Highlights 1/23 through 1/30

I love to copy ideas. I am not sure I have ever had an original idea in my life. I think it is against the youngest child code to have them. In that spirit, I am copying my brother-in-law and doing a weekly update on the family happenings. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right?

His are nice and detailed but I am not that good at recall and am far more lazy so I am going with a highlight approach.

--Addison gave a talk in church last Sunday (1/23). I learned that he would be speaking when we walked into the church that morning and got a program that had his name listed. I marched right over to him to see if he remembered and he said he had it under control. The administration of the sacrament was one of the longest we have ever had and I was sweating the whole time. He stood up and gave a simple and sincere account of our family being sealed in the temple. His most clear memory was all of us kneeling at the alter and looking into the the mirrors where "it seemed our family went on forever." You can be sure that by then my sweat had turned to tears.

--We started our Self-Cleaning House project. Our approach to the house has always been that everyone just makes a big mess and then we set the timer for 5, 10, 15 or 30 minutes and then just clean in a mass frenzy. We decided that now that I am more available to nag, I mean offer gentle reminders, we need to go with a more clean-as-you-go routine. Our goals this week were to put away coats, backpacks and shoes in their home (a big basket by the door--we can't make this complicated) and to put all dishes in the sink. I probably shouldn't admit that we had to start there but when we look back in a year and see how far we have come, we can really celebrate. Or, the boys can laugh at the number of attempts mom makes over the year to get the house in order.

--With a good bribe for meeting our housecleaning goals, Parker really got into the project. After breakfast on Friday, he said, "Okay, Mom, it is time to make this house sparkle!"

--Colin only missed one word on his spelling test! The usual score is a 12 or 13 correct out of 25 so this is a significant achievement. As we practiced he spelled the word easy--e-s-a-y, e-y-s-a, e-a-z-y and e-s-y and I thought for sure that would be the one he missed. He managed to get that one correct, however, and it was the word suddenly that he missed. That was unexpected.

--Addison's report card for term 2 came in the mail: 6 As, 1 B and a D+. It is almost exactly the same as it was for the first term and very similar to the report cards that we would get for Alex. The Ds are in different subjects for the boys, however. If this trend continues, by the time Paxton is in 9th grade, he will only be able to get his Ds in gym.

--Paxton wore his pirate shirt every single day this week--even to bed. He agreed to wash it a couple of times in exchange for getting to push the buttons on the washing machine but it went right back on as soon as it was done. He even wore it to church today under his sweater. We are taking bets to see if he can beat Alex's record of wearing his power ranger costume.

--Alex gave a talk in sacrament meeting today. This time we did get the notice at 8pm on Saturday when Todd Stout kindly called to remind him. He did a fantastic job with the topic of temples. He had a great opening, but decided not to use it so I will embarrass him here. He was going to start off saying that Todd and the bishop told him that he wouldn't have to talk if BYU won both of their basketball games this week (they were on a 10 game winning streak). After beating San Diego State he couldn't believe he was cheering for BYU against New Mexico. When BYU lost, he had to hurry and write a talk but now he will start cheering for BYU every game.

That's all I got for now. Looking forward to the start of February!