My sister in law posted about how she and her girlfriends would email each other things that they were grateful for from A-Z in the depressing winter month of Jan. I decided I want to do that, but daily here on my blog. If you want to join in you can leave comments or even start it on your blog!:0)

A : ATTITUDE- It changes Everything. I am grateful for the choice to BE happy. Chosing what Attitude you are going to have,changes the perspective and outcome of any challenge. I have been lucky to have people come to me and to express concern or trials that they are going through. I am amazed how wonderful and the love I have for them overflows my heart and makes me realize this thought that I had while driving
When life brings you disappointment and worry, look up, For you have the knowledge that You have a Father who loves you and is watching over you. You really should be rejoicing, nothing to be stressed about :)

FHE- Baptism Prep

Here is the monthly list of lessons. 1-4 means Each Monday in the month and that lesson to be taught.
These topics are all located in "Preach My Gospel" The "Character Trait" lessons however, are not. I just am making them up as I go.
RESTORATION DISCUSSIONS

Jan - .Loving Heavenly Father
Teach the children that Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ have resurrected bodies of flesh and bone. The Holy ghost does not yet. Teach them that God wants to hear from us. We communicate to others through phone, with God we can through prayer. He suffers when we suffer and he rejoices when we rejoice. Teach them that God gave us bodies and that we should respect our body and others.
Character Traits w/ lesson:
RESPECT. Teach Respect to body, prejudice,racism, sexism. Everyone is Different/ Children around the world coloring page.
Quotes to put around house this week: "If one doesn't respect oneself one can have neither love nor respect for others
Self-respect is the cornerstone of all virtue.
Respect for ourselves guides our morals; respect for others guides our manners.
must respect the opinions of others even if I disagree with them. "
Pictures to be Used: Heavenly Father- GodHead- Prayer
FEB
1. Gospel Blesses Families
2. Heavenly Father reveals his GOSPEL in every dispensation/ Savior’s earthly ministry
3.The great apostasy/ Restoration through Joseph Smith
4. Book of Mormon / Holy Ghost

MARCH- Plan of SALVATION
1.Pre- Earth Life- God’s Plan and Purpose
2.Creation/ Adam and Eve
3.Earth Life/ Atonement
4.Spirit world/resurrection. Kingdoms of glory

APRIL-
1.Gospel of Jesus Christ/ Sin/ Faith
2.Faith/ Repentance
3Baptism- our first covenant(Baptism Covenants)
4.Gift of The Holy Ghost/ Endure to the End

MAY
THE COMMANDMENTS
1. Law of Chastity
2. Sabbath Day Holy
3. Follow the Prophet/ Ten Commandments
4. Tithe, Word of Wisdom/ Fast

JUNE-
1.Laws and Ordinances
2.Eternal Marriage/ Temple
3.Service/Missionary Work
4.Recognizing g the Spirit

JULY- Role of BOOK of MORMON
Christlike Attributes aka character Traits continued….

THe Key

I decided since I have four months until Hannah is going to be baptised, I am going to do discussions with her. I am going to take lessons from "Preach My Gospel" and read up on it. Then I am going to turn around and make it age understanding and cute. There are four discussions to teach. FEB 1. Restoration. MARCH 2. Plan of Salvation APRIL3. Gospel of Jesus Christ MAY 4. Commandments.

I am going to teach these with our daily night routine and remind them in my FHE lessons as well on Character Traits. Character traits that we are aiming for are those that Jesus have. I am using this motto I made up ...The "KEY" to growing a "FOOT or TWO" in righteous character traits are: Honesty, Respect, Virtue & Integrity, Obedience, and so on. Now in next weeks lesson, RESPECT I am going to teach them about prejudices, racism, sexism, and treating others the way you want to be treated. I am so excited to put time and effort into these lessons and hopefully if you are reading this, you to can take what I have put together and copy the lessons! I love finding ideas and being able to share them with others.

Here are some of the pictures I took and I know need to learn to use lightroom. This is the actual sunset! IT was beautiful!!

