Elijah

Elijah will be turning 8 next Sunday! He is getting baptized June 5. He has been meeting with the missionaries, learning a lot, and he wants to get baptized. My parents, my grandma and Elijah's cousin (my nephew) Michael will be coming up for the baptism. I think my brother Michael and his family might be coming up as well, if they can make it that early. It's at 9:00 in the morning which I think is kind of ridiculous that that's when they put the stake baptism because if family is traveling then they have to come the night before or leave early in the morning to make it on time. I think 11:00 would work, but oh well, I'm not the Stake Primary President. Since it is so early, we are going to have a get together with our families afterward for a small family birthday party for Elijah.

Elijah has been having a hard time with our neighbor friends. They are all older than him and so they pick on him. Unfortunately, they are really rough with words and with actions towards Elijah. I don't know how it happened but him and another boy got into a "fight" and apparently the mom of the other boy thinks it's all Elijah's fault (which I know not to be true, they were both at fault). I have mixed emotions about that because in one aspect it means that he won't be playing with those boys for a while which is a good thing because it always ends badly, BUT on the other hand it means that she thinks ill of my little boy- sweet little Elijah!

I just need to figure out how to have his friends from class and church over during the summer. Hopefully Brian will be riding his bike and we will have the car to pick friends up and go to the park. Thankfully we have some friends about a block away that are in our ward and we all have really good friendships with their family. In fact, their little girl who is about a year old loves Elijah. We sat behind them in church today and as soon as we sat down she started smiling and pointing at him. Elijah is wonderful to her and I am hopeful that he will still love kids when we are ready to start adding to our family because he will be a great big brother to them.

I started playing Pass the Pigs with him the other night and he loved it. I was so impressed that it wasn't a HUGE fit when I was winning the first round. I like that game because it's not really about skill, it's about decisions and chance- things that he needs to learn about. I'm hoping it will also be a fun game to help him with doing math in his head.

We established an allowance today with Elijah. We gave a list of 6 things he needs to do every week: set the table, help clean out the dishwasher, help with yard work, clean the bathroom, clean his bedroom, and fold and put his clothes away. If he does all 6 things he will get 3 dollars at the end of the week. If he misses one, then 50 cents will be taken off. Then we talked about tithing and if he gets 3 dollars then that means he gives 30 cents to the Lord. We also talked about saving it for his own things he wants to buy and also for Disneyland if he wants a special souvenir.

We have been talking as a family on how we can save money for Disneyland. Brian had an idea of having "Disneyland Meal Weeks" meaning that for that week we will eat cheaply and the money we save will be put into our Disneyland fund. We are also trying to put $50 a month away and when we have a casino gig contracting musicians then we will put a big bulk of that money away. Hopefully if we keep this up, by the time we go in a year and a half we will have enough saved up. I hope that talking about this kind of stuff with Elijah and giving him an allowance that he will get a better understanding about saving money.