30 December 2012

Here's a photo of our bulletin board at the end of our Christmas advent.  We read scriptures and hung pictures of witnesses of Christ's birth.  Over a third of the pictures were from the Book of Mormon-- a reminder of the strong testimony the Book of Mormon bears of Jesus Christ.

Becky told Sofi she could go to see the movie Les Miserables if she read the book first.  The unabridged translation she got from the library was 1200 pages long.  She spent a large part of this week reading.  Sofi slogged through the first 100 pages, finally got into the book after about 400 pages, fell in love with the book after 1000 pages and cried for half an hour after she finished the book.  

Here are Sofi and Joey at the movies.  Brandan and Becky were a little jealous of how well Sofi knew the story, including the backstories of all the minor characters.  We should have assigned ourselves to read the book, too.  Maybe we'll try to finish the book by the end of 2013.  We were happy to piggyback on her accomplishment to see the movie, though-- it was a powerful story of redemption.

Saturday was Helen's 8th birthday.  We've had a lot of snow in the mountains the past 2 weeks and it was a great day for sledding.  A giant snowman greeted us at the snow park.

Gib loved this short run-- he probably slid down it 30 times, arms outstretched like an airplane, big belly laughs all the way down.

The other kids liked going down the biggest hill without sleds.  It was steep enough that they could slide down in their snow pants.  This is a photo of Helen and Sofi going down together.

Here are Helen and Gibson playing in a snow fort.

Here is Abe with a giant snowball.

Many families at the snow park had started fires.  The sunlight made pretty patterns as it filtered through the trees and smoke.

After we got home from sledding, Becky and Helen hurried over to the church to help at a friend's wedding reception.  We served cake and bussed tables.  Helen said, "This is so much fun!" about 50 times.  It reminded Becky of one of her favorite songs, "When We're Helping We're Happy."

When we got home, Abe was just about finished with the 1000 piece puzzle he's been working on for a couple of weeks.  The puzzle was too big for our card table so we put a large piece of cardboard on the table so the puzzle would fit.

Helen postponed her own birthday celebration to help at the wedding.  We had birthday cake before bedtime.  Happy birthday to our sweet, smart Helen.  Helen has a strong sense of who she is, what she likes and what she wants to do.  She's looking forward to getting baptized on February 2.