Church, Goodies and Plastic Wrap

Today was a good day. There was a musical program at church. Sophi and her friends from Activity Days group sang together, Sophi did very well! I sang in a small choir too and spent a half hour this morning singing the song over and over, trying to wake up my voice. I stayed up late last getting ready for teaching Gospel Doctrine class today, and that went well I think. We discussed the Family Proclamation, and after all I learned and studied this week (Elder Christofferson's talk "Why Marriage, Why Family" and Sister Beck "Teaching the Doctrine of the Family") I love it even more that I did before. Go listen to Follow Him Episode 51 - Part 1 and Part 2 - so good. The guest Jenet Erickson was also the guest on the Book of Mormon Central and she's become one of my new favorite people! Amazing articles and lectures by Jenet Erickson here. So after nourishing our spirits, we had a nice day at home. Peter was sweet playing cars after church. He's so cute. 

Natalie and Owen playing spies.

Sophi joined them and we got a big kick out of her Spy Identification card. 

Although it seems, to me, if you're a undercover spy, you're not going to want to have an ID in your wallet or pocket that could give you away... but maybe they thought of that, hence why they used the 2 month old photo to throw people off? Hilarious. (I remember that little baby face!! <sniff>)

Today the kids had planned to make Christmas goodies to give to neighbors. They went with Corey to buy more stuff for it last night, and today they got them all together and delivered them and they did it all without me! Sure they had a few mistakes. The cookies didn't turn out. Abi had asked me "what is 3/4 plus 3/4?" and I asked her "What is .75 cents plus .75 cents?" "$1.50?" Yes. "So one and a half?" Yep. A while later I saw the finished products. They were very flat.

"That batter had too much butter..." I commented. They were also very crispy. Abi said she just isn't good at making cookies, and that the recipe on the back of the bag of choc chips was no good. She turned to making brownies instead

...but she kept thinking about the batter, then a few minutes later she said "Ohhh..." and realized her mistake - She had put one and a half CUPS of butter into the recipe (3 sticks) instead of one and a half STICKS, which would have been 1.5 cups of butter. So little mistake there of accidentally doubling the butter... So they were basically toffee cookies. 

The kids slowly nibbled away at the bits of cookie toffee and they continued their work. 

And not that I want to give the impression that I'm not in the Christmas Spirit, but it was really nice to not do it. I'm sure they spent a lot more money than I would had I helped and participated, but the extra cost might be worth the not participating. 

I bet soap would be less expensive though. It's definitely be easier. Maybe I'll look into that for next year. After they were back from delivering, we watched the 1970 Christmas Carol, which was great. I've put it on my calendar for the Sunday before Christmas next year, to watch it again. Tomorrow we're going to watch "The Man Who Invented Christmas". When I tried to watch the Man Who Invented Christmas with them a while back, they didn't know what heck was going on cause they didn't know the story of Scrooge. So we did it in proper order this time so they would understand. This was the first time most of our kids have watched the Christmas Carol movie and so now that they know what it is about, they're ready for The Man Who Invented Christmas tomorrow, which really spoke to me when I first saw it in 2017 because of a particularly stretching trial we were facing. So yeah, I love it. When that was done, and it was time for bed, most of the little ones were sent off but the older kids got distracted with the saran wrap that had been left out when we were wrapping goodies. Joseph started it - 

He was remembering Mel and the fun she had with broken glass years ago.

Wesley followed Joe's lead - here's video of him

And then here are two more videos of Wes discovering how to make the plastic pop, which intrigued Abi: "I wanna try..."

And then we were all laughing so hard together. 

Abi looked like the screaming guy in the Edvard Munch painting. It was really funny. She finally got the plastic to pop! 

It was great to have such a good laugh together. They are fun kids. I'm looking forward to more fun together over Christmas break.