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.

Quianna

We have been having football games as a family on the weekend. She has become quite a thrower! Brian and I were just talking about giving her the opportunity to participate in sports because her coordination has been coming together so well lately.

She has also been excelling at the violin. Just a few weeks ago we went to her first orchestra concert. It was a district wide event. In the Spokane School District, each 5th and 6th grader are required to be involved in either band or orchestra and so the concert was of all those students. I think they said there were around 2,800 performing in the arena that night! It was fun, even though we were looking at the back of her head as she was playing (I couldn't find her because I had forgotten my glasses...oops!) because they had the groups facing the center of the arena floor and we were sitting behind her group.

Before the concert we stopped by Fred Meyer's and bought her a Symphony bar which Brian said was a tradition from his mom. She bought him a Symphony bar after every performance, starting with his first spelling bee (he thinks). I thought it was cool since she is in a "symphony" the title fits. Below is a picture of Brian explaining the tradition and giving it to her.

Quianna just went through a difficult time of telling her mom she wants to be baptized in the LDS church. She had been praying about it and was given her answer from Heavenly Father that it was the right thing to do. Since then (the beginning of April) we have been praying for Quianna to have strength to talk to her about it and for Brook to have an open heart. Our prayers were answered on Saturday. Though Brook didn't say yes, she didn't say no and she said that she felt 95% good about it but she thinks the 5% will come. She doesn't have anything against Quianna getting baptized, she's worried about her becoming a member of the church.

We are very proud of Quianna and her decision and also the strength and courage she had to tell her mom how she felt. She has grown up so much in the past few months.
She's a little embarrassed that she won't be 8 when she gets baptized (like most kids in the church) but today she shared with me that she thinks it's cool that when she is baptized she will have more years of sins washed away.... let me see if I can explain her thinking. Since most kids were baptized when they were 8, they only had 8 years of sins washed away and when she is baptized, they will have more years after they were baptized and she will be clean as new!
I thought it was really cute and we had a good chuckle about it during primary.

Quianna has also become really good at math. She has started to love learning. Last night she asked each of us to ask her a science question and then a math question. I was so impressed because when I was homeschooling the kids during the summer last year when ever I would say the word divide she would plug her ears and say "Don't say that word!"

Sundays

I have been subbing in primary off an on (more on than off) for the past few months, from being the chorister, to subbing the 4 year olds and then in the SR primary. It has been a lot of fun! I have loved teaching the older kids because then I get to tell them the story from the old testament. The kids have been jealous because I have mostly subbed for the class between Elijah's and Quianna's classes. So, when Quianna found out that her teacher was going to be missing today she jumped at the chance to tell her teacher to ask me to sub. It was lots of fun to teach 10-12 year olds. When I was telling the story about when Moses killed the Egyptian that beat the Israelite, one of the girls eyes got big and she was so astonished!
I left Primary and found Brian to wait to go to the car and while we were talking, the new teacher of the 4 year olds came up to us and said, "hey, you guys like Primary, right?" Brian immediately pointed to me and said, "She's the one doing Primary, I've never done it before" and i said afterward, "Yes, but if you're asking me to sub your class I am going to need you Brian." You see, the 4 year old kids are really tough and you really need a team teacher in that class. One to be a firm hand and the other to give the lesson. So, once again I will not be attending the adult Sunday school and relief society, but this time..... I roped Brian into it too :-)

CrAZy Hair Day!

It was crazy hair day today for Elijah's school. He wanted green and blue, but we settled for one color.

Traditions

My family had a tradition when we were growing up that for St. Patrick's day we would have corned beef for dinner, and that was the only time in year we had it. So it was pretty special. :-)
It's been a few years since I have been for St. Patrick's day and therefore a few years since I have had corned beef (how sad). So this year I definitely did not want to pass up another St. Patrick's day and the opportunity to star the traditions in our family.
On Wednesdays, Brian works with the All-City kids until 8:00 up north so he doesn't get home until 8:30-45ish which by then, Elijah is already in bed. I was really bummed on Saturday at Costco when I saw the corned beef and then remembered Quianna will be at her mom's house and Brian will be at All-City on the 17th. But then Brian had said, "How much do you want to start it as a tradition?" I started thinking... I had just hung up the phone with my mom who told me they were having their Chinese New Year party a month late, so why couldn't we have a St. Patrick's Day party a few days late? So I bought the corned beef.
The next day, I started researching St. Patrick's day and I found out some really cool stuff. Did you know that the first St. Patrick's Day parade was in the United States in 1762? The Irish soldiers serving in the English army marched through New York City.
Brian says that besides in big Irish populations in the United States, St Patrick's Day is just an excuse for American's to get drunk. But I learned the reason behind St. Patrick's Day. St. Patrick wasn't even Irish! He was originally from the Roman British Isles and was captured by pirates and sold into slavery in Ireland. In his 6 years of slavery he used religion as his solace, then he escaped and went back home. He became a priest and years later he had dreams that the people of Ireland were calling him back to bring them religion. So he studied and prepared himself and went back to Ireland. They say that he converted people in high political positions and so then masses of people followed suit. Therefore, St. Patrick was responsible for a Christianity in Ireland. Long explanation but to sum it up, St. Patrick's day is a religious holiday in Ireland and it wasn't until in the 1970s that the pubs were open, before everything was closed and everybody went to church.
So for our St. Patrick's Day party on Saturday I had everybody wear green. I looked for green necklaces, but since it was so long after the 17th, there wasn't very much at stores. BUT I did get a table cloth and cups for $3.50.
We had corned beef for dinner with corn and peas then for dessert we had mint oreo shakes. Between dinner and dessert we had a scavenger hunt that a leprechaun left for us. At the end he left us some of his pot of gold. It was lots of fun to see the kids figure out the clues. They loved it!