Clara Visits the Bean Museum

A few weeks ago, Clara visited the Bean Museum with Grandma Carter and some cousins.  She had a great time.

Isaac is Turning 12 Soon

If you will remember, back when Jared turned 12, we planned and carried out the "12 days of Priesthood".  In The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, when a boy turns 12, he has the opportunity to be given the Aaronic Priesthood.  This will be a big step for Isaac and, like Jared, we want to make sure he understands what this means and what is expected of him. 

Also, like Jared, Nathan and I have decided to implement the idea of a "gift" each day leading up to his ordination.  We will also focus our family home evening lessons on the priesthood leading up to the big day.

This is the list we came up with for family home evening topics.  The links are to the lessons we did last year, so we may or may not follow the same lesson plan.

March 30 -  What is the priesthood?
April 6 - What are my duties as an Aaronic Priesthood holder?
April 13 - How does worthiness affect priesthood power?
April 20 - What are the keys of the priesthood?
April 27 - How does the priesthood bless me?
May 4 - How was the priesthood restored?

Most of the information for these lessons come from the Youth lessons for June.  You can find the lesson outlines here and here. 

The gifts for each day are roughly outlined as follows.  We've still got time to tweak and plan here, so the ideas are rough:

• day 1 - letter from Grandpa Harwood.  his testimony of the priesthood and how it has helped him and how he has helped others.
• day 2 - letter from Grandpa Carter.  same as above.
• day 3 - Framed picture for his bedroom of something gospel related.
• day 4 - Letter from Grandma C.  Her testimony of the priesthood and how the priesthood has helped her and blessed her.
• day 5 - An inspirational gift.  I am going to give him a "hold to the rod" key-ring.  You can see what this is here, but it is a terrible picture.  With Jared, we also ended up giving him a key to our home and talked to him about the responsibility that comes along with having "keys".  It was a perfect tie in!!
• day 6 - fhe lesson on how the priesthood was restored.
• day 7 - priesthood line of authority bookmark.  You can request your line from the church.
• day 8 - for the strength of youth book, fulfilling my duty to god book, and true to the faith book.
• day 9 - letter from mom.  my testimony of the priesthood and how the priesthood has helped and blessed me.  plus whatever else i decide to write.
• day 10 - date with dad.  they'll go somewhere great and discuss any questions Isaac may have and how he's feeling.
• day 11 - 
• day 12 - today's the day.  his gift today will be his ordination to the aaronic priesthood.

I tried to take into account weekends and family home evening nights.  I've already given the grandparents a heads up so that they could start thinking about their letters.

The inspiration for the 12 days of priesthood came from a friend of mine, "12 days of priesthood".

Lunch with the Kids

A couple Saturday's ago, I decided to take the kids to lunch.  Nathan was working and I needed to get out of the house.  I wanted to do something out of the ordinary, so I took them to +Buffalo Wild Wings.

This is about how the entire lunch looked from my perspective:

So many TV monitors for them to watch.

The only child who paid attention to me, was this one:

So we took some selfies...

 At least all of the kids were quiet and entertained.  :)