Ok now that I have birthday on my brain... I am going to do a Black and hot Pink/Zebra stripped party for Hannah. We will make Black and Hot pink pom poms, black table cloth, hot pink boa, hot pink balloons and candy jars. Then I found the CUTEST cupcake holders that will go great!!! Her chair will be in black with a hot pink bow around it . If you know me you know I love SPARKLES and GLITTER!! Well, here is some edible glitter and pearls for the cupcakes!! Then for her baptism I am going to have a white table cloth with white pom poms~! She is so excited for her baptism!

Then for Faith I am going to do her favorite person on the plant... Cinderella! We will probably have a cinderella party,. Who knows however, since it is far away but I get so excited when the ideas come. I am taking the colors from this dress and using it as my theme. Light baby blue with silver. You could even get white twinkling lights to hang above the white and blue pom poms. Light blue table cloth, with little white pom pom napkin holders. Then for fun we could get plastic goblets to drink out of. I found the cutest cookie cutter of a glass slipper we could use and put the edible glitter all over it! Then she could have a light blue chair cover with a silver or white with sparkle ribbon over it:

The give away treat boxes:

Invites, but "Make it Blue"

I would do both paper and netting pom poms:

Faith didn't want to get off her moon! Little Did I know it is the 25th anniversary of the Challenger disaster....

look the flag in the moon...

The Invite rocket

This year I did a "Space" theme for Austin's party.THe invites for his party I made little rocket and wrote " 3...2...1.. It's Austin's Party and we are going to have a BLAST!! I told him he could only invite enough kids to match his age (6). IT was hard to find ideas online for a space party, which I thought I would have no trouble. I decided to make Planets , Moon, and sun out of tissue paper pom poms. I cut stars from neon color poster board. I was going to make a rocket cake, but I will save that for when my family comes over tomorrow. Instead I got tin foil looking cupcake holders and stuck little rockets I printed off online in them. We played "Pin the Man on The Moon" WHich I think they cheated cause they all hit the moon right on. Even Faith. We then played "Moon Walk" Which was like Musical Chairs. We then went on a Spaceship scavenger hunt (I made these up so bare with me lol) and I made rockets out of pringle cans and filled them with Milky Ways, Mars, POP Rocks, Glow in the dark glowsticks, SUN chips, ORBIT Gum, and STARbursts! I think the kids had a fun time!

Today is my little guy's 6th birthday!!! Life really does happen in a "Blink" It just seemed like yesterday he was finally turning 3! I look at my baby girl and she is already almost 3! Anyways, I remember I had Austin 3 weeks early and he was my smallest baby weighing in at 6'5. He was a little bird~ I remember when he was born, there was a light shinning from the ceiling and it reminded me of this little angel coming to me. He had to go to the NICU which was emotionally draining thanks to just have given birth. He came home healthy and happy to Hannah who was 2 at the time. Austin is a peacemaker and loves babies!! Sometimes he is too much of a protector. When he sees someone push another person down he goes and jumps in the fight and will wrestle the mean kid down. Even to this day he can get a little baby to giggle. He told me once he couldn't wait until he was older and a dad! HE is going to be a great one. As he has gotten older he likes to be silly and the class clown. He goes around saying "Chicken" all the time and laughs his head off. He is such a great help to his sisters and loves to play with his friends. He loves Lego Batman, star wars, and lately has surprised me by making a plane by following the lego instructions. I just got back from his parent/teacher conference and he is doing really well. His favorite food is ramon noodles/mac and cheese/ and anything with meat! Austin is my little buddy and I sure love him.

