Thumbs Up

On this Thanksgiving morning, I am thankful for hands that work. I am also thankful for family visiting for the holiday.

I am especially thankful for fingers. It's been a rough week at our house for hands. After my finger cut on Monday (which is healing but will definitely leave a gnarly mark), Bryan joined me in the land of the injured. Last night he was helping Peter make his traditional apple pie by slicing the apples. Bryan was demonstrating proper knife safety when his hand slipped. Instead of going through the apple, the knife went through the pad of his thumb and cut it clean off.

He no longer has a thumbprint on that hand.

I was upstairs doing bedtime with the girls when this happened. Bryan came into the room and said in an urgent voice that he needed to talk to me right away. I was shocked and prepared to drive him to an ER or urgent care. The only reason this was an option was that Bryan's brother Paul and their sister Melinda and her family are all visiting us for Thanksgiving. In other words, there were people at our house to stay with our children.

Paul offered to do the driving while I got the boys to sleep. Melinda (who found the severed thumb tip!) took over helping Peter with the pie. I was able to get kids to sleep and Bryan got the medical care he needed.

No, they didn't sew the tip back on. They couldn't even stitch up the wound. Bryan has some special bandages to dress it with and instructions to keep it dry. We're not sure if he'll have a divot in his thumb from now on or how it will heal.

Bryan told me that if he had been holding the knife differently, he might have sliced off his thumb completely. So losing the tip of his thumb sounds like a much better alternative to totally being without a thumb.

What are you thankful for?

Happy Thanksgiving! And please, be careful with sharp objects.

Baking Party

We plan to do some baking today, how about you?

It Cuts Like Glass

A note of caution: be very careful when sliding your finger along the spout of your glass measuring cup. You may realize, with a shocking jolt of pain, that the glass is broken. This may lead to you canceling your plans for dinner, telling your kids they now get to serve themselves cereal for their evening meal, then sitting with finger wrapped tightly and held above your heart in a slow and frustrating attempt to stop the bleeding.

On the bright side, this may give your oldest child a chance to serve by fetching you bandages and alcohol swabs.

Yes, this is my actual blood. No, the 3/4 inch long diagonal cut along the inside/back of my pinky finger is not visible. The jagged glass can be seen in the background. Peter wrapped the broken edge in electrical tape (totally something Bryan would have done had he been home from work but something that never would have occurred to me), and threw it away.

This is going to leave a funky scar.

Teaching Our Friends

I got a text yesterday morning saying that the talk for Junior Primary had fallen through and asking if Sophie would like to give a talk instead. She happily accepted. I rephrased the assigned topic in the form of a question and asked her, "How can we tell our friends about Jesus?" The talk below holds most of the things she said. She also composed a song on the spot about Jesus being our brother and friend, but I wasn't quick enough to transcribe it. Hopefully she'll sing it again later for me, more slowly.

We Can Teach Our Friends About Jesus and His Church

Sophie’s Primary Talk 11/19/17

We can teach our friends about Jesus by sharing how much we love Him. We can teach that we lived with Jesus in Heaven before we came to earth. We can show them that Jesus loves them too by caring about them and being kind and being loving. We can teach our friends about Jesus and His church by being faithful to His commandments. We can teach our friends about Jesus by singing Primary songs while we play together, because the songs we sing here teach about Jesus. If we live by the words of this Primary song, we can teach our friends about what we believe in our church.

I belong to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

I know who I am.

I know God’s plan.

I’ll follow him in faith.

I believe in the Savior, Jesus Christ.

I’ll honor his name.

I’ll do what is right;

I’ll follow his light.

His truth I will proclaim.

I know this is true. I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Signature Move

What you see here is an original work by Miss Sophie that she created for Uncle Jordan and soon-to-be Aunt Leah. That's thoughtful and sweet, but it's not the reason I'm sharing this picture. The other important aspect? This is the first time Sophie has seriously tried to write her name.

She wrote the first three letters without much instruction. I said the letters and she worked from her memory of what each one should look like. I modeled h, then i (which took a few tries), and finally e. She was so pleased with herself. I was pretty pleased too.

Juvenile Engineering

On Saturday morning the kids woke up early and wanted to watch a movie. I said no and asked them to find something quiet to do instead. When I came downstairs I discovered what they had done in place of the screen time. Cooper was so pleased with his creation that he asked me to take a picture.

Service Minded

As I prepared lunch today, Sophie began demanding certain items for her meal. That's when the following conversation took place:

Me: You have to change the way you're talking to me. You're treating me like I'm a naughty servant.

Sophie: You're not a naughty servant. You're a good servant.

That's when we had a discussion about what the word servant means and when it should and should not be used.

