The Proper Way to Picnic

(Image Source)

Okay, maybe it’s just because my dad and brothers make travel trailers for a living, but I am totally loving this. I just had to share. It is awesome on so many levels. Check out this vintage trailer and all the lovely pictures of its retro French country flair here. Love it!

Oh No! Rainbow

I just bought a new box of Trix cereal. We have started keeping our cereal in air-tight containers instead of the original boxes, so I was transferring the new cereal to the container. I put the lid on and turned it upside down to shake and mix it with the old cereal…

Yeah, it was a lot worse than this. I’m talking like the ENTIRE box of cereal. Poor, Aubrey was on sitting on the floor next to me and got about half the box in her lap. She started crying when I gasped “No!” and Josh came running. I just stood there in disbelief, an ENTIRE box of cereal was on the floor! I kept shaking my head, saying “oh, no,” and tried salvaging as much as I could off of Aubrey and her blanket.

Then, softly, Josh says “It’s okay Mom, we’ll eat it.” It just melted my heart and I grabbed my camera. As Josh started eating some, Aubrey realized she was the luckiest girl ever surrounded by free food and started stuffing her face.

Josh soon realized that eating one at a time was taking too long. So, he grabbed a bag and started filling it up.

You can see that it wasn’t just all over the floor. It was also all over us.  They were stuck (and crushed) on Josh’s knees…

my feet and Aubrey’s …

behind!

Now the darn things are spread everywhere and while normally a mess like this would make me upset, you have to admit—it’s pretty funny. :)

So NOT Perfect…

Just in case you thought I was perfect (Ha! Yeah, right…) let me be honest and share a little something with you.

Okay, pick up your jaws…yes, this is my house.  This is a picture of laundry day: clothes on the sofa, coffee table and floor; a box full of socks; and Pandora on the laptop, while my kids watch movies.  In all honesty, what usually happens, I wash laundry all week and the clean clothes pile up in my bedroom. Then, when nobody can find clothes to wear any more, I pile up the clean clothes and fold them and wash more and we go from completely empty drawers to overflowing. (Yes, Aaron I just admitted it. Take a deep breath and let’s move on.)  I am not an organized person but I am working on it and slowly getting better. Plus, with three young kids in our family, plus three more that I watch during the week, things can get a little chaotic. (I’ll save you from the horror that is the current state of the playroom.)  Just keepin’ it real…
On a funnier note, this is what happens when your daughter sticks her plastic play muffin tin in the oven and you forget about it until you start making dinner….
…and smell burning plastic. Yeah, should have seen that one coming. Let’s just say we ended up eating salad for dinner last night. :)

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I love to see the temple

"I love to see the temple I'm going there someday.

To feel the Holy Spirit, to listen and to pray.

For the temple is a house of God, a place of love and beauty.

I'll prepare myself while I am young; This is my sacred duty."

The words of this children's song put in simplest words how special temples are to the LDS faith.  (If you would like to know more about what temples are and why they are special to Mormons, follow this link to a wonderful article all about LDS temples.)

Today, I wanted to remind our kids of that specialness and help them feel the spirit. So, we took an impromptu trip to the temple. We are lucky that the Houston temple is within a half-hour drive of our home. So after church this morning, we grabbed a quick picnic lunch and the camera and headed to the temple. The temple itself is closed on Sundays and Mondays, but the temple grounds are open to visitors to visit and walk around. So we sat down by one of the fountains and enjoyed the beautiful day and the peace we felt. I remembered hearing somewhere the idea that if we want our children to grow up and live worthy of entering the temple we need to have it as a daily reminder and goal. What better than a personal picture of the temple to see on a daily basis and be reminded of that goal. So, I took a picture of each of us with the temple. I edited them online with Picnik (which I love), and I want to hang them in our bedrooms.

Later for Family Home Evening, (which we do on Sunday because Aaron has a late night class on Monday) we talked some more about temples and why they are special. I used this lesson for FHE and bore my testimony about temples. Seth told me that he loved being at the temple this afternoon and wanted to go back. That is so great that even at a young age, he can feel the spirit there and wants to return often. We just might have to make this a more frequent family tradition.

It was really neat that Saturday night's session of  Stake Conference was all about temples and temple service. It is probably what sparked the desire to take my family to the temple today. For anyone who wasn't there Saturday, this article sums up what was shared at the adult session at Stake Conference.

Let me finish with a quote by President Howard W. Hunter (from the article). “Let us be a temple-attending and a temple-loving people. Let us hasten to the temple as frequently as time and means and personal circumstances allow. Let us go not only for our kindred dead, but let us also go for the personal blessing of temple worship....If we can pattern our life after the Master, and take His teaching and example as the supreme pattern for our own, we will not find it difficult to be temple worthy."