Book of Mormon Stories

We have loved diving into the stories of The Book of Mormon this year for Come, Follow Me. It's been a fun bonus to watch the new videos that correlate to the scriptures for us visual learners. I've been amazed at all the things even Lincoln and Jonah are able to pick up on with the help of the videos, and I've been amazed that the clips are always able to keep every boy's undivided attention. 

I loved studying about Lehi's family and couldn't help but relate to the scriptural parents of four sons. As we've told the boys stories of the broken bow and arrow, the sword stealing, and the camping in the wilderness, I've become convinced that the stories of The Book of Mormon were intentionally written in a way that would hold the interest of the male mind. 

As we read about Lehi's family leaving Jerusalem and dwelling in a tent, I knew it was time to bust out our new Christmas present from David and Mary to act out the scene. Jeff set the tent up in our playroom and we "journeyed in the wilderness" (walked around the kitchen and up the stairs) before settling in to "dwell in a tent" for the night. 

We also talked about how Nephi got the gold plates and right away Lincoln and Jonah recognized Nephi as the hero and began scrambling through the house to find every copy of The Book of Mormon they could to bring back to the tent while saying, "I'M NEPHI!" It's been neat to see these stories that I often fear will go over the heads of little kids instead settle right into their eager hearts. 

We spent the night in the tent...well...not all of us! The littlest two and I spent the night in the tent. The other three bailed and instead chose a softer slumber. 

I've also been really excited about the new youth and children program to focus on personal goals rather than certifications. My dad was a big goal-encourager growing up, and as I've gotten older I've appreciated the pushes from my dad to always be working on something and trying to improve. I have loved seeing that from the church and I'm grateful my boys will get to work and grow in areas they are interested in. 

We made vision boards for one of our first Young Women activities this year. A few of my goals for the year are:

• Run two half marathons
• Finish the Book of Mormon by April
• Have weekly mini-lessons with my older boys about ways to manage their emotions
• Learn how to play a hymn on the piano
• Go to the temple 12 times

We stole an idea from my sister of having the boys draw what they heard in the scriptures while reading Lehi's Dream. Again, I was amazed at the things they were able to pick up on. Lincoln focused on the iron rod and the tree of life with the fruit in the tree. He also has the spacious building floating and Lehi standing by the tree. 

Jonah's was less straightforward but no less adorable. 

Carson noticed the mist of darkness and was able to envision some colors to go along with the dream. 

Eli focused on the people following the path and the people calling (and falling?) down from the building. 

Later in the week we acted out the vision. Jeff set up a whole scene upstairs that brought everything to life...to the Tree of Life to be exact.

He tied a rope from doorknob to banister to doorknob for the boys to hang on to, blindfolded, no less. He also added a fan for a wind effect, he had a flashlight flickering for lightning, he had a phone playing stormy sounds and another one playing what sounded like a group of people at a party. He really captured all the feelings of traveling through the dream!

It ended with the boys coming into our calm, quiet room with a picture of Christ and "The Tree of Life" with the "fruit of the tree" (suckers) for all of the boys to "partake." It was sweet to see them enter one by one and then get to cheer each other on as they each approached the bedroom. Nothing better than a good object lesson to throw them into the scriptures and to give them a memory they can return to each time they hear about The Tree of Life. 

This week we talked about how Satan likes to trick us by making evil things look good and good things look evil. There was one scripture (2 Nephi 15:20) that talked about putting bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. I handed everybody a blow pop after reading the scripture. 

And they were alarmed, disappointed, and outraged to discover a grape tomato where they were expecting their sweet treat to be.

It made the lesson so much more impactful to give them the real feelings of being surprised and confused to be tricked and we had a great lesson on how Satan loves to disguise things to look good and appealing at first, but will leave us confused and disappointed once we start grabbing at his temptations.

We love Come, Follow Me (or as we call it, Night Light). The boys are often doing headstands during our lessons. Someone is usually screaming or making some kind of potty joke at any given moment throughout the message. Many nights are less exciting than a cherry tomato Blow Pop. But I can feel the power of the scriptures as we make an effort to teach from them, and I know we're planting little seeds of faith and understanding in my boys' brains that I hope they'll be able to fall back on forever.

We have had a lot of good conversations because of the stories we've studied. Eli said he wasn't sure he was a "Nephi" because Nephi never seemed to do anything wrong. He felt like maybe he was a "Sam." We were able to talk about how Sam was a good brother and he was righteous and did the things he was supposed to. We also talked about the chapter where Nephi was discouraged because he was tempted by sin, so he wasn't perfect either. We were able to talk about the differences between Laman and Lemuel and Nephi and Sam and the things we could choose to do to be like either set of them.

