Weekly Report: Full, Filled to the brim

What a busy week. Every day there was something going on. When I stop to think about it, Monday seems so long ago. This week I was thinking about how much I love homeschooling. I know a lot of people worry about whether homeschoolers get enough socialization. It was one of my concerns while I was considering homeschooling. Even if you don't think you will ever homeschool, I encourage you to read this excellent post by Liz from My Ice Cream Diary.

Monday we went to the Discovery Gateway Museum. Very fun. That's a picture of Claire watching poo go out of the "intestines". Ewww.


Tuesday we made Pulla (Finnish sweet-bread) for Enrichment night. We talked about microbes and how yeast is made up of microbes. We did a little experiment and watched the yeast fill up a balloon with carbon dioxide gas.
Later that night we went to Enrichment. It is so nice to be with the sisters. Because Jeremy teaches a class at BYU Tuesday nights, we ALL trekked up to the church building. It was such a nice night and our building isn't very far so we walked. On the way home it was dark and the sky was clear. We saw so many stars! I pointed out Orion and now Sam and Elise can point him out too. We sang all of the Articles of Faith songs to keep some of us from being afraid of the dark. It was such a joy to be singing and walking home.



Wednesday we worked really hard to get our school work done, learn new piano songs and dig ourselves out of the huge mess that accumulated over the last two days of craziness. Sam and Elise did pretty well. We made these cute paper guys from this web site. We also went to cub scouts and had fun! We have a very global den. We had one boy, who recently moved, whose mom is from Romania and dad is from Tahiti. We have one boy whose mom and dad are from Mexico. Just this week we had a boy join who is from Mongolia! And then there's Sam. Elise says he's from Mars.


Thursday we went to the Bean museum and gave animal presentations. We also went to the library. This is a HUGE deal. It always takes so much time and energy to go to the library with four kids. Mostly it's just Claire and Anna that make it crazy for me. We love the library though. Except this time...Ouch! I had to pay a pretty hefty fine for over due books. I WILL get those books back on time.





Friday we went to the National Amateur DanceSport Competition at BYU. We had some friends from our old dance studio competing. It was also fun to see friends from Washington competing. We loved the costumes and the music. I especially loved watching the 4 year olds. They were amazing! Everyone wants to take ballroom dancing lessons now. I wanted to rent one of my favorite movies "Strictly Ballroom" but someone else beat me to it. (The photo is taken from the Daily Herald--my camera would not take good pictures in that stadium)

Saturday I did the run. The kids had a friend over. Sam went with Jeremy to the store. Jeremy and I spent a good deal of time looking for homes. More about that later. I got to go to the temple in the evening with a good friend. I really needed that. I love the temple so much. Next week Jeremy and I will go together.


Sunday we go to church. Church for us is three hours long. We have our congregational meeting first, then Sunday school for adults, teens and children. I'm in the nursery and love it! We have great kids. They are so cute and very precious. After church I had a special treat. Both of my brothers came over! Mika (on the left) is attending school at BYU studying clinical laboratory science. Mark (right) is up at Rexburg studying chemistry and biology. He graduates in April. We enjoyed lunch and these yummy cookies. (Just your standard butter cookie with toasted coconut, dyed green, and candy-covered chocolate eggs on top) That smudge on my lens is from little cookie-dough-licking fingers.

I use to be bigger than both of them.

Scripture Study: Through Ether chapter 4
We start school every day with about 10 minutes of scripture reading, discussion and prayer. We started the Book of Mormon at the end of August and we are almost done. Even if everything else I planned for the day goes out the window, we can always read the scriptures. It is my anchor. We also read often from the Bible. Next week we will spend our scripture time reading about our Savior's last week, His death and His resurrection as we prepare for Easter. I plan on using this great idea from Cocoa over at Chocolate On My Cranium.

We talked a lot about faith while reading these chapters in Ether. It's interesting to have a discussion of faith with children. The are so full of faith. It's easy to see why the Lord says "except ye become as a little child, ye can in no wise enter into the kingdom of God." The brother of Jared saw the finger of the Lord, because he believed in Him. He believed that He would help him. I loved Moroni's interjection in Ether chapter 3.

"...Jesus showed himself unto this man in the spirit, even after the manner and in the likeness of the same body even as he showed himself unto the Nephites. And he ministered unto him even as he ministered unto the Nephites, and all this, that this man might know that he was God, because of the many great works which the Lord had showed unto him. And because of the knowledge of this man he could not be kept from beholding the finger of Jesus, which when he saw, he fell with fear; for he knew that it was the finger of the Lord; and he had faith no longer, for he knew, nothing doubting." (3 Ether 17-19)