Alienor was excited! She can't wait to have some time to really sit down and practice. She loves playing the piano and has enough talent that she should go far - with lots of practice, of course. She played the right hand of 'We Thank Thee O God for a Prophet' as we sang during FHE tonight. We'll have to buy her a full sized hymnal. For right now, she'll have to learn all the Primary songs because all I have is a nice Children's songbook.
Alienor slept in spongey curlers so she could have curly hair for her birthday. She likes how it bounces when she walks.
Alienor needed a warm scarf, so she got one! She'll get the rest of her presents on Saturday.
Margot couldn't stay away from the cake. Funny how when it's their birthday the kids want everything for themselves, all the presents etc. but they can't seem to leave the others alone when it's THEIR birthday.
This is Alienor talking to Gramma Cass on the phone.
She was admitted on a Friday evening. Come Monday morning we found out that there was a 'craft' room with lots of games and crafts to do. So we spent Monday and Tuesday crafting.
Margot made a mask with lots of bits of felt.
The dumbest thing about the hospital stay was that they put the IV in her RIGHT hand so once she was feeling better - by Sat. night/Sun. morning - she was 'handicapped' with her right hand all bandaged up. I will definitely speak up next time.
Margot wanted me to show the little toilets they had so we took a picture - she thought it was SO funny to be taking a picture with the toilet. We were in the children's wing. Well, come to think of it, it's a children's hospital so the ER is for kids, everything is for kids.
I hope everyone is doing well. Have a great weekend! Jocelyn
I thought we would all like to see a better picture of Jeff and Whitney so I put the little picture in photoshop lightened and sharpened the image and vola! You can actually see how cute she is and how cute but scruffy Jeff is---much better I think. I agree none of you are dead but we all are very busy----but that is no excuse for not adding your info every now and again. Thanks Jeff and Jocelyn.
3-The girl.
Wow, I put it in a list and it actually doesn't sound like I'm doing very much. Well, I still feel like it's a lot. This past week I spent probably 20 hours preparing a YW/YM combined activity for Friday night - it was a murder mystery dinner party. Then this morning I was supposed to give a talk in sacrament meeting - as well as the nursery lesson and YW lesson. Well, I had been so busy during the week that I hadn't prepared anything for it. And Saturday night I ended up falling asleep on the couch around 8 so I gave up and went to bed early. This morning I prepared a quick talk, obviously not one of my best, and we went to church. I winged my talk and it didn't turn out too bad. Then it turned out that all 4 of my YW were absent! So Heavenly Father sent me a tiny miracle to get me through the rest of Sunday!! YW was the ball I was about to drop but which vanished before it hit the ground. Thank Heaven for small miracles.
So what is everyone else juggling? Although I love to see what everyone is doing and am glad to hear about your day to day activities, I'd love even more to find out what you THINK about what you're doing. I always want to write about the things I think about but then I think it's too personal and nobody would want to read it. I'd probably sound like a coock - that's coooooock, don't know how it's spelled! Well, maybe I'll start writing stuff anyway and if you want you can throw tomatoes at me - if you can throw that far!!!
Have a great Sunday. Let's see if I have any pictures to post.
This is Christmas Eve dinner at Patrice's cousin's house.
This is our new family tradition- the kids decorate the Christmas tree because Mom doesn't like to have to do it. They had a ball. They used decorations plus odds and ends of ribbon and anything else they could find that was 'pretty.'
Opening presents on the 'veranda' which is enclosed but not heated like the house so it's kind of 'outdoors' still.
Yes, I love the frosted look. This is looking out our kitchen window to the northwest.
OK, I've gotta get going... BYC in half an hour!
Love you all, Jocelyn
I was a leader (with 3 other adults) over one of 6 groups of youth. This was my group in front of the temple after our baptism session.
I just love the frosted tree look.
This was all the youth and a few leaders, taken from a second story window.
Here are some of the youth from our stake. We went on a night walk our first night and had these huge 'candles' to hold. It was pretty but I was worried about someone's hair catching fire!
The night walk, leaving the 'conference center'.
I chose to go snow shoeing on one of the afternoons. We took a ski lift to the top of the mountain and then hiked down. It was totally fun! And it was cool to be so far away from 'life'. It felt as if we were miles and miles away from anywhere. In the foreground is my friend Christine from our stake. We met at girls camp this summer and met up again at youth conference. It was fun to have someone to 'hang around' with.
I took this looking down on the lake. You can't really tell it's a lake from this distance. Beyond the green trees, and before the 'blue' trees is the lake. It was really big and totally frozen. One of the activities was ice skating on the lake. I even saw a horse drawn carriage/sleigh on the lake. During our night walk we walked across it which was a little spooky because we hadn't really seen it up close during the day so most of us were a little nervous. It was actually the first time I'd ever been on a frozen lake before. It was cool.
Each group of youth went to the Zollikofen Swiss temple once during the conference. It was about an hour away from where we were staying. I like the trees when they are 'frosted' so I thought this was a pretty picture with the partially frosted pine next to the temple.
