Early Mornings

I never thought I'd be able to get up at 4:30 each morning and actually look forward to doing it but teaching seminary is such a joy and a delight, especially with the kids I have. They're so willing to do anything I ask them to do. I try to mix things up by having different types of activities each day and I appreciate that they rarely grumble or complain. Sometimes we do our work in the hall just for a change of scenery.

Our Mission Impossible activity.

Mission Complete!

There's always one...

Sitting under this tent with my kids, talking about the Savior and them sharing their testimonies, will forever remain one of my favorite seminary memories.

Fridays are always everyones' favorite - the breakfasts continue!

The kids wrote down a time when they chose to follow the Lord and we stuck them on our cool Nephite sword.

Drawing their own personal "tree of life" vision.

And more drawings, this time some doctrinal mastery. On the board are drawings of the prophesies contained in 1 Nephi. I LOVE their artwork!

The Restoration of the Gospel and the two different paths we can choose. My models did a good job!

One thing that I have really wanted to get rid of but the older kids won't let me is seminary bucks along with the seminary store at the end of each quarter. Ugh, I can't stand giving them "money" just for doing things like showing up on time and doing assignments, things they should just do. Anyway, I did drop it to just two seminary stores a year and I guess it's nice to see them excited about the goodies they can get.

In honor of the Olympics this year I decided to do our own seminary Olympics. I put the kids onto teams and they decided which Book of Mormon "country" they were from. And then, to prepare for our opening ceremonies, they then created a flag.

Introducing the Destroyerites from the land of Nephi (they even have a mascot) witht the motto "We will conquer";

the Jevannahites from "the land of Moron, enough said";

and the Femaleites from the land of Bountiful, the land of plenty.

 

The others weren't quite done with their flags when I took these pictures but everyone was super excited for our very first seminary Olympics!!

Some More Basketball

January 21st - we played Patterson Mill. Man, did our JV team put the hurt on them! Xander got some playing time and did a good job as always. He's really coming along. Two of his football coaches were there (they are sitting in the stands almost directly behind Xander in this picture) and they were super loud cheering him on.

I didn't get too many pictures because one of the lovely students I sub for just had to take a bunch of selfies with my phone.

And was still doing it by the time Xander joined me for the Varsity game!

The very next day we played against North County. We had heard they were tough! But, once again, our JV team rocked it!

As our team starts to take a pretty good lead, Xander gets in more often which just helps him improve his skills. We're all really enjoying the season!

A Special Visit

In January Mom and Dad came out for a visit. As always we're thrilled when we get to spend time with family. We all got to cheer on Xander in one of his basketball games, though he didn't get as much playing time as we would have liked.

Dad gave him some helpful pointers for his next game.

Torturing Dad with some Utah love, ha ha!

But the real reason for their visit happened on Sunday - on January 12th Xander was ordained to the office of priest. What a special event, especially when David, Xander, and Dad blessed the sacrament together. I will forever cherish that memory in my heart. Some of the wonderful men in Xander's life that have helped him on his journey so far - Mike Archbold, Rich Paul, Matt Brown, Xander, David, Dad, and Ken Mangum.

I am so grateful that Mom and Dad could be here!

Some other fun moments from our visit...Cleo took an interest in Mom one afternoon.

A tasty treat at our favorite ice cream spot!

And one more basketball game though Xander didn't play much in this one. Boo!

A New Year of Seminary

New year, new seminary students! The Stake decided to eliminate the Bel Air class and put them in my class so we added five new faces - Jack, Molly, Julia, Skyler, and Jessica. We have quite the big class now!

This year we'll be studying The Book of Mormon so one of our first activities was breaking down the organization of the book.

We are so grateful for the beautiful promise given by Mornoi at the end of The Book of Mormon. We truly can know for ourselves the truthfulness of this beautiful book of scripture.

I had the kids write down some personal goals regarding the study of The Book of Mormon...

and then carve them on their own gold plates. They turned out awesome! We hung them up in the room as a reminder.