Chill Sunday

Nice to have a lazy day at home. I hid outside in the backyard and did a little reading and napping on the grass. The older kids tried to nap inside, but if you do that, little kids are around to prevent sleep. Katharine was by Lily playing with a little plastic helicopter toy that Daniel got at the 4th of July carnival. K did pretty good spinning it at Lily...

Then she'd jump over (or on) Lily to go pick it up so she could try again. 

Katharine smirking and loving being a tease.

Daniel came and started playing with her. It helped keep her from bugging the napping teen, but mostly he was just trying to get his toy back.

Looks like K just killed Daniel.

Ethan and Bella stopped by. Little Buddha Alvie!!

Bella let me get him out, even though I had a policy to never wake a sleeping infant. That was for my own children, ha, not for grandbabies! Bella showed us some pictures that the took of Alvie at church today - 

They were putting Bella's rings on his face as he slept. 

And he did sleep right through it all - 

Haha, so cute. 

Katharine washed her hands and then they let her hold her nephew.

Alvie is a lot bigger and heavier for Katharine to hold than Mary was!

Quick potty training update (cause I know all future historians are anxious to know...) - Katharine didn't have a #1 accident today, yay! I even had enough confidence in her that I let her wear underwear to church. I was helping sub in a youth Sunday school class and Corey texted "Katharine just went pee, Sister Eakins came and got me" and from that it wasn't clear to me if she had an accident in the nursery room or if Sis Eakins came and got Corey because K said she needed to go before she went, and they had made it to the bathroom? I asked him "Hopefully not on the nursery floor?" He said it was in the bathroom, yay! Good job Kat. At home I caught her in the act of #2, little bit of a mess but not too bad. I sat her on the big toilet with her training seat, she sat there and was curious about the toilet paper as she spun it a bit to let the tp down. Then she said something about "George" that I didn't understand. I left her some privacy and when I came back, she had unrolled the full roll of tp onto the floor, piled up like a big white ribbon. "Ugh, Katharine, don't do that..." Then she said with some introspection: "George can do that, Katharine can't do that..." That's when I realized she was talking about Curious George! haha, oh it's ok, you can be curious if you want. You keep exploring the world. It's easy enough for me to use this tp off the floor. She's a cutie, and I'm proud that she's getting the hang of it. 

While E and Bella were here, Ethan talking about another person's kid in the lobby at church today, that he thought was being a bit naughty and needed to be disciplined... "they just gotta put that kid in the hold" Bella commented "Doesn’t that cause trauma?" Ethan "Well yeah! if it didn’t cause trauma then it wouldn’t have been effective!" Ethan asked Corey "Where did you learn the hold?" "I made it up." Ethan "You made it up!?!?" Then with awe and respect "...Genius!" They said a lot of other things that were making me laugh, but I couldn't record it fast enough, it was funny though. E&B came over for like 2 hours just to chat and do nothing with us before they went over to Bella's sibling's house for dinner. Natalie made a cake and Ethan took a generous helping, the girls were kinda freaking out - He's a big eater so they were worried but it was fine, there was still plenty for all of them. Ethan and Bella are staying with Corey's dad for a little bit, in between reunions, so that's fun for us to have them closer and hopefully see them a bit more! We're excited for the Hibbert and Wride reunions coming up soon.

Tonight we finished the book "Consider the Blessings" by President Monson. It was a great experience. Most nights, we read scriptures downstairs, with some Daily Dose of Internet first to draw everyone in, sometimes a news update or current event by Corey, and then scriptures up on the screen. Other times like tonight, I'll have the kids just come upstairs and I'll read a few stories from this book as they brush teeth and finish playing while we wait for Corey. So it's been several months of reading these stories now and then in the evening, but when we've done it, the kids will ask for one more, then one more again. They are short and captivating, and there have been tears shed a few times. Biggest tear jerker was the story from pages 62-66 titled "I do not know how I can go on" - it's a story that President Monson shared in his General Conference April 2009 message titled "Be of Good Cheer". It is a true story recounted by Ezra Taft Benson after his postwar tour of Europe in March 1946. I was crying, Daniel was too, and we were in awe at the trials some people face. That same night the next story was about how Pres Monson, as a boy (we were guessing maybe 12 years old, cause he said it was during the depression. He was born in 1927, and the depression lasted from 1929 - 1941, so if it was in the last year or two of that, he would have only been 12 or 13. The kids were so impressed by this - he and his family were getting ready for a thanksgiving feast, and a neighbor Charlie came by, Thomas asked him what he was having for his Thanksgiving dinner. There was silence, then he said "Nothing." Then Thomas went and got his beautiful New Zealand white rabbits, which he said were the pride of his life, and he gave them to Charlie for them to eat for dinner!!! My children were in awe at his selflessness. My kids ideas were to tell his mom to invite their family over, not to give them your pet to kill. President Monson was pretty amazing even as a child. We loved reading these stories and I recommend this book to you. Maybe we'll read through it again.