Family Home Evening

We have been given instruction to hold weekly family home evenings. We are also given promises of increased blessings if we do hold FHE. For the past year we have been fairly diligent in holding our home evenings. It has been a learning and growing process for our family - for instance, we know that after a prayer and song we have five minutes or less to give a lesson (anything longer results in bad attitudes and loud voices!). I can testify that as we do the things we are instructed we can and do receive the increased blessings we have been promised.

In an earlier blog we mentioned that we have been working with Nathan to memorize the Articles of Faith. So far Nathan has the first and second Articles of Faith completely memorized. We introduced him to the third this week. As we were sitting in the living room Audrey started to participate. She looked at her daddy and said, "We believe," long pause "in God [the] Eternal Father," long pause - we all stared at her "and [in] his son Jesus Christ," we all continued to stare, not believing what we were hearing "and in [the] Holy Ghost."

Later we were able to get her on a recording saying the the First Article of Faith. We will be trying to put that on our blog too.

Audrey's Second Birthday

It is official Audrey finally has the age to go along with her attitude! She has been acting 2 for quite some time; now he has every right to!!! All joking aside, Audrey is our prized princess and we love her more every day. Audrey is compassionate, loving and involved we are so blessed to have her in our family.

As is custom we let Audrey choose her birthday dinner. We had pizza, Baked Cheddar and Sour Cream potato chips, fruit and cake - with all of the options she wanted white cake, white frosting and chocolate chips. Her ice cream choice just had be be plain vanilla too. When we sang to her she was embarrassed and had to hide her head. It was a great birthday.

Home Improvement

This is the most ambitious home improvement project of my life. I found the stud and everything. I am very impressed with myself. - RJB

Ryan forgot to mention that WE found the stud. WE put the bracket together. WE hung it from the wall!

TJ Illness

TJ had a bad experience with one of his paws recently. He wouldn't quit licking and biting at it, so we did the best we could under the circumstances. It was this or the cone around the neck. During a trip to the vet we learned he had an infection and needed some medicine. Fortunately, he stopped wearing the sock shortly thereafter.

School, Festival, Field Trip

Nathan had his first day of Kindergarten on September 1. He loves going to school! The favorite thing he has learned is math and something called "the sensory" (we are still not exactly sure what the heck that is yet, but we know it really does exist). He says the Pledge of Allegiance each day, and eats a ham and cheese sandwich each day (his school prohibits peanut butter in lunches).

Nathan is wonderful with memorization. He has many parts of movies and videos memorized. He often quotes parts of his favorite movies. (Sometimes he skews reality with TV world. Fortunately we have litmited his video and television intake.) We have decided that we should use his memorization skills for building up his knowledge of the Gospel. For family home evening, our family has been working on learning the Articles of Faith. Nathan has the first Article of Faith memorized, and almost has the second one down well also. He loves learning!

Picture and Video:

We attended the Apple Festivle in Hendersonville, NC. You may not be able to tell from the picture but Audrey did not enjoy the ride nearly as much as Nathan did!

Nathan had his first field trip. He went to Hickory Nut Gap Farm in Fairview, NC. There he had the chance to feed a goat, was offered to hold a baby chick - he "chickened out", fed a couple of pigs some apples, went through a sunflower and corn maze, etc. It was a fun experience!