We talked about being free to choose captivity and evil or to choose freedom. This scripture reminded me of the Genie in Aladdin so we watched the end of the movie where Jaffar wants to be a genie and have endless power, but his power is limited to his master and he ends up being locked in a tiny lamp and thrown into the desert. Then we talked about how the Genie was freed by Aladdin and how good he felt to no longer be confined to the lamp anymore. We talked about how that's like us. We can choose to follow Satan and be captive to what he tells us to do, or we can be freed by the Savior as we follow Him.

This translated into talks with the boys when they had difficulties through the week that they could choose. They could choose to scream and fight about their homework and feel bad and not get their work done (murmuring like Laman and Lemuel), or they could choose faith and optimism (like Nephi and Sam) and do the best they could do with a good attitude and rely on help from the Savior. When we've had lessons with the boys about the scriptures, we're able to later help them apply it through the week and I've been surprised how many times we've been able to have a lesson perfectly tie into a life situation that we have faced that very week.

I love reading The Book of Mormon from the perspective of a parent. Jeff makes fun of me because I'm a sucker (a real sucker, not a grape tomato one) for self-help books and every time I try a new one he reminds me we have the best self-help book there is--The Book of Mormon. I'm seeing that to be true as we have tried to help our kids pull from the stories to make them applicable to their lives and their challenges. I will continue to argue with Jeff that self-help books are a useful side-study to the ultimate self-help book, but we can both agree that The Book of Mormon is true!

Janu-Owie Birthdays

Eli, the heavy (soda) drinker of the household, started the year off right when I handed him our sparkling cider from dinner and let him guzzle the last three gulps straight from the bottle. 

While we were partying downstairs with Apples to Apples, Saboteur, and the ball dropping on New York time, the two little guys were quietly missing all the fun.

We cashed in on a Pogo Pass offer over winter break by going to an arcade. See. We do fun things sometimes, kids.

The best part about living in Las Vegas is the weather. Not only is it great for kids who can hit the playgrounds year-round, but it's also great for runners who can hit the pavement regularly.

I have loved the running-friendly weather so much that I'm in constant half-marathon training because there's no off-season! With my next race fast-approaching in March, I decided it was time to kick my training into high gear. I was feeling good, so I wanted to see how fast I could run the last mile of my run. I got going at a pretty good speed just as I approached the one and only block of my run with an unfinished sidewalk, leaving me to momentarily shuffle along on threatening shards of gravel.

I run this same route nearly every day and have never before had a scuffle with the immobile shrapnel, but despite its lack of mobility, it proved to be just as effective if a mobile object hit it with significant force and speed.

I can't explain how it happened other than I felt my left knee hit, then a slam on both hands, then a bounce, and a roll, finally landing me flat on my back. Impressive momentum if I do say so myself. It felt about the same as what I imagine it would feel like to abruptly be shoved out of a golf cart...onto a pile of rocks.

Perhaps the best part of it all is that the roll portion of my stumble twisted me in such a way that I was able to get a good view of the road as I flew onto my back, so I saw the car that passed by perfectly timed to witness the wreckage.

They did not stop (much to my dad's disapproval, but I think I prefer it that way). However, they haven't released the dashcam footage of the incident to the presses, so they may be a better samaritan than we are giving them credit for.

I peeled myself off the ground, dislodged rocks from my body, and tried my best to pop up to assure the next approaching vehicle I was going to be just fine. Luckily the last mile of my run is a loop around my neighborhood, so I was close to home. I stared at my hands the whole way home, holding back tears and vomit because the dangling flaps of skin had me convinced I'd never be able to use my limbs again.

Or at least I wouldn't be able to use them for the next few days which would feel like a lifetime with a toddler and a preschooler. I got home to inspect the damage. A pounded left knee, rock-imprinted hands, a bruise on my right knee, and tiny cat-like scratches all over my back, hip, and shoulder.

This will go down as my most significant running injury to date, and is the runner-up on overall bodily injury only to my 3rd grade rollerblading-on-the-first-day-I-got-my-rollerblades-on-the-first-day-of-spring-break accident (and perhaps childbirth). With that, I'm hoping to make it through the rest of my training without hitting the pavement quite as hard as I hit it in January. And actually, hitting pavement sounds a lot nicer than hitting the gravel, so I'll shoot for pavement next time.

