Manly Jell-O & Our Tongue Depresser Family

I can’t believe it, but I slept in until 8:00 this morning!  That’s 10.5 hours of sleep!  I’m either going through a growth spurt (which is not likely since I’m way past that stage), or I was just super tired and my body needed that much rest.  Anyways, we woke up and had breakfast and watched Princess Diaries (Autumn’s pick) and made brownies.  Then we had some lunch and got ready for church.  Autumn looked so cute in her new yellow dress.  I think it’s so funny that you can see all of Autumn’s dolls lined up on the coffee table behind me.  She did that b/c she said they wanted to watch the movie w/ us.

Church was really good today.  The sacrament talks were about temple worship and not just temple attendance.  It made me so thankful that I went yesterday and felt such peace and power when I left.  Then in Sunday School we talked about the Liahona and what the Liahona (or spiritual guides) are in our own lives.  It was really good and gave me some spiritual insights into my own life.

For the 3rd hour we all met together b/c it was a 5th Sunday.  The Bishop had 7 different people stand up and share their favorite scripture from the Book of Mormon with us and tell us briefly why that was their favorite scripture.  It was really powerful and the Spirit was really strong.  He then reminded us of the challenge he gave us to read the Book of Mormon this year.  He had a bunch of lima beans in little zip lock bags.  He said each person in the ward should get a zip lock bag, and for every 50 pages we read, we could put a bean in a jar that he is going to keep on his desk in his office.  He even met w/ the Primary kids and told them about it.  Autumn was so excited to get our 2 zip lock bags of beans after church. 

We have been reading every night in the kid’s Book of Mormon reader, and when we finish that, we will start reading this family version of the Book of Mormon.

It’s still the actual words of the Book of Mormon but there are pictures and explanations of what words are or what things mean, so it’s easier for kids to understand.  I’m excited to start reading this w/ Autumn.

Mom made a double batch of manly jell-o today b/c she knows how much we all love it.  It’s one small box of orange jell-o and 4 cans of mandarin oranges!  That’s how Dad likes it…just a little jell-o holding together the oranges.  I wanted to get a picture of it to include in my Project Life b/c it’s a standard Sunday snack, and I wanted to document it.

Autumn discovered a tongue depressor in the pocket of Papa’s scrub top, and so he got out a pen and started drawing a face on it.

His is the one on the left.  Then he had to leave for work b/c the clinics called and were backed up.  He left some extras for Autumn to draw on.  She did the one of me next and I knew it was me b/c of the curly hair.  Then she drew herself and I knew that was her b/c of the long straight hair.  Then she drew the one of Nick & Mom and I had no idea who they were supposed to be, so I wrote names under the picture she drew to indicate who was who.

She had enough sticks to draw Nate, Jon, Lexie, Andrew & Jackson, too!  They kept getting less and less recognizable.  Oh, well.  She had fun drawing them and got to express her creativity, and that’s what matters most.

After dinner we watched Downton Abbey b/c I’ve gotten Mom addicted to it.  Autumn said she was cold, so she snuggled w/ Mom and next thing I knew, she was asleep!  She will be SO SAD when she wakes up, b/c Deckers offered to have her come over to play while I went and did drive bys.  Drive bys are where we go visit each of the Laurel’s and they come out to the car and update us on how they are doing w/ Personal Progress.  It’s also just a chance to talk one-on-one and get to know the girls better.  I brought the brownies I had made earlier.

I had two great visits and the other 4 flaked out.  Oh, well…next time.  When I got back to Mom & Dad’s house, Autumn had just woken up.  She was DEVASTATED when I told her it was too late to go to Kylie’s and that she had missed going over there b/c she had been asleep.  I told her I would text Sis. Decker to see if Kylie would be free to play sometime this week on another day.

At 8:00, the new episode of Downton Abbey was on, but Dad wanted to watch sports in the living room so Autumn & I went in their room and watched it.  I definitely shed a few tears at the end of the episode.  I also want to punch Vera (Mr. Bates’ wife) in the face for being so rotten.  But, it was a really great episode and I’ve already placed my preorder for Season 2 on Amazon.com and it will be delivered on the release day, Feb 7th.  I can hardly contain my excitement!