Restoration

On Saturday we had a family adventure to visit the Priesthood Restoration site near the Pennsylvania/New York border. It was quite a chilly day, so we all bundled in several layers. A sweet pair of Sister missionaries gave us a tour of Issac Hale's home, followed by a tour of Joseph and Emma Smith's early home. 

This statue depicts John the Baptist restoring the Aaronic Priesthood.

And this one shows Peter, James, and John restoring the Melchizedek Priesthood.

The kids stayed warm by running every time we were outside.

It was so fun seeing inside the homes. We did have to repeatedly remind the kids to look with their eyes and not with their hands, but otherwise they were well behaved. And the kids did a great job in answering the gospel questions the missionaries asked them.

After seeing the historic homes, we took a walk through the woods where the Heavenly visitors appeared.

Then we retired to the Visitors Center to warm up and enjoy a short film about the translation of the Book of Mormon and the restoration of the Priesthood.

This has been on my bucket list since it opened last year. I'm glad we finally made time to visit.

Pecan Problems

"I don't like pecans. They're bland. They taste like cardboard, but not in a good way."

-Peter, during a discussion about Thanksgiving dinner.

Phoebe 7.0

A few months ago Miss Phoebe turned 7. She asked that we use as much gold colored fanciness as possible, so I scoured nearby stores for gold wrapping and decor. Thankfully, gold is popular these days.

Phoebe's birthday fell on a weekday, so we didn't do much in the way of celebrating on her actual birthday. She chose to wear a shirt with gold on it and gobbled down her birthday breakfast of Pop-Tarts. She took a box full of gold-filled goody bags (gold colored items, we did not actually include any gold) to school to hand out to her classmates. And we enjoyed a birthday dinner of her choice and a gold papered, gold candled cupcake cake.

The real birthday fun came a few days later. We took the kids to a local drive-in theater, their first experience with such a venue. There were two screens, one showing two horror films, the other showing two family-friendly movies, so there was a diverse group milling about while we waited for the sun to set.

There was a playground setup between the two screens. It was chilly that evening and I was amused to see so many kids playing in their warm pajamas. My kids took advantage of the bounce house obstacle courses.

After we played, we sat in front of our van and ate our fancy dinner of sandwiches.

We met some minions that were hanging out near the playground.

Then we danced to get out wiggles. The first movie of the double feature started an hour after the girls' bedtime, so at this point in the evening they were getting more than a little antsy.

Because it was cold, we lowered the back bench of the van into the floor and the kids and I snuggled under blankets as we watched Despicable Me 3 and Cars 3. Bryan spent much of the night sitting on a cooler just outside the van, but he did climb in to get warm later in the night. The first movie was fun and the second movie was really good, arguably the best of the Cars movies. The only person that didn't stay awake till the end was the birthday girl herself. She slept through the last twenty minutes of Cars 3 and when we woke her up to drive home she was not happy about slumbering for the conclusion of her birthday celebration.

In all, it was a fun birthday for our girl. 

As is our tradition, here is her annual birthday interview. I added a new question this year, based on a conversation I had with Phoebe. I'll give a hint about what it is: Phoebe has some big goals for her life.

FAVORITE FOOD: Lemon Meringue Pie

FAVORITE ANIMALS: Tigers and deer and horses

FAVORITE CANDIES: Bounty and giant Hershey bars

FAVORITE BOOKS: The Harry Potter books, all of them

FAVORITE COLOR: Sea shell green

FAVORITE SHOWS: The Flash and Kong King of the Apes

FAVORITE MOVIES: Some Like It Hot and Harry Potter 1, 2, and 3 (She hasn't seen any of the others yet.)
FAVORITE SONG: Hedwig's Theme
FAVORITE BOARD GAMES: Clue and The Game of Life and Candyland

FAVORITE CARD GAMES: Go Fish and Old Maid and Uno
FAVORITE VIDEO GAMES: Super Mario Odyssey and Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild and the Disney Princess Game
FAVORITE THINGS TO DO: Read, read, and read
FAVORITE MEMORIES FROM BEING 6: The first day of kindergarten and the last day of kindergarten
FAVORITE PLACES: Paris and the Temple and school and home and the park and Utah
FAVORITE SUBJECTS IN SCHOOL: All of them

FRIENDS: Layla, Claire F., Claire H., Cecilia, Eva, Miranda, Ashlyn, Nadia, Phoebe (she's laughing about this), Jolin, Grayson, Eliza, Cat, Amelia, Camilla, Ava, Evva, Peter, Cooper, Daddy, Mommy, ("Best for last.") SOPHIE!

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP: A mother, a fashion designer, a doctor, a scientist, and President of the United States of America