Just one person

Today, the 2nd counselor in Primary, I am the 1st counselor had sharing time.  Today was the 5th Sunday and so she decided to talk about the 4th Article of Faith since that is the one we are working on.

She actually talked about the difference one person can make.  She spoke about her great-Grandmother, who was a Comanche Indian.  Her mother died young and the Grandmother and her siblings went to live with a uncle and aunt.  The aunt was a member and the children converted which led to many conversions and on down to today and Kylie standing in Primary.  She also told a story about her Sister-in-law that is from Astonia - one of the small countries split off when  Russia split up.  The sister-in-laws Mother was finally free to go to church and set out to find one.  She found the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and that led to many people  joining the church including two Russian orphans that were adopted by her family.

That brought me, of course, to us and the Missionaries that taught us.  Elder Thielet was a convert himself - he joined with his sister when he was an older teenager - and how his service let to so many others.  I thought about Donna and about Nathan and Mandy and about Cameron, Katherine, Nathan, Mandy, David and Victoria who wouldn't be here if our decisions in life had been different.

Absolutely incredible miracles.I think about the strong, strong personalities that Heavenly Father has sent us, either by birth or adoption and the missionaries they will become if  and only if we do out part.  I do believe that it takes a village to raise a child but we can choose that village and who is in it.

Lastly, I am just thankful for all of you. Love you all.

Monday, May 18th

 

On Monday we set out to conquer the Magic Kingdom, which is what most of us think is DisneyWorld (It actually consists of 4 parks and several really cool water parks).  It was my birthday and Disney's "thing" for this year is your birthday is free!  Well, we had actually already bought tickets and so we had a choice of a $75.00 Disney card or free Fastpasses for everyone.  We choice the gift card.

Actually as I look at the pictures I left many wonderful pictures out of Epcot so, I am just going to put my favorites here.

 

  A magic carpet ride in between showers.

 

Here we go on a jungle cruise.

 

Our cruise guy was slightly entertaining.

 

 

 

 

 

Swiss Family Robinson Tree house - I'd live there!

 

 

Mandy walking from one room to the other high in the tree house.

 

 

The outside cooking area.

                                          Cinderella's Castle

One of Nathan's favorite rides.  The kids drive the track. 

Mandy enjoyed the track also.

 

The pictures are scrambled so here is the entrance to Epcot.  Nathan kept saying look for the golf ball!

 

 

 

 

 

  Mandy and I found the fairy garden and butterfly hatchery while Glenn and Nathan went to ride something.  Mandy loved all of the flowers and the fairy's that were in the background. There is Tinkerbell!

I'm not sure what the blue fairies name is.  The gardens were very nice.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Butterflies in flower and on wing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and last for today- Princess Mandy and Minnie Mouse

 

 

More tomorrow.

Blessings

 

I was sitting in a theater in Walt Disney World last week and was very humbled and in awe of the fabulous blessings that Heavenly Father has given us.  First, of course, is our awesome family and friends.  They are absolutely the best and our church family is great too.  We have had the incredible opportunity to see and experience so many places and cultures in our life times and I am very thankful for these experiences.

Walt Disney World is an incredibly well thought out experience.  Everything is done with the utmost care for children and families.  Saturday, May 16th we went to Hollywood Studios.  It is vignettes of many different Disney stories put to action.  There is Toy Story, The little mermaid - which has awesome special effects to the point that they spray you with water and you feel like you are literally "under the sea", and many others.  The grounds are amazing.

                    Wow, Mickey was there to greet us.  We were afraid Nathan   would be afraid of the characters but he did well except with Mike Wysoski (??) from Monsters, Inc.

 

  The magicians hat was huge, our family is dwarfed by the hat in the bottom of the picture.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It may be hard to see but that is C3PO talking to the other robot (I have forgotten his name). We were waiting in line for Star Tours where you rode a Star Cruiser to the Moon of Endor.  It was quite thrilling.  The wait to ride was made quicker by the scenes from the movies in real size and you had robots fixing other robots, assembly line robot making, etc.  You even had a damaged cruiser.  We are going to have to find a copy of Star Wars as Nathan had a million questions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These were for Andrew and Jacob!  They were actual car and truck.

 

Remember the movie Honey, I shrunk the Kids?  They had this fantastic playground and you were the size of ants.  It was awesome!

 

 

 

    Mandy refused to climb on to the ant.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am glad the bee wasn't real.

 

 

 

 

 

under the grass

 

Mandy and Nathan surrounded by the "back yard"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                Saturday was the only day that

 

Saturday was our only sunny day and we stopped on the street to have some refreshing ice cream.More tomorrow on our week long adventure in sunny (not) Florida.

