Sunday

Yesterday I did a lot of hard work in the yard and house and was extremely exhausted last night. My husband asked if I wanted to eat an orange with him at about 11:30PM and I politely declined and said, "I'm going to bed." I think I literally fell asleep when my head hit the pillow. I thought only men did that.

It was painful to get up at 6:45 this morning, so we snoozed through two 7 minute snooze cycles. I was extremely tired after church, and really wanted to take a nap, but during my cleaning of the cupboards the other day I found some pretty Jello molds, that I bought at a garage sale about 10 years ago, that I wanted to try.  While Daddy played chess with the older kids, I made Jello with Jason. I love that little kids are so easily pleased when you give them a job to stir sugar and water.

We are going to have the Jello tomorrow for Family Home Evening. 

After I saw this picture, I realized my shirt totally looks like a maternity shirt. 

(Note to self: Do not wear maternity style shirts when you are not pregnant. That is how rumors are started. Although it would be totally logical to think I was pregnant since George is 10 months already, I don't need anybody to ask me when the due date is and have to tell them that I'm not pregnant. Awkward.)

The chess players. It looks like Daddy could use a nap too. Emily won the game. For real.

I also had seven very brown bananas, so we decided to make banana bread too. I had two very helpful "mushers."

Wendy helped beat. Having four small children begging, "I want to beat it!" made me break out in song to the Go Go's "We Got the Beat." Jason had the privilege of cracking an egg into the the creamed butter and sugar. I failed to realize that you need to tell a four year old NOT to lick the egg white off his fingers.  I also learned that egg yolk actually cleans quite nicely off kids' suit pants.

George really looks up to his older brothers.

(He made that mess in the background.)

Rachel was the flour dumper. She did a good job.

Of course Bradley cannot walk away from any kitchen event without a messy piece of clothing. At least he changed out of his suit when he got home from church.

I forgot to take a picture of the finished products.  The loaves were beautiful and we nearly finished both of them at dinner. (The banana bread actually was our dinner.) We did a test with one loaf made with butter and one with margarine.  There wasn't a huge difference in taste, but I think the butter was better.

Our lesson in church today was about Charity, or the pure love of Christ and the greatest of all virtues.  We discussed the story of the Good Samaritan. Tonight we were good Samaritans and brought our neighbor two slices of fresh banana bread because I'm sure if Jesus baked banana bread, he would share it with his neighbor or 5000 of his neighbors. Charity is awesome because as the scriptures say, "Charity never faileth," (1 Cor 13:8), which basically means that you will never go wrong when doing good or helping someone. Sometimes a charitable deed might be as simple as smiling at a grumpy looking person, or posting a :) on somebody's Facebook wall. It doesn't have to be complicated or as heroic as saving a dying person on the side of the road. Just something very Christ-like. In addition to bringing our neighbor banana bread, it was a joyful experience to make Jello and bake with my kids. It was more fun than taking a nap.

That's about all for today. Rachel is talking more. Today she brought me a broken toy and said, "Nee buy mo one," which translates to "We need to buy another one," for those of you who don't speak toddler.

She also says very clearly, "My do it myself!" She's obviously been working on that one a lot with how clear she annunciates it, mostly when it comes to buttering a slice of bread or putting on Carmex.

HaPpY SpRiNg!!