Practicing Church on the Couch.

We arrived back home from church a couple of hours ago, and do you know what my kids won the privilege of doing as soon as we were home? Sitting on the couch to practice being back at church. This ingenious activity is something my mother used to have us five terrible Beck siblings do while we were growing up, and now my lucky kids have earned the right to the same tradition. 

I'm thrilled to be going back to church. I really enjoyed home church a lot, but it's time to be back. Getting my kids back into the routine is going to take a few weeks though. Today, Gwen wondered why she couldn't crawl underneath all of the pews to go see her friends. Gwen--the SIX year old. When was that ever allowed, you ask? Never. I don't know where she got that idea from. The three big kids fought over two toy cars. And then Harris jerked on the hymn book holder in front of us and it came out of the nails on the pew. And church is right when Beck's morning nap usually is. So they were all out of sorts. 

We brought an elderly church member with us, and I'm sure she was impressed with our great behavior.

But the girls did have nice hair for it.

Dan taught a terrific Come Follow Me lesson. The guy has the best object lessons. I will sit and talk at our children until they pass out, but Dan gets them involved, and we all learned a ton. This week he focused on the Law of Moses being fulfilled in Christ.

Going up the first set of stairs in our house were the pieces of paper with the Ten Commandments on them. The girls read each one, and we discussed how they point people to the Savior and how they still apply today.

On the landing, Dan told the girls that the next set of stairs would contain Christ's law as given in the Book of Mormon (also in the Bible). The lower stairs and Law of Moses pointed the people to the Lord, but the Law of Christ is an even higher law (hence the higher stairs) which takes you even closer to Jesus Christ. 

And then they went up the higher stairs and read elements of the higher law. There's just something about that verse where the Savior talks about never even being angry that gets to me. Being angry is probably the easiest emotion for me to be. I love life; I'm a happy person. But it's so easy to get mad when things don't go well, the house is out of order, etc. It truly takes discipline and understanding of the Savior to not immediately go to that place of anger.

The big big news of our week was--June is riding her bike without training wheels! We have been working on this for yearsssssssssssss.

We had to get pretty inventive for this to happen. We have a balance bike she used when she was younger, but she didn't grasp the concept. Then we bought a bike with training wheels, and she could ride it but still struggled with leg strength to peddle AND keep balance. A couple of weeks ago, Dan realized she was ready for the balance bike again but it was way too small. So he removed the pedals and training wheels from her bike and made a bigger balance bike for her. For the first time in years, she didn't dread when I said it was "bike time". She would kick off the ground to get momentum and then could keep her legs in the air for a really long time while she coasted down the hill. So Dan put the pedals back on, and she could totally balance herself while peddling.

We still have our work to do. Her leg strength is still such that she cannot go up hills. But we're that much closer.

Other updates:

Ever since our excursion to the apple orchard, Beck requests an apple or two A DAY. Not cut up either. That would be for true babies. He gnaws on them and sometimes even eats the core before I can grab it from him. Yes, that is bad parenting at play.

Lots of neighborhood walks with friends as soon as they arrive home from school.

No idea.

And we are putting shutters on the big windows of our house. We did the bottom window yesterday and were attempting to do the top when we realized we had the wrong size for the top. So now it's just uneven and driving me crazy.

The End.