kidney beans and stars

What does the title of my post have to do with each other???? They don't. It's just what I wanted to name it because of 2 different things I was thinking about.

First, kidney beans are killing me! Not in the literal sense but they are killing my arms. When I'm warming up on my treadmill, I use cans of kidney beans for my arm exercises. It is quite intense some mornings but I'm learning to manage. I don't have dumb bells so I have to use what I have and that something is cans of kidney beans. It's the same thing right? I'll get the same result, don't you think? lol

Stars...oh man, I LOVE doing my paper route these days because I get to see a sky full of crystal clear stars. Millions and millions of them. They are so beautiful. On Monday, I almost fell off my bike because I was busy gazing up at the stars. Such a blessing to be able to see them so clearly. We don't have the light or air pollution that Calgary does so we see them much clearer here.

If any of you are looking for a good FHE lesson, this week I read the book "Mister Penny" (it's about working together) and then we cleaned the house. I don't think I can remember a time when Tanner was so excited to clean. He wanted to empty the garbage's all by himself (normally Matt helps him do this) and actually did it. He cleaned up his toys quicker than he ever has before. Anyways, it was a great book and taught a good lesson.

Some of you might have noticed that my blog is not private anymore. I've decided to open it up again for a little while. That is why the comments have to be moderated now. If any anonymous people want to comment they can but I get to decide if their comments are going to be published. I was just feeling really uncomfortable, previously, with having unknown people make rude comments. I feel like this way, if they want to remain unknown to the public but want to (they don't have to) tell me privately who they are, then they can still remain anonymous/unknown to the public while still enjoying my blog. I hope that makes sense. I want everyone to enjoy my blog but I don't want it to be a source of contention or back biting between my commenter's like it had started to become before I made it private. Anyways, I hope that my blog will something that people want to read and find enjoyable.

To end my post I'll end with a quote that came in a local newsletter

Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass...
It's about learning to dance in the rain.

FHE

I know 3 posts in less than 4 hours??!! Crazy...seeing as I've only been up since 12:09 this afternoon.

We just had this really great FHE on Monday that I was going to post but forgot.

In the March 2008 Friend on pages 29-30 there's an activity that we did. It's called "The Story of Jesus Christ" and has pictures that tells about His life. Anyways, it's meant to be a little book for kids to take to church as a kind of reverence book but we cut it out, pasted it on heavy paper and did an little activity with it. We put them on the floor and talked about Jesus' birth and asked him to find the picture that showed the birth of Jesus. Then the next one is Him visiting the temple when He was 12 so we talked about that and asked him to find the picture of Jesus in the temple. There are 10 pictures in all so that's what we did for each picture. It was a good activity for Tanner and it kept him interested because he LOVES putting things one after the other (similar to sequences but not always in any particular order. We have to work on that with him a bit). So he seemed to really enjoy it.

Anyways, I'm sure you could tweak it to your own families but this is what worked for our family. Our FHE's are usually only about 10 minutes at the most because with a 4 year old, we don't expect he'll sit for too long. I mean, it's not like going to church for 3 hours. Some kids can sit longer than that and I know as he gets older, the lessons will be a bit longer and more involved.

So I just thought I'd share that. I find the Friend has really really great activities that can be used for FHE's for older and younger children. You can find past Friends online on the church website here and they have the activities on there that you can print off. I have the issues from 2004 and on. I just went back through them a little while ago and cut all the activities out so I can do up a little quiet activity Church box for Tanner. I'm going to put flannel on the back of a bunch of the pictures so I can use them for flannel board stories etc. I am slowly working on it right now. It's a very time consuming thing because with all the cutting and pasting on heavier paper and then putting flannel on the back, it take about 10 minutes just to do one little figure cutout. I'm really excited about it and will post picture for sure when I'm done.