Family Night on the Farm

Last night we took advantage of the Spring-like weather and headed to Thanksgiving Point Farm Country. It was so nice to be outside in the beautiful weather. We hope that there is a lot more enjoyable weather to come!

Concentration

We know that Landon is seriously concentrating on something when he sticks his tongue out. He often does this when he is sorting things, building towers of blocks, and coloring. Tonight for FHE we had a picture for the kids to color. Landon was totally focused on the task at hand!

Allie's look of concentration is a little less intense.

"Faith is like a little seed: If planted it will grow..."

Once upon a time Eric wanted to teach 3-year-old Allie a hands on FHE lesson on faith. He equated faith to a seed and taught Allie how if a seed is nourished and nurtured it will grow. I generously offered up a few visual aids that consisted of: some seeds, a picture of the sun, a watering can, and some fertile soil. Eric was not interested in such a standardized way of teaching this fundamental principle. No way! He was going to make this lesson fun and unique. So, instead of my well thought out props he utilized these:

And then a few days later we had this:

And, even better still, a few weeks later I got to overhear Allie telling her Primary teacher that "We have a faith. It grows hair." Unfortunately, things got worse when a few more weeks down the road Allie's story changed to: "We had a faith, it died." And that was it. The individuals who were given this tidbit of information from Allie got little else in the way of an explanation. Allie was scarred for years (and that is no exaggeration!) and has only recently truly grasped what faith is and how object lessons work. I'm not sure if Eric learned his lesson, he still defends his teaching tactics to this day. I, however, learned my lesson. All object lessons must have my approval before they are shared with the children. I love you Eric!

FHE...Allie Style

Our family was treated to an interesting Family Home Evening lesson and activity tonight courtesy of our sweet little Allie.

We had a schizophrenic lesson given in true 7 year old style. Allie began her lesson with a couple of easy questions followed by one that stumped both Eric and I: "How is our family like a hotel?". Do you think you know? The correct answer, according to Allie of course, is:

• Eric is like the hotel manager. The boss. The one who tells the rest of us what to do.
  
• Yours truly is the maid/room service. Duh. That's what Mom's do...that's why.
• Allie is the one who gives the wake-up calls. (This one really makes no sense as we typically have to work very hard to get her out of bed every single morning. I guess she does get creativity points for this one. Maybe she was trying to do a little reverse psychology on us?)
  
• Landon is the entertainment. The one who makes the rest of us happy. (The only job description that I don't take issue with.)
  

We worked really hard at keeping a straight face while she explained this to us. Following this portion of the lesson Eric and I got to search the house for clues Allie had hidden in her own version of geocaching. It's going to be a while before she gets assigned to give the lesson again.

Soooo Nice!

After my last post, I decided that I better post about how lovely the weather was yesterday. Yay! We went to the park last night for FHE and had a picnic, played on the playground, and flew a kite. Well, at least we did until it broke. Dang kite. The funny thing is that we were at the Hillcrest Elementary park and the kite was flying really high when it broke and the wood part came crashing to the ground on University Parkway. We saw it come crashing down and heard it hit the road. Thankfully Eric was able to pull the kite in quickly and land it on the South side of the fence so that we didn't cause an accident on that busy road. That would have ruined all our fun.








Landon learned how to slide down the slide all by himself. What a big boy!