Monday, August 22, 2011

Family Home Evening by Ava

My sister and her family keep a history of all their family home evenings which I think is such a good/fun idea so we decided to start it in our family.  So here is tonights:

Opening Song: I love to see the temple (chosen by daddy)
Opening Prayer: Mommy
Lesson: The Tower of Babel by Ava (It went something like this): The tower of Babel was at a time when "people were very curious about heaven" (she's just recently learned the word curious) so they built a tower to get there.  Heavenly Father didn't want them to do it so he changed their language so they couldn't understand each other.  This way they couldn't build the tower because if someone said please give me that piece of wood then the other person wouldn't understand him. The Brother of Jared did good things so he asked Heavenly Father to unchange (not change) his language so he could talk to his family.  (Directed at Dad): Is building a tower the way to get to heaven? (Dad answers no) What is the way to get to heaven? (Dad says its by following Heavenly Fathers commandments.) That's right.  Now we are going to do an activity.  The good things go in the bag with the Brother of Jared on it and the bad things go in the bag with the tower of Babel on it.
Activity: We then played a game where we read little strips of paper i.e. you shared your toy with a friend.... and decided which bag to put the paper in.
NOTE: Ava planned this activity herself after playing a similar game with our goats and sheep lesson and after hearing the story of the tower of Babel several nights for her scripture story.  She chose the pictures to put on the bags and cut them out, glued them on and cut the word strips out as well.  She did a great job giving the lesson with very little help from mom.
Closing Song: Families can be together forever (chosen by dad)
Prayer: Dad
Treats: Charlotte handed out cookies that her, mom and Ava had made earlier.

Some stuff we've been doing

Hanging out with the girls

Making volcanoes (and silly faces) with friends

Waiting to wave to daddy as he drives away to work

Friday, August 19, 2011

Getting Married

Just heard Ava say to her 3 year old cousin: "Lucy, do you like weddings?" (Lucy says yes) "You do? Because I'm getting married soon.  Do you want to come to my wedding?" (Lucy nods) "Well I'm going to send out invitations soon aren't we mommy? Mommy? Mommy aren't we going to send out invitations soon to my wedding?" (Looks at me) So I say "okay, who are you going to marry?" To which Ava says "I don't know mom but it will have to be somebody I"m in love with."

So apparently she is operating on the "if you build it, they will come" principle. Plan the wedding and the groom shows up.  

Fashionably Late (and a little princess birthday party)

Remember in college when you were going to a party that started at 7 but you didn't want to show up right at 7 or (heaven forbid) 6:58 because then you'd seem like you never got out and were waaaaaaay too eager for the party? So instead you showed up at 7:20 which was considered "fashionably late" which meant you didn't miss anything exciting but appeared to have such a busy/hectic/glamour-filled life that there was just no way you could have been there any earlier.  I wanted to put that image out there so that anyone who reads this post and realizes that I'm posting June pictures in August might just think of all kinds of chic, cool, totally-hip things that my life must be filled with in order for my posts to be so "fashionably late."  Scrubbing hard peanut butter off the back of your dining chairs is so totally the in thing right now. :)

But I digress...... Back in June we threw a birthday party for Ava.  The theme was rainbow/princess/unicorn (translation: indecisive kiddo) party.  We had several stations at the party: a wand-making station, a crown making station, a pedicure station, a photo-booth station and a pin the horn on the unicorn station.  We had 14 little girls there and they all had a blast.
Ava opening presents and testing some of them out

The party decor - or the part I got pictures of at least

The big birthday gift - her very first bike

Pedicure station and pedicure drying station

Some cute ones from the photo booth my friend LE did

Dancing with the ribbon wands they made

Pin the horn on the unicorn

My friend Dee painted Ava and friends' faces when the party was over

Even Charlotte got in on the action

Ava's birthday dinner choice (corn dogs, corn on the cob and salad)

Blowing out the cupcake