FHE...isms

Last night for Family Home Evening (or FHE) we were telling Ethan about the birth of Jesus and the whole meaning of Christmas when this conversation happened:

Justin: (After finishing the story) Where was Jesus born?

Ethan: In the hospital!

Later on....

Justin: So Ethan, what is the whole meaning of Christmas?

Ethan: Jesus. AND SANTA!!! Maybe I can pray to Jesus and ask him to bring me presents? Maybe I can tell Jesus that I want a choo choo train from Costco?(Said with a cheesy grin on his face)

Gotta love the way his 3 year old brain works!

Ellie- 8 Months

I'm not sure where Ellie's 7th Month went, and now that she is 8.5 months old, I think it's about time for a little update on our little sweetheart!

- She is now a mover! She has been crawling around now for about 3 weeks and she is so cute to watch! She reminds me of one of those fake crawling babies with her robotic movements. She is so precise with every move! She isn't a speed crawler yet... I'll let her take her time :)

- Her favorite places to crawl are below the kitchen table as she scourers the floor for crumbs and also she loves to crawl in and out of the bottom of her exersaucer.

- She is starting to want to pull herself up onto things but hasn't quite figured it all out yet.

-She gives great kisses and we are still trying to get her to wave bye bye. She just smiles and laughs at us when we try to get her to do it :)

- She is still nursing but I think we are almost done...She wants more than I can give her.

- Speaking of, she is ALWAYS hungry! She found out what big people food is and if we are eating and she isn't, she lets us know that she wants some very loudly! I almost worry that she is eating more than she should- this girl can pack it away! We found out on Thanksgiving that she can down some yams as well!

- She is a fabulous sleeper. She still takes two naps a day and sleeps 12 hours at night.

- Everything goes in her mouth which means that I have had unusually clean carpets for the past month or so. I love it!

- At the beginning of her 8th month is when her two bottom teeth popped through. Man oh man, those were a rough few days (and nights!)

She is still such a good and happy baby and has such a sweet disposition. She loves to cuddle but also love to explore and play. We just fall more and more in love with this girl as time goes on. She is such a sweetheart!

My camera is still missing so I'm going to just have to post these pics of Ellie from our family photo shoot a couple weeks ago.

I may be biased but I think she is just a little cutie pie!

She loved exploring the dirt in the flower beds...

And oh how I just love kissing those cubby little cheeks!

Some Changes Around Here...

We have been busy little bees for the past few weeks and I need to post about Young Women in Excellence, Ellie, and this last weeks work conference but I need to find my camera before I can do any of that! Hopefully I have just misplaced it somewhere in the house.

Anyways, back to the changes that have been going on.. This last week we had Stake Conference for our church and after the session our ward and another ward had a special meeting to attend. There they announced that they are taking 2 wards and making 3. We all knew it was coming since we had around 650 people and 120 plus elders. That's a TON of people in a ward! As far as our young women, we had about 30 girls total and now we are down to 18. In our presidency, we lost our amazing president, Jill. We are all so sad that she is no longer with us! So officially, our presidency is dissolved until they call another Young Womens (YW) President but our callings for now are to keep YW going until told otherwise. As of now, Justin is still in the Elder's Quorum Presidency and I think they are all relieved they no longer have 120 plus elders to take care of :)

Oh I hope I still get to keep my calling! If you are now the YW President and are reading this, please, please please keep me in there! You don't even have to keep me in the presidency... make me an advisor or something! I love being in YW and I think if I get "kicked" out, there might be some pleading, begging, and groveling going on- surely the Bishopric wouldn't want that, right?! :) Seriously though, I'm not really one to plead or grovel so most likely I wouldn't even say anything if I get called out of there, but I would be sad. Very sad.

We still have a ton of people in our ward and I wouldn't be surprised if we split again in the next few years. I bet the Bishop's are breathing a sigh of relief though because now all 3 wards are much more manageable. Change is necessary but it sure is sad to let our friends go. Luckily most of them, who are in the new ward, live walking distance away... so it's not too bad.

*For those of you who did not understand a word of this post, no worries. There is a lot of LDS vocabulary in there :)

Personal Progress with the Stars!

This post is going all the way back to the beginning of November. I wrote it a long time ago but I'm just going to leave it the way it was written even though I'm no longer in young women's. :(

We had our Young Women in Excellence and we (the presidency) were busy little bees in preparation for this huge event. Our theme was Personal Progress with the Stars and we had the girls dress up all glamourous for the big event. With the help of the advisors we decorated the cultural hall beautifully with christmas lights, chandeliers, red carpet, and it was complete with A Walk of Fame with each of the girls autographs and pictures on a gold star. It really looked beautiful and a few of us leaders commented that it was way prettier than any of our wedding receptions were!

You can see a part of the Walk of Fame and the display tables in the back...

We planned for 2 + months for this event and it turned out even better than we had expected! The girls were able to present their projects in front of everyone and there was a strong spirit there as we talked about how each young woman is a light unto the world and how each one of them are beautiful daughters of God! We have such beautiful young women! We have a photographer in our ward and she took such beautiful pictures of each girl and they were able to take home portraits of themselves. I think each one of their self esteems rose at least a little bit to see how beautiful they each looked in the pictures. And that is so important for teenage girls to see! Just go here http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=240340&id=64620567927 to see pictures of our beautiful young women!!

To culminate the night the girls sang "The Light Within" by Janice Kapp Perry. It was hard to keep dry eyes... so beautiful.

It was a fabulous night and well worth the work it took. If any of you need ideas for next years event, we have tons of good ideas with this theme!

We love these girls!

*Side note* A few weeks after this, our ward split and the presidency dissolved. While we miss working with each other and the girls dearly, at least we can say we went out with a bang! :)