It's a Great Week!

So far it's been a great week. Today I had two of my scrapbooking friends over for a day of chatting and scrapping. Unfortunately, my kids weren't cooperating and I didn't accomplish much (only four pages) but I still had a great time visiting in between the kids' whining, screaming and demands.

Yesterday, I took the kids to story time. The theme was grouchiness. The first story was Eric Carle's Grouchy Ladybug (I think that's the title.) The second story was darling. . .I would recommend it to every parent of young children. . .The Pout Pout Fish. The fish always pouts but eventually turns into the kissy fish. I'm definitely buying it because it's a keeper. Afterwards, the kids made sea animals with model magic and pipe cleaners. After making a fish, Spencer then fashioned his model magic into a jellyfish with pipe cleaner tentacles which all the other kids copied. He really is a very creative kid.

Tuesday, my visiting teachers came and the twins got to play with Bethany, one of their friends from nursery. They call her "my Bethany." One of my visiting teachers is moving so this was probably her last visit. I'll miss her! She has been very faithful and always gives great lessons.

Monday night, Rachel gave a cute family home evening lesson. I told her to look in The Friend for a story to share and she found the last one about a 10-year-old girl with two younger sisters and a younger brother who make messes and ruin her things. Rachel could definitely relate! She loved reading the story to the kids and gave a great synopsis at the end encouraging the kids to clean up their messes and included the remarks, "When we clean up our things and we help each other clean then we will have the spirit in our home." She also asked that we sing "When We're Helping We're Happy" as our closing song. I noticed yesterday that this lesson actually had an impact when Spencer said to me, "Look Mommy, I'm cleaning up my Legos before you even ask me." Sometimes a lesson from a sibling is much more effective than my million requests for them to clean up after themselves. Family Home Evening really is a blessing even though I often wonder if the kids are getting anything out of it at all.

One thing that is really exciting me at the moment is how many people are looking at my preparedness blog. They are from all over the U.S. and really all over the world! It's so fun for me to see how many people viewed it, how long they looked at it and where they are from. I created the blog for my ward so I could disseminate massive amounts of information without incurring any copying costs. But since then, it has blossomed and now it has been viewed more than 4,000 times with over than 10,000 pages viewed. This may not seem like a lot in the realm of typical internet traffic but considering that this was just meant to be a ward preparedness site, it's amazing to me. I even received a note from someone who isn't LDS thanking me for the site because she wanted to start a food storage program and appreciated the information she found there. That made my day. Just today, I had people viewing it from Utah, Washington, Ohio, Oklahoma, Arizona, Washington, California, Texas, Idaho, Missouri, Louisiana, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Colorado, New Jersey, Georgia, Australia, Kansas and Arkansas! The internet is an amazing thing. I hope this doesn't sound like bragging. I am just so grateful that something I have done (and it wasn't hard at all) may help others to follow the counsel of our prophets.

Finally, I end with the last blessing I have to chronicle today and that's the garden. The garden has peas growing in it! I haven't been paying attention to it and only planted a few pea seeds before I got distracted and quit because the kids were ripping open seed packets, dumping out the entire packets in one spot, dropping seeds into the grass, etc. but I noticed yesterday that every one I planted is growing! I also have peppers and broccoli growing beautifully. My asparagus is about four feet tall. I can't wait to have my first harvest next year. It's a vegetable worth waiting for. Saturday, I will have to plant the rest of the garden if the weather permits. I love this time of year! Okay. . .that's it for now!