Bland-uary

Driving home from church yesterday, I asked my girls, "What did you learn in primary today?" June quickly responded, "Mom, I don't want to be a log." Whatever that means. I asked Gwen a second time what she had learned, and she screamed "I DON'T LEARN NOTHIN'!"

Then June began to sing "Choose the Right Way" but her lyrics were as follows:

Choose the Right Way

Or You'll Be Killed.

As you can imagine, Gwen didn't appreciate that song very much. And repeatedly screamed for June to stop. Finally, I yelled back to June, "June, maybe we could sing this later." To which she replied, "But I'm singing to Gwen to help her feel better!" I told her Gwen didn't like it. So June said, "Okay mom I'll just sing a song to you instead," and the singing and screaming continued all of the way home.

I think our efforts to teach our children the Gospel are really beginning to bear fruit.

Here's a picture of the girls before church when they were (a little) more intact. Though with church starting later for us this year, we are already losing it before get there.

Gwen is joining the primary ranks as a Sunbeam this year, and she hasn't mourned the loss of nursery like I feared she would.

I'm still working on forming my New Year's resolutions. I have ideas of what I want to do but am trying to make them measurable and actually maintainable. I think it's actually a hit to my self-esteem when I don't keep goals so I'm really interested in setting keepable yet challenging goals this this year.

Our New Year's Eve was exactly what you would picture for me. We actually had plans to see friends who were visiting from Tampa, but they had to cancel last minute. So I fell asleep at 8. And then woke up at 10:00. This little nap gave me confidence that I would actually see the ball drop this year. Until I fell back asleep at 10:30. It's just as well. I want to start out my 2018 well-rested.

Ready for New Year's Eve church service:

Besides, the only thing I really care about for NYE is being able to sing "Ring Out Wild Bells" at church. It's the best. A spooky church hymn? YES PLEASE!

Here's a picture I caught of Dan closing our van doors in the freezing cold last Sunday. We looked at our living room windows to realize that we had left all of the doors to the van open after coming in from church. Three hours previously.

Because of that weather you can see in the above photo, we've been pretty cooped up lately. The excitement over the snow and snow days and sledding and hot chocolate have been replaced by irritation over windshield scraping, crying from children when the wind hits their faces and a general cursing of Daylight Savings. What are we saving the daylight for anyway? I'd rather it be light at 5:00 p.m., thankyouverymuch.

But we have managed to spice things up by doing lots of indoor art projects and also hosting some game nights.

Does anyone else remember drawing on these black scratch papers growing up? This is June's favorite snow day activity.

Another art project: Pig on a plate.

We left the kids with a babysitter and went out to eat last weekend, and we came home to find that the girls and the babysitters had decorated our paper plates. Which is great by me. But Dan and I do find it a bit disheartening when we finish off our slices of pizza to find a pig face staring back at us. We agreed that this could be a helpful weight loss product, if you're into shaming tactics.

June also recently wrote this note to a boy she likes in her class:

Valentine's Day just might be spicy around here.

Look at these awesome giant Uno cards our friends brought over. Playing with the regular deck just isn't as great now.

And Dan had a bunch of people over to play Risk, including some people who had never played before. Dan LOVES playing Risk. I love Dan playing Risk with other people. It's a win for me, but every time I walked through the room, there was definite tension. Hopefully we still have friends after this one.

June isn't the only one expressing herself lately. Here is an outfit Gwen pieced together. I like to call it "Hit Me Baby One More Time."

And here is June's outfit for Decades Day at school. Some moms sew poodle skirts. Other moms affix a poodle onto a skirt with velcro. I won't tell you which mom I am.

And for the lightening round: MISCELLANY!

Harris and I are ready for church:

June and Gwen wearing bunny pajamas with bows in their bunny ears to help others know they are GIRL bunnies and also aprons because we are cooking for our game night.

I don't know what is happening here.

Gwen is tired so she'll hug me.

June doing her best Jim Carrey "the claw" impersonation.

Harris puts up with another family outing. This one was a pancake breakfast fundraiser at Applebee's for June's school.

 The rest of the fundraiser participants:

June fell (again). The nurse at school called me (again) to tell me that June tripped over her own feet in the bathroom and her poor head slammed against the tile wall. This is not the first time we have had this conversation.

I really don't know what is happening in this picture.

 Hearts/stars tights.

The End.