Sorry for all the silence this month. I was in charge of Sharing Time and also a Quarterly Activity for Primary. Also the boys are now doing soccer and baseball. We had the Rossels for a weekend visit. And overall it has just been busy.

For the activity, I mostly planned from a suggestion from the Primary President and from theideadoor.com. we helped the kids (ages 3-11) make Family Home Evening kits. The activity went really well and I have received a surprising amount of positive feedback from parents. The kids seemed to have a great time and I learned a valuable lesson which a few people told me, "Well, I could have told you that." to which I respond, "Why didn't you?" When you have a group of kids and you want them to hold still at all do that part always at the beginning. By the end of the activity or really anything they are too busy being social and having fun and too excited to hold still and be quiet. The theme was Love One Another and the treat was heart sugar cookies that the kids got to decorate themselves. This meant I had to make sugar cookies on Friday for the Saturday morning activity that I was following with a day of soccer. Fortunately there are 4 adults (me included) who are happy and capable of sharing the load of making cookies.

On Sunday I had to make another batch of cookies for a church meeting that night. Fortunately they were just drop cookies.

We had a lot of fun with the Rossel family for President's Day Weekend. I love the time we get to spend together. We spent a lot of time outside at the various parks. I even enjoyed having their puggle, Leo for a visit. I was grateful for the reminder that I never, ever want a pet dog, cat, mammal, etc. On Monday, the last day of the visit, Elijah and Xander both stepped in dog poop outside and walked all around the house with their shoes on. DISGUSTING! I had to scrub shoes and I utilized the kids to help wipe up the floors, but ultimately I did most of the cleaning. Jared insists it is no big deal. To that I respond, "Why didn't you help clean up the floor and shoes then?" If the boys of this house really wanted a pet mammal, they would have been working their butts off to rid the house of any poop remnants. They also would have told me to sit down and keep reading the stories to the kids who had not dragged poop into my house. I am also grateful to my excellent sense of smell (sometimes the bane of my existence) for alerting me to the stinky situation quickly.

A week ago we had a house inspection. The property management company is supposed to do this once a quarter, but we have been fortunate enough that they have only done 2 in the 9 months we have lived here (once at the beginning and this time). They say it is for the renter's and the home owner's protection, but I can't figure out how it protects me. Anyway they check to make sure we aren't some sort of drop house, don't have 3 families living here, 4 dogs or are growing marijuana. They also check to make sure our yard care (part of the lease agreement) is adequate and that we change the a/c filter regularly enough. I barely remembered in my mad dash to get the house presentablish to change the filter and dust/vacuum the vent. I was grateful I remembered since it is something she did check. Jared did a great job getting the yard presentable in the short bursts of time he had. He spent a few days after work/ before scouts and sports raking and cleaning the yard. He ignored the front yard even though it looked horrible since I had finished that during the week prior. Our yard is impossible to get cleaned up all the way. The people planted a lot of super messy trees, ground covered with teeny tiny rock pebbles, and added a ton of cactus and thorny plants to the mix. I have tried several times to really clean out around the spiky plants and have given up after 3 separate occasions of having thorns stuck in my fingers that I couldn't dig out.

Both Xander and Jared have been blessed to discover the pain of one of our cactus variety that actually shoots fine hair like thorns at those who disturb it. It is the oddest thing. We actually have 2 cholla nicknamed jumping cacti in our backyard. What crazy person decided to actually plant these in the middle of their yard?

Yesterday I overheard Xander, Elijah and Maxwell in a heated discussion. Xander had told Elijah to change his password and not to let Maxwell know what the new password was but to keep Xander in the know. Maxwell's feelings were hurt by this. Elijah did in fact change his password but he kept Maxwell in the loop and left Xander out. Anyway Xander's feelings were hurt on the way home from soccer when he learned Elijah had changed the password and not shared it with Xander. Elijah said, "Well, it was your idea." Then being a kind older brother he whispered the password to Xander so that Mom and Dad would not overhear. It was only later that Jared and I realized the password was to a paper laptop Elijah had created. Literally the laptop is one piece of paper with drawings on it.

The theme from the activity was "Love One Another". One of the stations involved decorating a manila folder including some of your favorite family activities. Maxwell's feelings were hurt that on one heart sticker affixed to Xander's envelope, Xander had written "Attack Elijah" and another heart sticker read, "Attack Maxwell". Maxwell was worried that these were Xander's favorite things to do and brought it to both Jared and my attentions.

As usual sorry for the wordy, run-on, bad grammar entry. Not really sorry though just sorry that it bugs some of you.