Trades, Co-ops, and Sign

We have been blessed with such great friends and neighbors here. They have been an answer to prayer many times and their service has greatly helped us accomplish things that we’ve always wanted to do. Every Friday night our whole family gets excited for “date night.” With 3 other families we created a babysitting co-op. All the kids of our 4 families (13 total) get to go to one family’s home to play while the other 3 couples get to go on a date from 6-9pm. Each couple takes a turn watching all the kids once a month. The kids love it because they get to go to a different home every Friday with different toys, games, activities, snacks, movies, etc. Finding, setting up, and paying for a babysitter was always 95% of the battle for us on trying to go on a date. We’ve been doing this for nearly 6 months now and all of us families have been surprisingly pleased at how well it has worked out for us. The kids get along great and we are loving our couple time together! Boyd came up with a creative date a few weeks ago and surprised me; he burned a bunch of our favorite songs on a CD and set up a dance just for the two of us, complete with a bouquet of flowers and a photo studio so we could take “dance pictures.” It was blast. This last Friday we grabbed dinner at Subway and then met our backyard neighbors at our house (they’re in the co-op with us) for games and ice cream sundaes. It’s been forever since we’ve been on a double date.

We also have Saryn in a pre-school co-op. There are six moms with kids that are all Saryn’s age (3-4yrs). Each mom teaches pre-school for a couple hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays for a week and then the school rotates to another’s home. We have the whole school year mapped out so we know when and what to teach so we can cover all the alphabet, numbers, colors, shapes and other basics. The mom’s we do it with are so creative with their lesson plans and really make it fun for the kids. Saryn loves it and wishes she had school every day. She’s knows all her letters (most of their sounds too), numbers from 1-20, colors, shapes (including rhombus, trapezoid, pentagon, etc.) and other stuff. I usually spend time with Saryn practicing writing her numbers and letters on the days she doesn’t have school. It amazes me how much information these little kids are able to absorb so quickly.

Ever since Elder Costa came and spoke in our Stake Conference last March we have been trying our best to get to the temple every week. He spoke on the blessings it brings to marriages and families who attend every week together and invited everyone to make their temple attendance a weekly event, or at least go more often than we have been. We trade babysitting for temple night with a couple of friends and family each month to make this possible. We have felt a difference in our lives and are so grateful to live near a temple.

A friend or ours asked if I’d be interested in trading piano lessons for art lessons. Her daughter (who is also homeschooled)loves art and is very good for her age. Makenna has been wanting to take piano lessons. So we swapped. She teaches Makenna piano lessons and I get to teach art lessons once a week. I’m loving it! It has helped me pull out all my art books, sketch books, notes, etc. and brush up on my art terminology and skills. That along with this new blog site and has gotten me excited about painting again. On many other blogs I’ve seen cute photos of their kids on the side bar and liked the idea but couldn’t find the “right” individual photos of my kids so I thought, “hey! Why don’t I just paint a portrait of them!?” So I’ve been working on Aubree’s portrait in watercolor and actually enjoying it. We’ll see if I like how it turns out, if I do you’ll see it on the blog shortly, if not, you’ll know I goofed it up. It’s hard being a perfectionist sometimes!

So cute! Saryn has been practicing saying her prayers in sign language lately. For Family Home Evening last Monday we all learned some more sing language to help us sign a basic prayer. Makenna has gotten really good and continues to learn and add more signs to her sign vocabulary. As a family goal for 2009, we have been trying to learn more sign language to better communicate with our two nieces/cousins who are deaf. Saryn has been frequently making up her own signs and coming up to me and saying, “Look mom, I do this and it means this…” as she makes some interesting and creative movements with her hands and body. Aubree uses the signs for “more” and “please” and knows the meaning of many others, especially “SIT!” She was so hyper in church today!