Preschool Part One

This week I had the profound pleasure of teaching preschool to The Princess and four neighborhood friends. I will have this privilege every five weeks.
Our theme for the week was COLOR.
We sang Rainbows.
"Red and yellow and pink and green. Purple and orange and blue. I can sing a rainbow, sing a rainbow, sing a rainbow too. Listen with your eyes. Listen with your eyes. And sing every thing you see. You can sing a rainbow, sing a rainbow, sing along with me."
We planted Rainbows.

We made Rainbows.


These are such sweet little ones. So curious and full of energy. I even think some of their energy rubbed off on me and I got through the day in better spirits than my amount of sleep would have normally allowed. A friend once said, "Three year olds are so delicious that they should be dipped in chocolate and sold in department stores during Easter."
A.MEN.

Family Cookies

From an FHE lesson:
Families are like a cookie recipe. Each ingredient is, at most, ok on it's own, but put them all together and you have something scrumptious!
We made these cookies together the other night. They are DE-LISH! And they are henceforward to be known as "Family Cookies."


Here's the recipe, but be sure that each member of the family adds an ingredient and gets a chance to stir.

1 cup brown sugar, packed
1 cup white sugar
1 cup butter, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 eggs
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups quick oatmeal
1 cup milk chocolate chips

Mix together the first five ingredients until creamy. Add remaining ingredients. Spoon onto cookie sheets and bake at 400 degrees for 7-8 minutes. (Made 3 dozen for us.)

Oh, and this was our first big tomato from our garden. (And it's already September! Am I going to get anymore before the first frost?)

Saturday Night at My House

Saturday is a special day.

About a minute after I took this photo. Mr. Boy pooed in the tub. And not a nice neat self contained nugget either.

If The Princess has to get her hair combed, then so does Daddy.

PUBLIC ENEMY #1

Destroy on sight!

Here's Something I Can Do

Something I've decided to do to keep up with my family, is read all their blogs. I just spent about an hour virtually catching up with sisters and cousins. It was awesome! My family are (is?) so fun. And attractive, if I do say so myself. I'm changing some of my sidebar to include family members' blogs that haven't previously appeared. (This will also save me from returning to my baby sister's blog to find links to all of them. It seems she's way ahead of me in the whole keeping up witht the family idea.)

So, if you're reading this and you're related to me and you have a blog and it's not on the side bar, please leave a comment, and I'll add you, Cuz!

Oh, here's something bad that happened today (or last night). I'm growing watermelons and Charantais melons (a very classy French variety, because I am a snob and cannot just grow cantaloupe like everyone else) in my front side yard next to my fence. Nothing else is growing there and it's very sunny, so why not? I'll tell you why not: Little vandals will come and steal the only three watermelons that were likely to ripen before the frost BEFORE they were even ripe!Here's the biggest watermelon that was melon-napped.

I was really having a hard time with this. My garden has become my fourth child. I take all of its successes and failures to heart. Really. To heart.
But then I counted three more Charantais melons than I had noticed before and decided that was a Tender Mercy and my reward for going to the adult session of Stake Conference. Here are the Charantais:
So all's well that ends well!
(Except, I really wanted to try those little watermelons! Grrrrrr......)

Another Fresh Start?

Hello out there in Blog Readershipdom,

I really don't know how many of you out there there are, but one of my faithful readers has been my cousin. She posted a comment on the post entitled "Yeah, Yeah, Yeah." The next day she was in a car accident and is now paralyzed from the chest down. After reading her comment I thought I'd buzz a note back to her, but decided to wait until later. (Gosh, this is sounding like a super sappy email. Sorry.) That she was faithful (for lack of a better word at the moment) to me and I was not to her has been a source of considerable guilt and one of the reasons I've not posted in a bit. A few weeks ago, as I mentioned in the previous post, the sister of some friends of mine were in a terrible airplane accident. I have witnessed, through the blogging world, their family rally around each other. Their devotion to one another is very evident. Without saying that my family doesn't share this same devotion, because I think we do, I will say that I want that for my family. I'm making a conscious decision to strive for that. Frankly, I'm finding that it's kind of a lot of work. But I want to be up on what my sisters and cousins and in-laws are doing and cheer them on. I want them to know that I am a fan. I want my children and The Rose to really know that I love them and create solidarity among us. I want to be faithful to my family.
I'm not really sure what this all means or how I'll put it into practice, but I just thought I'd put it out there.