Church Growth

Any idea what the growth of our church looks like? I didn't. But now I do!



(For those of you who aren't LDS, a stake is a group of congregations (or wards as we call them), generally about three thousand to five thousand members in five to ten congregations.)

Rice

Gotta love how little it takes to keep them entertained!

(I do wish that I'd thought to put down a sheet or at least pre-sweep so that I could reclaim all the spilled rice. Next time.)

Edited: I wanted to note that they played with this for over an hour! The extra cleanup was totally worth it.

Laughing Through Life

After returning from our big outing today (a ten minute trip to drop off school paperwork for the dr to sign), it occured to me that life has been a little boring.

So I thought I'd share a few glimpses of my boys that made me laugh or smile this last week.

* Edward dumping water on the living room rug and then dancing as he splashed in it. (This was while swearing under my breath that he'd figured out how to make yet another kind of sippy cup leak.)

* Ethan rolling his eyes at me for singing along to a "Word World" song. ("You can never have too many OO's" is a catchy song! And I know mom. It's payback time.)

* Edward singing along to the same song a few minutes later. Doodly-oo is such a fun word to hear from his little mouth.

* Ethan saying all morning that he was tired and should probably take a nap. (I had a yeah-right kind of laugh at this one. He didn't nap, but he did lay on his bed and read books for over an hour.)

* Edward's run. It's hilarious.

* Ethan's excitement when I showed him how to use a Magic Eraser to clean up Edward's wayward coloring.

* Edward's imitation of his brother when I leave for work. Even if I've already said good-bye to him, if Ethan gets a bigger hug or a real kiss, Edward comes over for the same. Gotta love those little arms giving hugs and the slobbery kisses.

Not very exciting. But these boys are constantly reminding me why I'm pushing through. Give me a few of those moments a day and it's all worth it.

Ant Migration

We're watching this out the back door today.



The fire ants that live in our walls are migrating across the patio. They're moving thousands of eggs to a new mound (or several) in the yard. Cool to watch. Scary because I discovered them when letting Edward out in the backyard to play.

How do we feel about having new fire ant mounds in our yard? We're thrilled. These ants have been in our walls since we moved in over a year ago. Once we realized it, we sprayed the interior walls to keep them away from us. As long as they went outside for their food and left us alone, we kept a tense peace with them.

Now, once they've moved out their eggs, we can spray the exterior of the house and keep them from coming back in. And a through walk of the yard will reveal the mounds and we can treat those too.

Maybe, for a few days at least, we can call our house allergen free!