For FHE this year I am focusing on "Building Character" I found vinyl saying at wood connection that saysIn faith, In purity, word,and spirit . I put them on a frame that I painted black with a picture of Christ in the middle. Each week we will talk about a characteristic that can fit into those categories. I got this idea because I was reading in a book called "Questions kids ask about sex." It talked a lot about teaching our children character traits that are positive. I loved that book, it says how in this day and age you don't have a choice to wait to talk about sex. Either the media through billboards, movies, tv, music and so on will teach them, or you can. Anyway it talks a lot about ages and stages children go through up until they are teenagers and some of the false core beliefs people thought when they were younger. I personally think if you wait too long, your kids won't want to talk to you and they will be disgusted. If you start early age appropriately they grow up realizing that it is normal. I am teaching about affection, character, and the negative side of sex, meaning I found an awesome book at Desert Book about pornography. Everything you ever needed to say to your kids about it is in this book. It's called "The Trap" and talks about a little boy who went to close to a bee hive and how it ties in. Anyways, Now with that being said, right now I am teaching my kids the first character trait on my list... Honesty. I printed out a picture of Cinderella and Spiderman and asked the kids what they were. They are Characters that they associate with. I then asked what makes them characters? DO they hit others? Steal? say mean things to people who don't look like them? They all said "NO" really loud. I then proceeded to talk about how we want to build good traits in our personality. I showed them a picture of Pinocchio and asked why his nose grew. I went on to tell them some stories about honesty and then we played the Hot or Cold game. I wanted to stress that when you tell a lie, even if you say JUST KIDDING at the end, it still is a lie and can hurt others. I played a song while showing pictures of honest people in the scriptures and told them I would play the song this whole week. I then wrote quotes and put them on cute paper around the house. For instance I wrote "BE HONEST" HONEST HEARTS BRING HONEST ACTIONS" "HONESTY IS THE BEST POLICY" and so on. So far it has seemed to work and I am working on next week's trait. Here is the song if you wanted to use it, Jenny Phillips "HONEST" song.

WE have such a great neighborhood~ I love it out here. We live so far away from the city that the next best thing to do is play dodge ball!! Yep a bunch of us got together and some of us wore ugly clothes and Played!! It was fun!

I have loved finding ideas for Young Womens and I have a ton all in my head.. so I am posting some of the lesson helps that I have done. For Manual 3 Lesson 3- Coming to know the Savior, I put a bag of rocks in a bag and told the girls to take one rock out and read it. You can put anything from eating disorders, depression, sin, impure thoughts to weakness or heartbreak and then proceed to tell the girls that the burden they are carrying can be lifted and that we don't need to be perfect to gain that hope and grace from our Savior. Besides bearing my testimony of Hope and faith in Jesus Christ, I wanted to stress that he loves us the way we are and will always have open arms to him, regardless of the stage of life or weakness or sin we are in. I then showed the movie clip "Jesus was no Ordinary Man" and passed around a cool black and white picture I found off of sugardoodle of Jesus. You stare at it and then close your eyes and you can see his face. At the end of the lesson I had bows tied around these "In Faith" blocks I made. However, I forgot to take a picture of it so I asked one of the girls to send me a photo of hers. On the back is a scripture about Faith and how Christ is always there for us, with him knocking at the door picture. Next lesson is on Forgiving ourselves and I can't wait! I have a bunch of great ideas for this one! I love teaching it uplifts me and is something I need always in my life.

I am trying to get a little more organized with Trent being home. We both wanted ideas for dinner, and I found an idea online and made my own! So far it has helped!

We bought a car this last week and are now down to one car... again. I learned how to drive a stick *Finally, can cross that off my bucket list.* and we bought a manual car so it's been crazy fun driving it around, unless I get nervous ... I remember my brother trying to teach me on his car and he would SCREAM at the top of his lungs everytime I tried to do it, so I feel like Pavlovs Dogs everytime I would get into a manual. *IF you don't know Pavlovs Dog Theory, look it up on google.) However, now I have mastered it.. I think... jk

Little Hannah had to have surgery for her reflux issue. She woke up as if nothing had happened. She defiantly has a better pain tolerance than I do! I swear every week I get someone saying that I have one of those familiar faces. IT happened again today. I need to come up with a funny comment next time. The girl who asked who I was, kind of looked like me... was a child life specialist... lived in layton.... so pretty much same stuff I wanted to do/or lived. Kinda funny.

I am so excited for my new church calling. I just got out of the library (Which was really fun) and now am young women's mia maid advisor and assistant camp director! I am stoked!!

Faith wants in..

Hannah got a present in the mail today. This year Hannah is going to be baptised. She got to chose out a baptism dress and she loves it!

Taking Down Christmas: