Sweet girls

Aahh, it's so nice to have such sweet little girls. Here's a few things I want to remember from lately. Emily has recently been scared of nightmares, monsters and fires (that's another story). For Christmas, I bought her a Tinkerbell lamp and really talked it up that it's a monster repellent. That worked for awhile, until we realized what a battery-hog it was and she'd wake up scared when it burned out. Now we've been trying to tell her that when the light goes off, it's actually a good thing because that means there's no monsters to repel! Don't know if she buys that. What's been really sweet though, is her prayers. I told her how the Holy Ghost is a comforter and can help her not be scared. So now every night she prays, "Please bless that the Holy Ghost will comfort me and there will be no monsters, nightmares, or fires." It's really sweet. And occasionally she'll wake up and say, "Mom, the Holy Ghost comforted me last night and I wasn't scared!!"

The whole scared of fire thing came about a while ago when I was telling Steve how ugly the smoke detector was in the girls' room. He decided to test it, which promptly broke it. So he ended up having to turn the power off to all of them for the night because they kept going off. Anyway, it frightened Emily. But as you all know, she takes things in stride...NOT! So, I was teaching her about smoke alarms and how they are actually trying to help us, not scare us. We talked about what we do if it ever does go off for real. Then a couple of days later, I decided to bake some french fries. They take forever to bake. When I checked on them, some of the thinner ones had burned and the smoke detector went off for a second. I think Emily thought the world had come to an end. She was scared to death and was crying her little eyes out. It took us awhile to calm her down. That prompted us to plan a FHE night doing fire drills - hopefully she'll be less frightened in the future!!

As for Ella, she's been a little Kim lately (which of course, I think is ADORABLE!) She got 5 new baby dolls for Christmas, plus she has 2 old ones she really likes. She takes care of those babies like nothing else! She makes sure they are all on her bed when she's sleeping and choses one every night to wrap her arm around and snuggle with. Then when she wakes up, she somehow manages to gather them all in her arms and get them out of bed with her. She also remembers which hat or headband goes with which doll. She's learned how to diaper them after a few very determined sessions. She loves her new doll furniture and loves to push her babies around in the stroller with a full diaper bag hung on each handle. Tonight, she very matter of factly informed me, "Dam-pa made this stroller me! Gramma too. Not daddy." (Dam-pa is her term of endearment for grandpa. I just chose to spell it nicely.)

I'm all primary-ed out today. We had our big Meet the Teacher breakfast today. They filled out their spotlight forms, made a class scrapbook page for the bishop's book, and cut out their handprint for the spotlight poster. The teachers got time to tell about themselves and get to know their new class. We made each child a wooden sign with vinyl letters, "I am a Child of God." That's our new theme for the year and I love it - it's so simple. I also spent all week getting new lists, forms, sign-ups, etc ready to update the teacher binders. I also had to make 50 CDs of the new year's music. Plus I had to make the new spotlight poster - which turned out nice - an Earth on a black posterboard with yellow words around it - I am a Child of God 2008. After the kids get spotlighted, they'll hang up the hand cutout they made today. It's nice because it's all done at the beginning of the year and the teachers don't have to remember to call the parents in advance and think of things to say. I also got all the Activity Day lists changed and held a meeting because we got all new leaders. Plus I have to teach this month, so it's been busy. I also went to a baptism this afternoon. I think Primary has it the hardest at the beginning of the year because EVERYTHING changes. The other auxiliaries mostly just change curriculum, that's it. I'm just VERY VERY grateful that I'm not the President!!