Valentine's Day

We celebrated yesterday, but here are some highlights:

Nothing says "I love you" like sharing your breakfast in bed.

Watching the BYU women's basketball game. Dash made it on the jumbo-tron three times!

I did a scavenger hunt for Matt based on this Mission Valentine post. I changed all of the missions to include Dash in some way. I also gave Matt the first Toy Story on DVD, which we watched later that evening.

We enjoyed getting Valentines from family members!

And, of course, we had Cherry Yum-Yum
(graham cracker crust, cherry pie filling, and a cream cheese whipped topping).

Rhetorically,
Rebekah

Dear Dash: Thirteen Months

Dear Dash,

Congratulations! You're one month older!

You LOVE to clap

And read books BY YOURSELF

Shredding tissues is a new favorite

You've joined us eating at the table!

You've already developed the habit of putting your feet up.

We still have fun going on walks!

Playdates are a must these days

You had your third haircut with clippers today!

You are walking 80% of the time these days. It's so cute to see you toddle around. You have figured out how to shut doors, but don't quite have the coordination to turn the knobs to open them again. You are finally drinking out of sippy cups. Graham crackers are your new favorite snack. You hate cold foods. You are getting so close to talking!

Rhetorically,
Rebekah

Food Storage February

This is a follow-up post from my Provident Living post in 2014. As Matt and I have built our food storage, we realized that the handy-dandy sheet we used wasn't as awesome as we thought, mainly because we don't ever use half the stuff we bought (flour, yeast, powdered milk, etc). So now we have pounds and pounds of stuff that's going to expire shortly.

So, I've decided that February will be food storage month. I'm going to make bread from scratch! I'm going to try new recipes that actually use tomato soup or cream of mushroom soup! We won't be eating through everything, but hopefully we can make a dent in our storage before it's too late. Then we'll be building up a whole different food storage based on things we actually eat on a regular basis.

I started out on Sunday by making cinnamon rolls from scratch for the very first time, and they actually turned out okay! Not perfect yet, though, so I'm going to have to give it another go. Then maybe I'll post the revised recipe.

If you have any good bread recipes or ideas on how to use up 5 pounds of peanut butter, let me know.

Rhetorically,
Rebekah

The Living Christ

We finally finished memorizing "The Living Christ." It's taken months and months, since we only did a line a week. But we've learned more ways to remember Christ daily and truly feel like this document was inspired.

Rhetorically,
Rebekah

A Christmas Carol

Matt and I read "A Christmas Carol" for the first time over the holidays. There was so much detail in "A Christmas Carol" that never comes out in any of the movie renditions I've seen. I realize I shouldn't be too shocked by this, but I figured it was such a short book they would be able to fit in all of the details. Like how the ghosts were really good about using Scrooge's own words against him, or how awesome his nephew is, or how people would have robbed his grave in the future. Or that there's other quotes besides "God bless us every one!" For example: 

“There is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humor.”

“Merry Christmas! What right have you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry? You’re poor enough.” “Come, then,” returned the nephew gaily. “What right have you to be dismal? What reason have you to be morose? You’re rich enough.”

“Darkness was cheap, and Scrooge liked it.”

This was fitting since we finished the book weeks after Christmas.

What a great lesson to teach to children!

Rhetorically,
Rebekah

Family History Guess Who

My latest project has been creating a Guess Who game using my family members and ancestors. I hope as my family plays the game that we can be inspired to learn more about each person.

For those of you who would like to do something similar, I have the following suggestions:
-Get color photos of all of the family members you want to sketch (or you will spend most of your time waiting to find out the hair/eye color of family members for whom you only have black and white photos.)
-Figure out the dimensions of your guess who game before sketching (I didn't, so I had to scan and then re-size all of my sketches to fit.)
-Sketch in pre-drawn boxes (they they will be ready to cut right away!)
-Depending on your preference, you may want to copy your black and white sketches first and then manually add color (I colored mine before copying them, and the peach tone I used for everyone's skin didn't show up. However, I do think that the printed versions looked more professional than the colored pencil versions.)

Rhetorically,
Rebekah

Dear Dash: Twelve Months

Dear Dash,

We had a great celebration for your birthday! You loved all of the attention.

In honor of the Winston-Salem Dash, I did baseball themed cupcakes and a batter bowl smash cake. 

You ended up pushing the entire cake off of your tray, so we gave you a smaller piece to munch on instead. 

It's crazy to think how much you've grown over the past year!

I'm kind of glad this is the last time I'm doing monthly pictures because it's so hard to get you to stay still.

It's been a busy month for you! You celebrated your first Christmas, caught another cold, and took your first steps. You can climb our stairs in 30 seconds flat, and have started to figure out how to climb down them safely. You are a social laugher and social cougher. You play most with your musical toys, although you will push anything around on the floor (paper, boxes, cans, etc). You still think the vacuum is the coolest invention. You love to turn pages of books. You sneakily gnaw on the corners of our games or the corner of the bottom stair.  You will let us spoon feed you almost anything if you are distracted.

Rhetorically,
Rebekah