Tent Morning

Yesterday both kids woke up really early and we were all a little bit tired and cranky. Our day was heading South quickly, and I decided I needed to do something to change the course of our day. Darcy loves making tents, but we hadn't done it for a while so I made a nice, big, cozy tent for us in the living room and we hung out in our jammies for a while and read some books. Soon after our day took a turn for the worst, but at least we had this one really fun moment together, right?! :)

Tonka Man

 Drew grew up playing with Tonka trucks a lot and really loving them so he wanted to get one for Ezra for his birthday. Unfortunately, the two stores where we always shop kept being out of them until a couple weeks ago, so it was a late birthday present. He loves pushing it back and forth across our driveway, and Darcy actually thinks it's pretty cool. Oh, and I just happened to come across this Tonka shirt that I thought he needed to go with his truck. :)

Darcy's First Day of Dance!!

I was so excited for this day! I had been talking to Darcy about it for weeks hoping that she would just be excited and not nervous. She was fine for the first couple minutes we were there, but when her teachers started talking to her she burst into tears and it took a while for her to calm down. When she finally calmed down though, she was loving it and I loved watching her. She is doing tap and creative movement and both are so cute!

While we were watching Ezra kept trying to walk into her class so I put him on the bench behind me. That kind of thing is normally not a problem for him, but suddenly I heard this disgusting thump and turned around to see Ezra face down on the cement floor. When I picked him up he had this gigantic bruise and bump on his forehead. Although he has had this kind of thing before I'm pretty sure it's the biggest one yet. I wasn't totally sure what to do, but the ladies there convinced me to take him to the ER. I was so worried about leaving Darcy there, because I had told her I would be right there watching her, and then I discovered I didn't have my phone! I always have my phone! So the lady who owns the dance place gave me her phone and they ushered me out the door. I ran to the ER (luckily I found my way there on the first try). I walked up to the front desk and said to the guy sitting there, "So he has this bump on his head. Do I really need to be here?" He told me that he wasn't really supposed to tell me something like this but if it was his son he would put ice on it and watch him. He hadn't passed out or thrown up or gone to sleep or anything and swelling on the outside was a good sign. I was so relieved and grateful for that guy who was willing to give me that info! I ran back out the door, but unfortunately I wasn't as fortunate with my directions on the way back. I am really terrible at directions! But we eventually got there in time to watch the last half of Darcy's class. We bring a show everywhere we go!

When she was done Darcy was so happy and loved talking about all the things she had done. I think her teachers are so great. I hope next week the initial separation will be a little easier for her!

 In her dance outfit!

Releve!

Plie!

A leap! (Her focus is amazing already!) :)

This was not actually a dance move, she was just getting distracted. It makes for a good dance picture though.

Crown feet (1st position) and soft ballet arms. This is her teacher Miss Christy

With her cute little group of girls

Dancing with feather dusters to the Cinderella song. (She really seamed to love this part.)

The knot on Ezra's head. The pictures don't quite do it justice. It looked so nasty!

Side view

TRYING to be reverent.

Two Sundays ago the speakers in sacrament meeting all talked about reverence. That is a hard subject to listen to when you have two little kids who won't sit still or be quiet and you have no idea how to get them to do either of those things. I felt really silly the whole meeting. At the end the bishop suggested that we talk about being reverent in our family home evenings that week. (He did make the point that he wasn't worried about the little kids as much as the teenagers, but I was!)  So I started researching when I got home from church that evening and we had a family home evening focusing on reverence the next night.

We sang a few songs about reverence from the Children's Songbook and talked about why we need to sit still and be as quiet as we can during church. I got a book from the library called Holler Loudly. I had gotten the impression the moral of this story was that we can be loud sometimes, but there are times we need to be quiet. I hadn't read all the way through the book though, and it did say that very thing one time, but that wasn't really the main message of the book so that was a bust. Ha! Darcy still liked the story though.

Then we played a game I thought up that would give us all (but mainly Darcy) a chance to practice sitting still and being quiet. I set up a row of chairs in the living room and we all had to sit down. We started by sitting still and being quiet for 10 ten seconds. If we got through that successfully we each got two M&Ms. Then we tried 20 seconds. Then 40. 40 seconds took a few tries for Darcy to get through. It was so funny and kind of crazy to watch how hard it really was for her to be quiet and still. We tried 1 minute eventually and we told her she could have even more M&Ms if she could get through that. After a few tries I decided she wouldn't normally be sitting there just staring at the wall with nothing to look at so I gave her a book. That didn't really help. It is really close to impossible for her to be totally silent so she would eventually start humming or making some sort of little noise. The look on her face was heartbreaking when she realized she hadn't done it again. I hadn't known this would be SO hard for her and I did not want it to be a sad experience for her, so we eventually just went back down to a shorter time she could handle. I am determined to keep practicing with her though.

Then we practiced saying different sentences in a whisper voice and got some M&Ms for good whispering.

Wow this was a way longer post than I meant for it to be. I hope we can get better at this soon!

Reverence practice :)