Visiting Teaching

I was impressed by the Women's Broadcast this past month. One quote in particular made an impression on me pertaining to visiting teaching. Julie B. Beck said, "This (visiting teaching) is one duty we have in the Church where we are certain to have the help of the Lord if we ask for it. This is one responsibility that is certain to increase our faith and personal righteousness and strengthen our own homes and families as we become partners with the Lord. A sister in this Church has no other responsibility outside of her family that has the potential to do as much good as does visiting teaching." then a little later she adds, "Faithfully serving as a visiting teacher is evidence of our discipleship."

Those are pretty powerful words to describe something that in essence is so simple and easy and yet so easy to disregard or procrastinate. I often wonder what I can do to serve others and go to great lengths to find ways to serve, which is a good thing--however, If I am ignoring or just doing the bare minimum for the sisters that I am assigned to visit teach then I am dropping the ball and I cannot partake of the blessings promised to those who make visiting teaching a "way of life" rather than a "task".

I have made a promise to myself to improve in this area. While thinking about this and thumbing through the great lds blogosphere I came upon a really neat blog that has given me some fun ideas on how I might present my visiting teaching message. I thought I would share it with you.

http://visitingteachingblog.blogspot.com/

Hopefully, as I improve, the measure of my discipleship will not find me wanting.

Wordful Wednesday

I wanted to participate in Chocolate on my Cranium's "Wordful Wednesday" assignment this week. Lucky for me the assignment consisted of only writing "6 little words". We were to write our own six-word biography. This is actually tougher than it looks. I decided to go the "extra mile" and add a bit of alliteration just for fun. Here's what I came up with.

Grateful for: FAITH, FAMILY, FRIENDSHIP, FUN

You can check out all of the great wordful wednesday posts at:
http://chocolateonmycranium.blogspot.com/

Laundry list

Look at these piles of Laundry-----What do they tell you?

MY KIDS HAVE ENTIRELY TOO MANY PIECES OF CLOTHING!

How is it possible to even use that many clothes all at the same time?

It is definitley time to purge!

There are many days when I wouldn't mind going back to the good ol' days when people only had two sets of clothes--everyday work clothes and their sunday best.

*note: At least they are all clean.

3 Days OUT

The Zoo crew happened to be out of school for 3 days last week. Day 1 was spent cleaning, fighting, destoying and cleaning again. I decided I couldn't take another day like that so on Day 2 after doing the morning "contributions," we loaded the baby up in the stroller and headed downtown. I armed myself with the camera and the bright idea taken from this past months Family Fun magazine. I told the kids that we had to find all of the letters in the alphabet made up out of different shapes that we found along the way. I thought that it might be a little on the hard side for them but they got the hang of it pretty quick and they had a blast searching for things that would make up the letters. Even Andrew had fun searching for the letters--although he just looked for them on the signs. Here are a few pictures of some of our letters that we found. Can you figure out which letters they are supposed to be?

They found all sorts of ways to entertain themselves along the way. I'm pretty sure that since this particular building is a city building--someone would have had a heart attack if they had seen the kids doing this. They would have dreamed about lawsuits that night for sure. We might even have been banned from walking had we been caught.
We had to stop and play at friendship square while we were there. We hardly ever go downtown and so the kids were thrilled to be able to play here. I was just glad that no one fell in the fountain as they were chasing each other around and around it.

Ahhh, the bubble window--classic.

After making it home just as the baby was waking up I decided that I was given a little blessing. Day 2 refueled my energy and made it possible for me to wake up on Day 3 with the assurance that I CAN do this. I CAN enjoy these kids and I CAN make it through another child--and have fun doing it.

Unexpected back-seat driver

Yesterday, as we were coming home from picking kids up from school, I told Andrew to make sure he closed the door to the van then went into the house and didn't think anything more about it. A couple hours later I went out to jump in the van to go get pizza for dinner and lo and behold the van door was still open. I silently cursed the kids for once again not listening to me and closed the door. I hopped in the front seat started the car and was out the driveway and down the road. I had driven about a block when all of a sudden I hear a loud, eerie whine coming from directly behind me. I swear, I think I jumped about a foot, slammed on the breaks right in the middle of the road and jumped out of the car. I almost forgot to put it in "park". I flung the back door open and out shot a nasty, white cat. I think it was more in shock than I was because it took off down the road like it had been shot out of a cannon. If I had been quick enough I would have kicked it as it sailed past me just because I was so freaked out by having such an unexpected "guest" inside my car with me. It took the whole 3 blocks to the pizza place for my heart to slow back down to normal---all because of a stupid cat!

I Am!

I have been thinking a lot about who I am as a person and also what I would like to become. I guess self-reflection is part and parcel of having a baby--or maybe it is all of that extra "thinking" time that comes when you are forced to sit and nurse your baby for hours on end. At any rate, I came across this really fun internet program. These are some of my "favorites" and some aspects of my character and personality that I hope I am developing properly as well as words that define ideas and concepts that I believe to be of the utmost importance. ---did I forget to put Chocolate in there? How could I have forgotten that?



To make your own you can visit this site:
http://www.wordle.net/

Our Little Man

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