Ethan's part

10 kids had lines they recited for part of the Kindergarten program.  Here is Ethan speedily cruising through his part.  "The Amazon River through South America flows, there are monkeys, parrots and sloths move so slow".  

Magnifying the Priesthood

Grant spoke in church today and did a wonderful job.  I thought I'd post his talk for posterity.  He gets so nervous, but once he's up there he looks up and talks into the microphone and does a wonderful job.  You would never guess he has jell-o legs, as he puts it.

            Magnifying the priesthood

           There was once a family of frogs that lived by a pond.  There were all sorts of good, healthy bugs there for them to eat at the pond, like crickets, flies, mosquitoes and water skippers.  Some of the little frogs, however, liked to eat ladybugs.  The ladybugs were easy to catch, and the red and white shells were sweet like candy.  But this wasn’t good. The ladybugs were friends to the frogs and helped keep the pond free of pests.  Plus, the ladybugs weren’t very healthy for frogs to eat.  

The father frog was very worried, and he thought long and hard about what to do.  Then, he had an idea.  He smashed up some red berries and gathered some white dust.  With it, he painted himself to look like a giant ladybug, and he hopped around for a week with a sign that said: “Don’t eat our friends the ladybugs.”  The little frogs were amazed at this and realized how important the ladybugs were to their father.  They never ate another one.

 You can see that this father frog magnified his responsibility to teach the little frogs by making sure they understood what was right.  Magnifying one’s calling means to go the extra mile in fulfilling your responsibilities. Now you will see I obviously had a hard time magnifying this talk.  But we need to work diligently and very hard on magnifying every calling we ever get. Prophet Gordon B Hinkley once said. 

            “To every officer, to every teacher in this Church who acts in a priesthood office, there comes the sacred responsibility of magnifying that priesthood calling.” 

            He also refers to magnifying as looking through binoculars and how they can enlarge and improve any object. But when we don’t magnify our calling it is like looking through the other side of the binoculars. It makes it farther away and doesn’t improve or enlarge an object. But shrinks it and makes it harder to focus.

             When I received the Aaronic Priesthood a few months ago, there was a lot I didn’t know about what I should be doing.  Luckily, there were experienced Deacons in our quorum who showed me the ropes on the basics, like how to pass the sacrament and collect fast offerings.  Now, I need to magnify my calling by helping teach other new Deacons and being as good an example as I can for those in primary.  But the most important thing I can do to magnify my calling is to build my own testimony.  The better I understand the gospel, the more I will understand how I can contribute to the important work of the Church in whatever way the Lord wants me to.

 [Testimony]

 In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Who doesn't love dirt?

With Troy in India for a couple weeks I figured I was safe to have a pile of dirt delivered.  For those who didn't know Troy really hates a dirty garage, car (his, he doesn't care what mine looks like) and/or driveway.  Numerous times he has had to put up with all three because he married me.  True Love.  So, yesterday we moved a lot of dirt and got the garden in and planted and moved some bushes around.  The kids, and neighbor kids, were extremely helpful filling buckets with dirt and dumping them in the garden for me.  As you can see after they were done dumping they turned the pile of dirt into a bike ramp.  At one point we had 12 boys over riding their bikes through the dirt.  I told the neighbor we just need to bring in a pile of dirt every summer and the kids will be happy all summer.  Who needs water parks, vacations, Lagoon for that matter if you have a huge pile of dirt?  A couple of boys are trying to find ways to convince me not to use the dirt.  I've told them to just enjoy it, they have another week, then it's got to go.  It will all be going to the back yard.  We are raising the back yard a bit so we can put in a playhouse... hopefully the huge pile of bricks on the other end of the driveway will be gone too before Troy gets home.   It is a little tricky to get in and out of the garage.

Mother Daughter

Thursday night for Activity days/Mother's Day we had a mom and daughter spa night.  We made these cute flip flops and did each others nails.  We took cute mom and daughter quiz's and it was really fun to see how much we actually knew about each other.  For instance I knew that if given the choice Morgan would rather eat at a restaurant than at home, but I didn't know her latest favorite candy bar had changed to a butterfinger.  As for me, she knew my favorite color, favorite candy bar and that I would prefer to stay in a hotel than a tent on vacation.  I'm glad she didn't know that my favorite TV shows are Bones and CSI.  It was fun to have a girls night out.

Undone

Ok, so I couldn't just put one song on!  I just love listening to her and have to share.  Again not the greatest recording, but I loved it.  This MS benefit is really great, 5 artists play guitar to raise money for MS at the local high school.  Kat's done it with Mike Murphy, man/teacher who started it all, for 8 years now.  Sorry, Kat I didn't have enough camera space to record all of your songs and forgive me that I posted this with your little voice crack.. Trish told me that was mean, but I love to watch you play your songs, as you can see my kids love it too.  Love ya!  This is her song Undone, which she was inspired to write after reading Stephanie Meyer's Twilight.  

Strangers

Oceans

My little sister played at a MS fundraiser last night and she was awesome as usual!  This is my favorite song right now (next to Undone, the Twilight song).  Please ignore my terrible recording, I was just holding my camera and leaning to the side to get around peoples heads so it's a little shaky and so-so video quality.