Forgive me for the pictures.

Onto cuter pastures.

If you catch them on the right day (a day when Eli is at baseball so Carson finally has the time to give Lincoln the attention he desperately craves from his older brother), Lincoln and Carson are the best buddies. Carson was so cute getting them both dressed up as "army men" one morning, which included slicked back hair and various props from Jeff's closet.

That same day Super Carson also volunteered to put his baby brother to bed. Why haven't we done this sooner? Jonah worships Carson and listened to his every bedtime instruction.

I loved this letter Eli had written to himself for a school assignment, though it does make me wonder what his teacher thinks about me!

"Dear me, I like that you let me do tasks such as walking. I know it's hard to have a mom that makes me run like a mile every day but you don't let down on me. I know I have not been treating you very well, but you have been an awesome support anyway."

Just to clarify, I DO "make him" WALK home from school a lot of days because it's beautiful weather in the afternoon and we all do a little better after school after we've had some fresh air and exercise, and it IS a mile from the school to our house. But the running is all his own doing. :)

Carson got braces on in October, and off in January! We couldn't believe how quickly his teeth moved. He'll still need another set in a few years, but this straightened out his front tooth that grew in wonky from an injury he got as a toddler. Woohoo!

Speaking of toddler, this one is trying to turn terrible with lots of screaming and opinions lately, but we're holding onto the sweet moments for now.

It was my birthday! For a solid year, every time we pass this restaurant Baby Stacks on the way to church, I would tell the boys, "Let's go to Baby Stacks on my birthday!" I had been with my roommates when they came to visit and it was good food at a decent price, and I knew my boys would be shocked by the number of pancake options they offered. The day finally came. To Baby Stacks we went!

Weeeeeeeelllllll. We thought going at 11:00 would be the perfect time to miss the breakfast rush and beat the lunch rush, but there was a 45-minute wait when we got there, so we bailed and we bailed fast. The one way to ruin a birthday breakfast is to turn 4 hungry boys hangry by making them wait around for 45 minutes. We found the next best thing and did a breakfast picture retake.

We NEVER eat out. NEVER. It's so expensive. Also it's rarely enjoyable because we get hyper-sensitive about every move our kids make and whether we're annoying everyone around us. But for my birthday, we broke all the rules and treated ourselves.

Wouldn't you know all four of those tiny Egg-cells were egg-cellent. They scrambled to obey our every word, their attitudes were sunny-side up, and they refused to crack under pressure. Yeah, we made a lot of egg puns, and breakfast was a dream! The kids were angels (in large part due to the toy train rolling along a track above our heads, mysteriously disappearing and then reappearing in perfectly timed sequences to keep all the boys' attention for the duration of our dining experience. Egg Works knows how to work it).

Next stop was Red Rock Canyon, because it's my favorite place and the weather was P-E-R-F-E-C-T!

We had some visitors join in on the celebrations. David and Mary met us at the park.

Jeff cooked me a steak and shrimp dinner while Mary entertained the boys and I finished the night off with a Nothing Bundt Cakes mini bundt cake. Saturday birthdays are the best.

When preschool is at my house on Mondays, the itinerary writes itself: watch the road for any glimpse of the garbage man for two straight hours.

Our preschool friends came over to help us celebrate Lincoln's birthday on the morning of his big day.

Lincoln had a non-stop day. We did presents in the morning, then friends and games, then his other preschool helped him celebrate, then we picked up the older boys to go bowling.

I repeatedly asked Lincoln through the month what he wanted for his special birthday dinner. I gave him options like meatballs, lasagna, pancakes, potstickers, sloppy joes, pizza! No matter how many times I tried, or what "fancier" options I tried to present, he confidently and assertively assured me all he wanted for his birthday dinner was Ramen Noodles. You got it, kid.

Lincoln has been cracking us up lately with the things he says! He is clever and funny and likes to make people laugh. Here are a couple of my favorite Lincoln quotes he's said lately:

While watching Star Wars Episode 1 (when Darth Vader is a boy):
Lincoln: "Hey, mom on the TV! Hey, mom on the TV! Your son is going to turn into Darth Vader! You might not want to keep him!"

A little later on during the same movie:
Annakin's mom: "You did it. I'm so, very proud of you."
Lincoln: "Well...Watch out!"

One night while we were learning about Lehi's Dream:
Me: "Why do you think the large and spacious building was floating?"
Lincoln: "Because it's SPACE-cious. Like a SPACE ship!"