Good Stuff

It's the end of another week and the rest of my family is in bed so I have a quiet moment to update our blog. So some good stuff from this week.



At the beginning of the week I was mailed 2 Family Fun magazines. (I order a subscription on-line so either I botched it up and ordered 2 or they sent me a free copy and I didn't need to order anything after all.) I didn't even remember the idea I had sent in that they wanted to publish so I turned to the page it was on and found this...



$100.00 for the 3 sentences in the pink box..."To get our kids to express written gratitude, we make thank-you note writing into a family night. The notes are much more fun to work on together. After we're finished, we play a game and have dessert."

Pretty simple I know. I remember it was about this time last year that I had done a family home evening for all our post-Christmas thank you note writing and we sat around the table with the thank you cards and each wrote a little something in them. Last year with my writing for children class I tried submitting various writing samples with no success. All of them had recieved rejection letters so who knew that our simple family home evening idea submitted on-line would be a "big idea" and actually get published after I'd given up trying. Another instance of a blessing for trying to live the gospel.

I don't have a picture of it but Taylor had to do a brochure on Japan for his History class with Mrs. Stearns this week, (his favorite teacher:). He worked hard on it and even used Google translator to translate his Haiku's into Japanese. Needless to say his hard work paid off and his teacher complimented him on his work in front of the class. He has stepped up his effort in her class and she has shown more willingness to praise him and offer encouragement. He came home saying that he's starting to respect her more and even like her some. It was thrilling to hear. That's what life is all about to take tough situations and try and make it better and learn what you can out of it. I was proud of Taylor.

This week Jacob finished his 3rd Harry Potter book for a book report. We have found that Reading charts work the best for Jacob. Here's what he's been working on for the last 3 weeks...



He passed his reading quiz and made a cereal box as his display for his book report. He named his fictional cereal Firebolt Fruities and has a boy with fire coming out of his mouth on the front of the box saying "Awesome".