Random Thoughts

For those of you with good eyesight, this is a picture of my family at my sister's wedding.  There are five sisters who you keep reading about in my blog, and their husbands and kids.  The only one missing is my brother who's on a mission in Toronto.

Here's all the cousins looking so put together in their outfits made by Grandma!

This was taken on the bridge in my parents back yard.

And my favorite wedding photo of all....

I took these from my sister's blog because I have people who read this who aren't family, and they are curious what we did this summer and how the wedding was.  As you can see, it was lovely.  And all thanks to the happy couple...



The other day my kids and the kids from the complex spent the morning collecting chestnuts.  They then requested we cook them in the oven so they could try them.  A few of them were sure they had had them before.  Curious, we looked it up online and gave it a shot.  I imagine they would be delicious, if they were really chestnuts, not horse chestnuts - a clever imposter that tastes horribly bitter.  They, and we, were very disappointed, but we learned something anyway.

The kids have been super crafty lately, no thanks to their non-crafty mother.  One of their favorite projects was making rock people.  They wanted to send one to each of their cousins, but I imagine the postage on that would be incredibly high.  So cousins, feel free to make your own and share your photo of your special rock person.

And, finally, daily scripture reading with four children under 9 can be both challenging and rewarding, mostly challenging.  We pull the kids out of bed every morning at 7:15 so we can be done in time to get ready for school.  A typical morning consists of us reading out loud to four lumpy blankets.  But we have tried to be more creative lately in an effort to engage their learning capabilities.  We, of course, are only in 1 Nephi, so we really went crazy with the vision of the tree of life.  Here is our butcher paper on the wall that we diagrammed the vision on:

I guess what makes it all worth it is the moments like we had in church on Sunday.  The speaker happened to be relating the vision and mentioned the iron rod.  Malcolm looked up his book and said, "Hey, I know this story!"  So there is hope.  Maybe something really is sinking in!