The beginning of May

 

before I begin the long blog on our trip to Florida, I wanted to post a few pictures of the first two weekends of May.  Nathan had a piano recital and a baseball game and Mandy had a dance recital.  Here are a few cute shots of both weekends.

                                    Nathan playing at his recital.                                         

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                              The other part of his weekend.  From a baseball outfit to a suit to play a grand piano.  What a weekend.

 

 

 

 

 

AND Then there was DANCE and lots of red glitter and sequins.

  dress rehearsal - waiting to be called on stage.

 

 

We had to have a group picture but it was hard to get everyone together.

 

 

 

 

 

There must always be flowers and pretty girls-

Assignment 5

Forgive me, if this is too long for a blog.  My assignment was to observe a child and then to create an internal dialogue of that same child.  I chose Mandy.  Shelly asked me to put it here so that she could read something.  Here goes:

      She walks slowly toward the rock steps, peers down and tentatively steps on each uneven rock.  Two shiny black ponytails hang down her back and swing from side to side, as she walks.  She has long straight bangs that make a line above her straight, thick eyebrows.  There are long wispies framing a strong, round face.  She marches purposely toward the bench, stoops and puts her black and yellow backpack down.  She wears a rounded necked dress with a bargello-print pattern of light pink, dark pink, brown and tan with a chocolate brown empire-waist ribbon tied on the left side in the front.  Glancing down at ther brown slip on shoes trimmed in pink stars and hearts, she scoots the dirt in front of her.

     She heads toward a large oak tree.  Squatting on her sturdy legs, she gathers dried-brown leaves and small sticks.  She continues to gather more leaves and moves with her treasure toward a weathered red stonewall that is chest high and piles her leaves into a neat circle.  Crumbling her leaves with her fingers, she pushes them this way and that and continues to build a round pie shape.

     Glancing over at the bench, she heaves a sigh and with a last look at her crunch-crunch pie, she heads for the bench.  She pulls out a vivid purple notebook and a shiny pink pencil with  an add-on purple eraser.  Placing the notebook and pencil on the bench, she climbs onto the meal bench.  She settles her notebook on her lap, opens it to a page and picks up her pencil.  Grasping the pencil so hard that her knuckles turn yellow, she attacks her paper.  Pressing hard on her paper and writing a few letters, she looks at them and then turns her pencil over and erases.  She starts again, withdraws her pencil and again appraises her writing.  More aggressively, she erases her letters and then gasps.  She has torn her paper!  Her body stiffens as she closes her notebook, throws her pencil and notebook into her backpack and jumps to the ground.

      Her attention returns to her crunch-crunch pie and she wanders over to the wall.  She purses her full heart-shaped lips and pretends to be a fish.  A puff of wind stirs her  leaves and then blows more strongly.  She grasps her pile, throws it into the air and laughs as the wind takes her leaves away.

 

                                            Dialogue

       My bed is big and soft and feels like I'm lying in a cloud.  I love to pile Jie-Jie, blue teddy bear, my lion, baby doll, pink blanket and jump into the middle of it all.  I can see a, what do you call it - rainbow, no - reflection, I think, of the sunshine bouncing off my walls.  It lights up my bright pink walls and the quilt Mama made for me, before I lived here.  It makes the pinks and greens shine and glitter, kind of.  I wish I could be like that and just shine all over.

       Why couldn't I get it right?  I push hard on my paper so that I can go straight and then the line isn't straight at all.  I tried to get the letters just perfect and then I tore my paper from all of my erasing.  I got mad.  I can't do it, it's too hard.

       Mama said, "Practice, it doesn't have to be perfect", but I want it to be!  I can use my new Hannah Montana, pink and swirly pencil tomorrow.  If I try so very hard, I can do it, maybe.

A Scary Noise in the Night

 

Night before last I was getting ready to go to bed and I heard Nathan and went up to see what was happening.  He was half-way down the stairs and  said he couldn't sleep because of the high pitched noise. 

What high pitched noise, say I?  We went upstairs and sure enough a distinct noise like an alarm going off.  I checked the alarm clock, the smoke alarm, the attics, turned off and on all of the lights and still we had an alarm of some kind going off. 

I moved Nathan and Maggie downstairs, closed the door and went to sleep.  I was really hoping it wasn't some problem that would erupt into fire . 

The next morning we went upstairs and it was still going.  Definitely only in Nathan's room and louder in some parts than others.  I still could not find a source.  My next move was to go downstairs and find an electrician. 

Nathan came down and said he had stopped it!  Love the boy but what was it?  He has a metal detector, more toy than anything but it does work.  Somehow, it had turned itself on and evidently was close to metal and was letting us know that.  I am so glad he figured it out - even though I think he may have had something to do with it but I can't figure out what.

What a night.  What a boy!