What's in a name?

When we moved to Illinois over 4 years ago I knew that there would be a number of differences between Utah and Illinois, among them being terrain and weather. I also knew that being members of the LDS church would put us in the minority rather than the majority, like we were in Utah. But up until recently I would say that the majority of our friends have been LDS as well. Since Will has started school, however, things have changed slightly. He's got at least 2 or 3 friends who are not members of the LDS church. Which has brought up some interesting conversations in our family. For example, when I picked up Will from school today we were talking about calling one of his school friends to come over and play. Will said "Can you call Sister K to see if S can come over tomorrow?" It caught me off guard but didn't totally surprise me to hear him call her that, because up until now all of his friends parents have been either Sister so-and-so or Brother so-and-so. So I did my best to explain that, if someone is a member of the LDS church you call them Sister or Brother, but if they aren't you call them Mr. or Mrs. I think it's going to be interesting to see what happens as Will is exposed to other religions and other ways of thinking beyond what we know as members of the LDS church.

The 7 Days of Valentine's Day: Days 6 and 7

This final activity/craft was done over 2 days. I'm actually kind of proud of it. For Family Home Evening tonight we will be having this:



It's super easy and looks cute. It's brownies with vanilla frosting, and the hearts are made out of colored sugar and a cookie cutter. Yummy and awesome-looking (if I do say so myself).

The 7 Days of Valentine's Day: Day 5

We slacked off a little on Thursday and Friday, but made up for it yesterday. Our Valentine's Day activity for the day was a temple trip. We decided to go up to Chicago rather than go to St. Louis, and we were able to leave Will and Kayla with some friends so we could go by ourselves. It was wonderful. We had lots of time in the car by ourselves, and doing sealings in the temple was a fabulous way to grow closer together and celebrate how much we love each other.

The 7 Days of Valentine's Day: Day 2

Today's creation: What I like to call "Heart People". I don't remember where I saw this idea, but I thought it was kind of cute. Will was a little resistant at first, and neither of them helped me as much as I would have liked, but I think they enjoyed the finished product.

The 7 Days of Valentine's Day: Day 1

I decided to extend our Valentine's Day celebration to a whole week with a number of fun crafts/recipes/activities/etc. So here is our first one:


Please pay no attention to how homemade this is. I'm not a crafty person by any means, but I figured a mailbox that we can put love notes and valentines to each other in would be fun. So my thought is that we put notes in there throughout the week and then open the mailbox and read them on Valentine's Day. I'm predicting that the majority of the notes will be from me and Bill to the kids or me and Bill to each other, but I think it's a fun idea anyway. I'm excited to see what else we come up with throughout the next few days. If any of you have ideas of things you've done in the past, I'm open to suggestions!