Nobody wanted the break to be over. We just played and had the best time. Telestrations has been the hit game so far. We played twice on Christmas Day and laughed so hard!! The game is basically like the telephone game, where you whisper something to the person next to you and it goes around the circle and you see what you end up with. In this game instead of whispering, you alternate between drawing a word and guessing what was drawn by the person next to you. We actually took pictures of two of the drawings, but you have to look at the progression going down, not left to right. On the left is one word, and on the right is another.
You won't laugh nearly as hard as we did - it was one of those things where you had to be there, but I tell you, when we saw Bruce reveal that he had written "Fun", we laughed until we were crying. Fun? How is Josh supposed to draw "Fun"?? And when Jesse put "Ugly Man", there were more tears going down faces.
We have gone to the late church schedule. Hallelujah! Since we don't get to sleep in on Saturdays a good part of the year (because of soccer games), I love sleeping in on Sunday. One of life's little luxuries that I am grateful for.
Josh is still looking for work. He has applied at a lot of places, but nothing has come up yet. He will keep looking!
Joseph gave a great talk in Church today on Faith. He used a lot of material from True to the Faith, Preach My Gospel, the scriptures and conference talks. He spent about 5 hours researching material and another five hours putting it together for the talk. He said he only included about 1/2 of what he had written down, and even at that his talk was still 12 minutes long. The counselor in the bishopric had to tap on his leg to tell him to stop. :) I told him afterward to not give Joseph 3 minutes. He's got to have more time than that!
Jesse made the commitment to learn Jeux d'eau (by Ravel) for Festival in about 6 weeks. She has learned 7 out of 13 pages. This is the hardest piece she has learned yet by far. She knows the first 7 pages really well, but they are not a tempo yet. A tempo is an eighth note equals 144 bpm, and there are 32nd notes all over the song. Craziness!! I love hearing her playing this song.
Mary had to do a project for science class in which they had to model an element, and her group is "Neon". She made a vest out of purple felt. She did it by making her own pattern from butcher paper and sewed it herself! I was really proud of her.
Peter has been playing the Wii like crazy. So has Bruce. I won't make any more comment on that. Ha ha Peter has made a goal to read the Book of Mormon this year. Yeah!
Libby surprised me this week. I was getting her piano pieces ready for Festival. I made a guess at what level she was on and played through some of the songs and thought that they would be challenging, but she could do it. When I played them for her, she listened and then sat down and played through one of them. She learned the whole song in about 10 minutes, playing it all the way through, a tempo, no problems. Wow! Needless to say, I went back to the store and picked a book that was at the next level for her. Festival songs are not supposed to be terribly hard, but if you can sight read them and play them in ten minutes, that's too easy! She's only eight, but she's really moving along in piano.
Libby also performed at halftime for the boys basketball game on Friday. She did her Gymnastics routine. She got lots of compliments afterward because she did so well!
I did 3 Raindrops this week within a twenty-seven hour period! In case you haven't heard of the Raindrop Technique, it's a method of applying essential oils to the feet and to the back, incorporating massage and reflexology techniques. One lady I work with has had wonderful results with the Raindrop. She gets one every two weeks. I incorporate the oils that come up on the Compass for her, and she takes NingXia Red Juice on a regular basis. (Contact me if you want to know more NingXia - I have a good website for it, but it has my full name on it, so I don't want to give it out on this public blog.) It has been a tremendous blessing for me to be an instrument in the hand of the Lord in bringing some healing to her life.
A few months ago, at Bruce's work, they announced that they wanted to reduce the on-site workforce by 20%. Bruce promptly signed up for it and got it approved. At the end of last year he cleaned out his cubicle, and now works completely from home. This makes sense, since his team is all in Vancouver and Israel. If you wonder if globalization has taken place, let that be an indicator. So we can live on our 2 1/2 acres, have our little farm here in Idaho and be close to great outdoor recreation and beautiful rural surroundings while Bruce works from his office in our home with Israelis in Tel Aviv. It's a beautiful life.
