Handling It

At church today I mentioned that LIGHTtheWORLD was making a difference to me.  I still have stresses but I feel I've been handling them better lately.
Of course that means that this evening there was extra stress.  One of our children decided to be difficult.  He's been acting pretty well lately but we all have those not so good times, don't we?  It was a long rough evening but I was determined to act more like Jesus, to not give in to the natural man and lose my temper.  There still had to be consequences but there was also love shown.
December 4- "Jesus worshipped His Father and so can you."
Church was wonderful.  We taught our Primary class about being kind to animals then gave them birdseed they could spread around with their parents' permission.  We told them that service doesn't always mean for people, it can also mean for animals.  Heavenly Father and Jesus love animals, too.

December 4 is National Cookie Day so I made snickerdoodles for our ward choir.  Our home teachers came and also brought us cookies.

This evening we watched the First Presidency Christmas Devotional as a family (with no one missing church again today).  It was a good reminder that Jesus came to Earth as part of Heavenly Father's plan.  He did what He did because of His love for us and because of His love for His Father.  We can do that, too- not exactly what He did obviously, but we can choose to do things because of our love for our Heavenly Father.  Those are just some thoughts I had and wanted to share.  Thanks.

The Broken Tradition Continues

You know I love traditions but sometimes it's better to break those traditions.  We did so last year and continued again this year with our broken tradition.  Besides minor colds, nobody was sick during the First Presidency Christmas Devotional.  In fact, a couple of the kids enjoyed dancing around to the music.

Nobody missed church which was good since Jeremy was teaching his class and I was teaching Sharing Time.  The lesson for Sharing Time was "Jesus Christ Came to Earth as Promised by the Prophets."
Hey, that's what we've been talking about in our family scripture study.
So I had Jr. and Jr. Jr. in Junior Sharing Time and Nichole in Senior Sharing Time help me talk about what we do as a family in December for our scripture study and talk about some of the prophets who prophesied of Jesus before He was born.
I brought our Countdown to Christmas skewers but instead of our vase of M&Ms, I had a bigger vase filled with wrapped candy.  At the end of the lesson, each child got to take a piece of candy for paying attention and participating (just like in our family scripture study) with the instructions that they were not to open them at church.  It was Fast Sunday after all.  They could take them home and open them when their parents gave them permission.  Most of the kids did pretty well with that, actually.

It was nice to talk to the children in Primary about prophets teaching about Jesus before He was even born and encourage them to listen to modern prophets teaching about Jesus Christ this very evening.

What Was I Thinking?

For some reason I thought this year would be different.  I thought this year we'd escape the tradition.  The awful tradition of someone being sick the night of the First Presidency Christmas Devotional.  And everyone was doing well, too.  Then all of a sudden today, Jeremy started feeling icky.  Poor guy.  He's been working so hard lately, it's finally catching up to him.  So here we go with that not so pleasant tradition once again.  Jeremy's sick.  He did make it through church today but got a lot worse later.

On the bright side, December 8 is National Brownie Day and even though Jeremy's sick, I felt well enough to bake brownies.  So the kids were able to eat brownies while watching the First Presidency Christmas Devotional.

Since we use the Devotional as our scripture study for the day it's on, before it started and while I was making brownies, the kids were asking each other questions about what we had been studying over the last several days.  It was cute to hear Nichole and Jr. asking Jr. Jr. about the town where Jesus was born.  I could hear their little voices coming from the "time machine" they built in their room.  Today is also Pretend to be a Time Traveler Day.  

I love when the kids come up with their own ways to celebrate.

Not So Pleasant Tradition

What is this? A Christmas tradition?
I don't think it was this way last year, but two years ago, we missed church due to colds, but we got to watch the First Presidency Christmas Devotional that night.
This year, it was something a little worse than colds. I stayed home, due to being sick to my stomach (lasted all day long and I'm not going to go into more details- you can guess). Jr. Jr. stayed with me because he was asleep when the others left and Jeremy had to be available to teach in Elder's Quorum in case the person teaching wasn't there (he was there, but Jeremy had a good lesson prepared- good for discussion in our own home).
So once again I missed church, but did get to watch the First Presidency Christmas Devotional. It was great and the kids did a great job answering questions about it for our advent calendar discussion.

We all stayed awake during the devotional and I only missed the closing song and prayer due to running to the bathroom.
Hooray for little blessings.
Today I'm feeling better (not much energy, I still need to recuperate) but Jr. is taking his turn with this bug. Poor little guy. Wish us luck.

Advent Calendar- December 6th

We missed church due to our colds, but we still got to watch The First Presidency Christmas Devotional of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. This was thanks to the internet in our own home.

Jr. was asleep when it started but woke up while it was on. Nichole was awake when it started but fell asleep while it was on.