2009 Family Goals

For family home evening yesterday we decided to make a few New Year’s resolutions as a family, type them up and print them, and hang them up on the wall. I tried to explain the idea of making goals to the boys, and I gave them an example – that we (the parents and kids) would all try harder not to yell at each other, and we talked about how we could remind each other about this goal and try to do better. Michael came up with the goal to not only read the illustrated scripture stories books with the boys, but to also read the scriptures together as a family each day. And Michael also wanted to include having a family trip sometime this year on the list, which sounded good to me. So, we asked the boys if they had any ideas for family goals. Kolby promptly answered, “Don’t go under cars.” And then he added, “And don’t walk in the middle of the street.” He even insisted that I write those goals on our paper. Eli’s idea of a goal was that he could play the piano with Kolby next time he was practicing (maybe a 3-year-old isn’t quite old enough to grasp the idea of New Year’s resolutions). But then Kolby came up with a great one by himself without any prompting from us: Be reverent in church. I liked that one. The last one we added to our list is something we’ve been working on a lot lately, and the boys are doing quite well with most of the time. It is that they need to ask what they can help with, and continue to ask and help until the job is done. It’s pretty cute – even Camden now has started to come up to me when I am getting lunch ready and say, “Mommy, what can I do to help?” And I’ll have him get out the milk or set bowls on the table. The boys really are good helpers. Anyways, those are our 2009 family goals. We’ve done pretty well with them so far (for the last day and a half).

Primary Spotlight

They gave me this paper to fill out for Kolby's primary class at church, and it was kind of funny to see how he answered each question about all of his favorites. There were a few questions that he didn't have an answer for -- like when I asked him what his favorite candy bar was, he said "ice cream." (We don't have candy bars very often). And when I asked about his favorite sports team I wasn't suprised that he didn't know what that meant -- his answer was "baseball." (I'm glad, too -- I don't think a 4 year old really needs to know about things like sports teams yet). And then he said his favorite hobby was playing computer games -- that makes it sound like he gets to do that all the time. Actually, he would enjoy that, but he barely ever plays computer games at all lately. And I was rather suprised when he said blue was his favorite color, as he usually says pink (but I suppose Michael would be more pleased with that answer). Well, here are all his answers:

"I Don't Eat Things With Feet"

So, Kolby had an assignment to give a talk for his primary class in church yesterday. The talk was supposed to be about the scriptures and how they teach about Heavenly Father and Jesus. We asked Kolby what his favorite scripture story was, and his response was, “the part about the Lamanites.” (For those of you who are unfamiliar with The Book of Mormon, the Lamanites were a tribe of people who were the enemies of the Nephite tribe, who mostly did not follow the commandments, and who loved war and contention – so Kolby’s choice of a the Lamintes as his favorite people in the book was a rather funny one). So, here is the talk that Kolby helped write and presented in front of the other children at church yesterday:

“I like to sing “Book of Mormon Stories” with my family. I like to read the scriptures because they teach about Jesus and Heavenly Father. I like everything in the Book of Mormon. I read the scriptures with my family at family home evening. My favorite part of the scriptures is when it talks about the Lamanites. I also like to read about when Jesus was born. And some scripture stories I like are Noah and the Ark, Nephi building the ship, and Ammon and the sheep. Reading the scriptures makes me feel good inside. We should read the scriptures because Jesus commanded us to.”

So after we helped Kolby prepare his talk the other night we were reading the children’s scripture stories with the pictures and Kolby wanted to read about the Lamanites. So Michael found a chapter that had several illustrations of the Lamanites and one was some men hunting for a deer. So in the middle of our scripture reading, we ended up having a long conversation about that illustration. Kolby asked what they were doing to the deer, and Michael said they were going to eat it. Kolby thought that was gross, and he said that people don’t eat deer. We told him that some people do eat deer, and he let us know that he does not eat deer. “I don’t eat things with feet,” Kolby added. Michael asked him if he ate chicken, and he said yes. And when Michael explained that chicken have feet too, Kolby said that he doesn’t eat their feet. After we explained to Kolby that the people were not going to eat the feet or the outside of the deer, and they would only eat the inside and cook it so it would be healthy for them, he told us that he would eat deer too.

Gospel ABC Book

*** Added November 2009 ***

I just wanted everyone to know that you are welcome to use these pages I have posted to create your own Gospel ABC Book. It isn’t necessary to e-mail me asking for permission to use the pages. You can just click on each page to zoom in, then copy and paste each page to save it on your computer. I also posted the pages that have family photographs with blank spots – so it’s easier for you to add your own family photos. And there’s an updated “P is for Prophet” page with a picture of President Monson too. You will find the Prophet page and the ‘blank’ pages by clicking here: http://bradshaw-family.blogspot.com/2009/09/blank-pages-for-gospel-abc-book.html Good luck making your own books. Enjoy, Stephanie!

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Original Post:

So, several months ago I had seen this Gospel ABC Book for the kids to look at during sacrament meeting at church on Heather Dawson's website (http://dawsondomain.com/Gallery/album13). When I saw it, I thought it was a wonderful idea. But I hadn't made one before because the thought of trying to do a big scrapbooking project with all of my boys either eating the paper and glue or taking advantage of the fact that I was otherwise occupied and finding something mischievous to do around our home has caused me to put all of my scrapbooking on hold since Kolby learned how to crawl (I am looking forward to when our youngest child will someday be a few years old and I will be able to start scrapbooking again without it being a total nightmare). Anyways, I was looking at the book on Heather's site again the other day, and I decided to go for it. Since the family photos on the book are not of Heather's children, I don't know if Heather made this book for a friend, or if maybe a friend or family member of hers made it. (I felt a little guilty about taking someone else's ideas and just changing a few things in the book to personalize it for my kids, but after Googleing "Gospel ABC Book" and finding several different versions of this book that different people had made, I hope that Heather or whoever made the book on her site won't mind that I copied it -- but just so you all know, I am not taking any credit for the majority of the book, since several of the pages I didn't even change at all from the original on Heather' site). Having said that, I was kind of proud of the work that I did put into personalizing this Gospel ABC Book for my boys, (even though I just photoshopped in some of our own family photos and added a few different pictures -- I didn't do any real paper and glue scrapbooking). So, I had fun making the few changes to the book, and Kolby and Eli enjoyed looking at it after I got it all printed out yesterday, so I thought I'd share it here: