A House of God

   So, the girls and I have not been seeing quite eye to eye on a few things around the house lately, mainly chores.  They don’t seem to like doing them.  Truthfully I don’t like doing them either so we all put them off as long as possible and then, when it gets time to clean, they don’t understand why all of a sudden mom wants them to finally do their chores? That’s when we start having problems.  After lots of  timeouts, tears, and temper-tantrums I am finally ready to come out of my room and talk to them (just kidding J).

   I decided today that during our devotional we were going to talk about a few scriptures that dealt with cleaning. D&C 132:8 - “Behold, mine is a house of order, saith the Lord God, and not a house of confusion.” and D&C 88:119 - “Organize yourselves; prepare every needful thing; and establish a house, even a house of prayer, a house of fasting, a house of faith, a house of learning, a house of glory, a house of order, a house of God;”  We talked a lot about what those scriptures meant, what we had in our home and what we didn’t.  We also talked about all the things that we wanted in our home.  Then, we talked about Lehi’s vision.  Brian has a beautiful print of a painting of Lehi’s vision, so I had the girls bring it upstairs and we read it out of the scriptures and then talked about all the parts.  It was a really good devotional.  My favorite part was when Allison asked “Mom, how can you get lost in the mist if you are holding on to the Iron Rod?” I just looked at her and told her, “Sweetie, that’s the whole point! If you always hold on to the rod – you will never get lost!” She just smiled.

  In primary in our ward, they have introduced the ‘reverence jar’. It is a big glass jar that when the kids are being reverent, a member of the presidency will put cotton balls into.  If they are being irreverent, they will take cotton balls out.  When the jar gets filled – the kids get to have a popsicle party at the next primary activity.  (Awesome idea Dede!!) So I decided that we were going to copy the idea at our house – but it is going to be our ‘CTR Jar’ instead of a reverence jar and when it gets filled with cotton balls we will all go to a movie or do something fun as a family!  The girls and I bought the supplies yesterday and as part of our devotional activity, I wanted to make something cute to put on it.  I couldn’t find any cute sayings – so I decided that we should write a poem.  I really wanted the kids to write it, so I showed them how. 

• First – we made a list of the things we wanted to have in our poem. Here is our brainstorm list :  family, service, House of Order/God, Iron Rod, CTR, chores, home, everyday
• Second – Allison came up with the first line – Every day I’ll Choose The Right, but then she couldn’t come up with a rhyme for right – so we went to www.rhymezone.com and I typed in the word right.  It gave us all the words that rhyme with right, so I gave her the options and her and Chloe came up with a concept for the second line.  They had a little trouble with the cadence (they are only 6 & 7) but it was about serving their family with all their might.
• Third – we talked about how we wanted the poem to finish (I helped them with this part and kind of gave them the last line)
• Fourth – They found a rhyme on their own and wrote the third line and now we have a finished product on our CTR Jar!!!  We also submitted their poem to The Friend!!

   I am so proud of my girls!  AND their poem is pretty terrific if you ask me!  So – here is Allison & Chloe’s poem, and a picture of our CTR Jar!!

A HOUSE OF GOD (by Allison & Chloe Furse)

Each day I’m going to Choose The Right,

And serve my family with all my might!

I’ll hold on tightly to the Iron Rod,

To make our home a House of God!

Airman of the Year Banquet

Who doesn’t love getting dressed up and going out on the town? I don’t know anyone.

The Air Force has an awards banquet each year for outstanding Airman. Brian and I first went back in 2002 when Brian was the Outstanding Airman of the Year for the 419^th Communications Squadron. Oh yeah, did I mention – Brian has to dress up in his dress uniform?? That is definitely the BEST part! It was fun to dress up in a formal dress and have a nice dinner and know that Brian did a good job, but it was slightly uncomfortable since I was 5 months pregnant with Chloe. We didn’t go again until last year when Brian was chosen as one of the 2 emcee’s for the event. Of course I was going to go and see him in action! Mom went with us and sat with me while Brian was up ‘doing his thing’. It was pretty fun, but I really didn’t get to dress up, since Hannah was only 2 ½ months old and I barely fit into anything, and I had to take a nursing baby with us, but it was still fun.

Well, this year we had the opportunity to go, just for fun! Just to dress up and go – with no babies and not being pregnant! I was talking to one of my best friends, Alicia, and she was talking about how long it has been since she has gotten dressed up fancy and gone out. So, we invited her to go on a ‘date’ with us! We often joke about dating with Alicia, since she is now single (almost officially) and we live in Eagle Mountain – so Brian must be looking for another wife right? LOL!!! Anyways, Brian was more than willing to take 2 beautiful women out to dinner!

I had to find something to wear, so I searched and searched. One of my other best friends, Mariah, went shopping with me (note to self – do not take 10 kids to the mall when mom needs to try on dresses!) and we went dress hunting. We found the prettiest dress and jacket at Macy’s. I just fell in love with it! It turns out that everyone fell in love with it. After I bought it, everyone wanted to try it on – now, we are definitely NOT the same size or body type, but it seems to fit all of us AND it looks good on all of us too! It seems as though we have formed the ‘sisterhood of the traveling dress!’ :) Now if they can just find somewhere fancy to wear it to!

I wish that I could say how much fun I had getting ready, but I was pretty stressed – my hair did not want to co-operate and I ended up having to re-shower and re-wash it! Then I was running late and had to do my makeup in the car! Thank goodness Alicia was driving so I didn’t have to do makeup while driving. We got to Hill Air Force Base, picked up Brian and continued up to the Ogden Eccles Events Center where the banquet was being held.

The banquet was nice but the fun definitely started after dinner when we went to get our pictures taken. Each year they have a professional photographer there to take pictures – just like your prom pictures, they come in a little black photo frame and everything. They always do 2 poses, so this year we decided that for one of the poses, we would have Alicia in the picture. Alicia was protesting, but finally she came over. I asked that it be more of a cute pose – so the photographer put Brian in the middle sitting down and Alicia and I were placed on either side kind of hanging on his shoulders. You should have seen his face! His smile was so big! On the way back inside, he slung his arms over both of our shoulders and said, “Ah come on, I have to do this at least once!” We walked in with our arms around his waist and his arms around our shoulders. I think he thought he looked like the luckiest man alive! :) Again he had that smile that looked like his face was going to explode!

The rest of the night was full of laughter. We went out for pie at Marie Calendars and had some great conversation and good jokes. We took pictures with our cell phones and made stupid jokes. It was so much fun! I definitely think that we all need some fancy dates more often!

Alicia, Brian & Me

Brian & I

Allison Performs at Halftime!

So for most people that know Allison, they know that she loves to dance. She has been dancing since she was 5 and she did gymnastics for a year before that. She has always wanted to be a ballerina. She even has her own blog about it! (allisonsgottadance.blogspot.com)

Last year, she convinced me that she should try out for the competition team at her dance studio. I don’t know what I thought would happen, but I certainly didn’t think that my baby girl would turn into a teenager!

She tried out and ended up making it on to a more advanced team than we had thought. The team that she is on now is the team that last year won a 6 foot trophy and numerous 1^st place trophies. In fact, they did so well last year, that they have to move up a division this year! The team is called the Diamonds.

I love watching her dance! She has a love for performing. She always wants to be the center of attention. J She has a talent for dancing. She is usually always on beat (even if that means she doesn’t match the other dancers ;) )

On Friday, the Diamonds performed at Rockwell High School’s Basketball halftime. It got off to kind of a rocky start, not the performance, but the basketball game. The Diamonds were performing at the boy’s basketball game but the girl’s game was playing first. We were told that the girl’s game would start at 3 pm and then the boy’s game would start at 5 pm and we would be performing at 5:30ish. The girl’s game apparently didn’t get started until around 4 and then went long. The game didn’t finish until 6! The boy’s game didn’t start until almost 6:20 and we didn’t end up performing until almost 7pm!

We had been told to show up at the high school at 5 pm ready to go (of course there was no way Misty – Allison’s coach – would have known what was going on with the games) so Mom and I had packed up all 5 girls and had shown up at 5pm at the school. AND 2 of my girlfriends Mariah and Alicia had brought their kids, Allison’s friends, to see Allison perform! There were 12 friends + my 4 kids just to see Allison! (Those are all kids – there were 4 of us Adults there tooJ) Plus all of the other people there to see the other dancers. It was a little crazy. The Diamonds did a few practices for us – kind of a ‘private show’ which was nice because Alicia and Mariah had to leave before the actual performance since everything was running so late.

When it was finally time to perform, they did such a good job! It was their first performance of this dance, the first time they had ever done it outside of the studio and the first time in front of anyone. I was so proud of Allison!

Here are a few pictures, and at the end is the video of the dance. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

Allison stretching before the big performance!

Misty telling the girls to get ready.

Our ‘Private Show’ or dress rehearsal – which ever you prefer :)

Allison’s Friends that came to see her – Becca, Brayden, Lilliah, Royce, Zeke, Noah, Brooklyn, Danni, Gabe, Savannah, Chloe, & Catie (Mary, Hannah, Mazie, & Cole were playing somewhere else)