This is what four my boys like to do in their spare time... I have another younger son who likes to accompany them on the piano. We have two on violin, one on viola and one on cello.
Practicing takes a lot of time and effort, on both the child and the parent! But the results are so rewarding! I love that my kids are to the point where they find different music and start playing together. I love to sit back and listen.
It's one of those moments in life that I absolutely love!
I love this time of year! All of the blossoms and warmer weather is something that I look forward to during the cold winter months. I love the smells of the flowers and the new foliage on the trees.
For those of you who keep up with our blog, you might know that I have five boys. So that means we do a lot of Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts! We have amazing Scout leaders here in El Paso and the boys earn so many awards. It's really impressive! Last month the Bears (the 9 year old boys) worked and completed their Photography Belt Loop. Their assignment was to take pictures and show them to the den. My son was so excited! He asked his Scout leaders if he could edit them in Photoshop as well. They told him he could and these are the pictures that he came up with. I did not take any of these pictures or edit them. These are all the works of a nine year old boy. I love how they just scream SPRING!
A couple of weeks ago, all of us sisters went to the Time Out for Women in Albuquerque, NM. I posted about it last week. We had so much fun! There are so many speakers that I absolutely loved, in fact, I loved them all! I just wanted to take the time to talk about Hilary Weeks and a project that she is doing right now called BillionClicks.org.
I think that this is such an excellent program that I shared it with my family for Family Home Evening Monday night. For those of you who don't know, every Monday night we gather together as a family and spend time together. We sing, have a lesson, activity, pray and always end with a treat! Anyways, my older kids knew that I had something special to share with them all week and they knew that it involved a clicker and they were so excited about it!
I shared this video with my family.
And then I explained that I have a clicker that each person will take for a day and will "click" their positive thoughts onto. We will then record our "clicks" onto BillionClicks.org. They were all so excited! The only problem is that I only had one clicker and they all wanted to go first. So we had to come up with a rotation schedule and these boys are really clicking away!
Next week at Family Home Evening we are going to discuss the difference that clicking made in our personal lives and the difference in our home this experiment makes. I really think that this was an inspired program that will aim our focus onto the positive things in life. There are so many distractions in life that can get us down and make us feel useless and worthless. But with all of the blessings and opportunities that come our way everyday, it's important to acknowledge and focus on the positive things.
~There are two little tricks you can use to see if you look best in warm or cool colors. You can look at the inside of your wrist and if your veins appear blue you are a "cool", if your veins appear green you are considered "warm". You can also hold something gold and something silver up to your skin, if the gold compliments your skin you are a warm and if the silver compliments you then you are a cool. This is not a strict rule, just a general guideline to help you find the right shade.
One of our brothers got married to a fantastic girl this past week! We all love Karlee and we are so glad that she is apart of our family! The wedding was beautiful and the reception was a whole lot of fun! My boys kept saying it was their favorite reception of all time!
Here is a picture of all us girls with Karlee. Isn't she so beautiful? She married our brother John. Larissa (on the left) married our brother James and is expecting their 2nd child in a few months! We are so glad that these two wonderful ladies are apart of our family! They add so much to our family!
Larissa, Brittany, Brooke, Karlee, Briana, and Bridget
Since we were all down for the wedding, we decided to snap a few pictures. My son, Caleb, took these pictures. He's becoming quite the photographer!
Yesterday I noticed some unusual stitching on my throw pillows that belong in our family room.
There were actually two of the pillow that had this stitching on it.
Hmmm... I thought that my sweet little boys are trying to be crafty.
They just love their mother so much that they are trying to be like
me...
And then I took a closer look...
This wasn't stitching from my boys!
It was from my husband!
I just had to laugh because while I was out of town this past weekend, my husband (who is an OB/GYN resident) was practicing his surgical knots on my pillows! Probably while watching some documentary. Haha! So I guess even doctors have to be a little crafty...
