. 
I erased them so I could put them on the 2nd.  I wrote them down only to realize that I had again written them on the calendar for April 1st.  Sigh.
I erased them again and wrote them again... on April 1st.  What?  Really?
Fine.  I was NOT going to write them ALL again.  So I put an arrow from April 1st to April 2nd and wrote, "Just kidding!  They are supposed to be here"

Looks like I was April Fooled.

Don't Want To Miss It

 Happy 12-12-12!

Not too bad for the wiggly 2 year old.

The sunglasses were his idea.

Happy celebrating!

July Holidays Coming Up

O.K.  Here we go again.  Links to how we've blogged about July holidays in the past.

July 4 is Independence Day
July 3, 2010- Happy Independence Day
July 4, 2011- Independence Day 2011

July 7 is Macaroni Day
July 7, 2011- Macaroni Day 2011

July 15 is Gummi Worm Day
July 15, 2011- Gummi Worm Day 2011

July 20 is Moon Day
July 25, 2011- Moon Day 2011

July 24 is Pioneer Day
July 23, 2011- Who Wants to be a Pioneer?
July 24, 2011- Pioneer Day 2011


Nichole's Birthday is also coming up in July
August 20, 2010- Barbecue
August 22, 2010- Ballerina Birthday
August 23, 2010- Nicholina Ballerina
August 24, 2010- Build A Bear
July 12, 2011- Musical Elements
July 13, 2011- Avatar Birthday
July 16, 2011- KAT's Kreation- Flower Clips


As you're enjoying your celebrations in July, try this noise-maker from the June/July 2012 issue of FamilyFun Magazine.

I made some for our kids to use during Pleasant Grove's children's parade during "Strawberry Days" (using balloons instead of rubber bands, of course).

Points for Creativity

Today is National Cereal Day.

For breakfast the kids were able to choose from three different kinds of cereal. Later, Jr. wanted to watch a movie but I didn't want him to (especially since he lost the Wii game he was playing earlier from throwing too many tantrums). There are lots of other things to do, I told him. And here's where my sneaky boy got points for creativity. He asked me if he could watch a "cereal" movie. Oooh, that tricky little boy. He'd been paying attention to our celebration discussions. He knew it was cereal day. Yep, I had to go with it. If you can find a movie that has cereal in it, I'll let you watch it, since it goes along with the theme of the holiday. And he did. He picked Muppets from Space which has a scene in it where Gonzo's breakfast cereal is writing messages to him. So, Jr. had another bowl of cereal while he watched the "cereal" movie.