Paper dolls

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This was our art project for the other day.

My friend posted these cute paper dolls on her blog, so the Ant Bug and I gave it a try. She asked me to do the cutting, but she did the gluing and the decorating. I love the lopsided eyes and smiles. You can make your own using this pattern.

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The Ant Bug made the following comment while playing with dolls in her bedroom:

“Mom, it’s great having you in our family.”

Oh, how I love my family!

To the Mothers in Zion: Have Weekly Home Evenings

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This is part five of my ongoing feature of President Benson’s address to mothers.

Have Weekly Home Evenings. Fifth, take time to have a meaningful weekly home evening. With your husband presiding, participate in a spiritual and an uplifting home evening each week. Have your children actively involved. Teach them correct principles. Make this one of your great family traditions. Remember the marvelous promise made by President Joseph F. Smith when home evenings were first introduced to the Church: “If the Saints obey this counsel, we promise that great blessings will result. Love at home and obedience to parents will increase. Faith will be developed in the hearts of the youth of Israel, and they will gain power to combat the evil influence and temptations which beset them” (in James R. Clark, comp., Messages of the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 6 vols. [1965–75], 4:339). This wonderful promise is still in effect today.

Ezra Taft Benson, To the Mothers in Zion, address given at a fireside for parents, 22 February 1987.

General Conference Activity Packets

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Our family is enjoying General Conference this weekend. What a blessing it is to be able to hear the inspired words of a living prophet and living apostles.

To keep things a little more calm and focused on Conference and things of the Spirit, I put together a packet of activities for the Ant Bug to do during the sessions. Thanks to Sugardoodle.net, I had a wealth of resources available to select from.


Sugardoodle.net is the LDS woman’s dream website (especially if you have children or a calling in the Primary or Nursery or Young Women or Enrichment Committee or…). Basically it is an online file folder of any kind of helpful LDS resource you can imagine, with countless contributors. You can find me visiting the site every few days.

If you’re looking for General Conference packets and resources to use with your children, I saw somewhere around 9 or 10 different links posted in the last two weeks. Just start working your way down the list on the first page and you’ll find them.

My favorites are the Apostle Cards, and the General Conference Coloring Book. The Ultimate General Conference Packet looks excellent also, but some of the activities are a little beyond the reach of my nearly four year old. But the Friend Coloring Book will be making an appearance in our home on a Sabbath day soon to come.

To all the wonderful contributors on Sugardoodle.net, thanks so much for sharing your work and ideas with us!

Looking for a good book?

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I love to read books with my children. Our bedtime routine always includes at least one story, sometimes three. Some of our recent book favorites I have shared here. We make regular trips to the library (every 1-2 weeks), and I am constantly on the lookout for great new books to share with my daughters.

One of the tools I have been using lately to find good books is the Read Aloud America Book List. The list makes it easy to find great books appropriate at every age level. One recommendation we enjoyed was Giraffes Can’t Dance, by Giles Andreae.

You can also find some great reads among the Caldecott Medal Winners and Honor Books. An oldie but goodie is Make Way for Ducklings, by Robert McCloskey. It won the award in 1942, and is a favorite on our library check out list.

So, what childrens books are you reading?

To the Mothers in Zion: Pray with Your Children

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This is part four of my ongoing feature of President Benson’s address to mothers.

Pray with Your Children. Fourth, take time to pray with your children. Family prayers, under the direction of the father, should be held morning and night. Have your children feel of your faith as you call down the blessings of heaven upon them. Paraphrasing the words of James, “The … fervent prayer of a righteous [mother] availeth much” (James 5:16). Have your children participate in family and personal prayers, and rejoice in their sweet utterances to their Father in Heaven.

Ezra Taft Benson, To the Mothers in Zion, address given at a fireside for parents, 22 February 1987.

Hair, Hair, Hair

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One of my favorite blogs to visit is She Does Hair. Blackeyedsue has wonderful ideas for styling girls hair. I’ve been having fun in the last few months experimenting with the Ant Bug’s hair.

The first one we tried was the Puffy Braid.


One of our favorite styles is Smocking. Here is one variation that we tried.



Last Sunday we went with the Loop-de-loop. Sorry about the less than great pictures, but that’s what we have.


This morning before Joy School we had a few extra minutes for hair, so the Ant Bug ended up with Lattice Ponytails. Unfortunately, she ran out the door before I took a picture, so I’ll try to get one this afternoon and post it later.

Of course, the B always looks adorable with her Antennae Style bug ponytails.

Luckily, the Ant Bug is usually pretty patient with my styling endeavors. She does have her days of simple one or two ponytails on top, or just down with a clip. Next up I’m going to start experimenting with Knots.

To the Mothers in Zion: Read to Your Children

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This is part three of my ongoing feature of President Benson’s address to mothers.

“Read to Your Children. Third, mothers, take time to read to your children. Starting from the cradle, read to your sons and daughters. Remember what the poet said:

You may have tangible wealth untold;
Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold.
Richer than I you can never be—
I had a mother who read to me.
(Strickland Gillilan, “The Reading Mother.”)

You will plant a love for good literature and a real love for the scriptures if you will read to your children regularly.”

Ezra Taft Benson, To the Mothers in Zion, address given at a fireside for parents, 22 February 1987.

To the Mothers in Zion: Be a Real Friend

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This is part two of my ongoing feature of President Benson’s address to mothers.

“Be a Real Friend. Second, mothers, take time to be a real friend to your children. Listen to your children, really listen. Talk with them, laugh and joke with them, sing with them, play with them, cry with them, hug them, honestly praise them. Yes, regularly spend unrushed one-on-one time with each child. Be a real friend to your children.”

Ezra Taft Benson, To the Mothers in Zion, address given at a fireside for parents, 22 February 1987.

I have to admit that I really love Mondays.

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It’s true.

In the last few months as we have adjusted to the sweet addition to our family, my life has fallen into a nice rhythm where Monday’s usually turn out great. Here’s why:

Monday is my “recover from the weekend and put the house back in order and clean the house as much as possible” day. I don’t know about you, but after a Saturday and a Sunday where we break from our daily routine, my house is usually a disaster that needs some serious recovery. To ensure this recovery, I plan to stay home on Monday. Wherever possible I avoid scheduling appointments or play dates or any place I have to be.

Monday is my laundry day. I don’t have a set day for washing whites or colors (I just wash them as needed), but I always know that on Mondays I am washing sheets and towels and dishrags–basically all of my linens. I get started right after breakfast. I wash the sheets first so I can get them back on the beds before the day is too late. I always just put the same set of sheets back on the beds, because I detest folding fitted sheets (mine always end up in an awkward, lumpy, somewhat resemblance of a square).

I’m not one of those women who clean house after the children are in bed, minimizing interruptions. Minimizing interruptions might would be nice, but kid sleep time equals my time, and I don’t want to spend it cleaning. The one exception to this is mopping my tile floor–I don’t try to do that with a crawling baby in the room, since the poor B slips and slides all over the wet floor. Consequently, I clean during the daytime and the Ant Bug cleans with me. Or, she dances and sings and runs circles around me while I clean. But that is fine with me. For some reason, Monday’s are magical because her patience for cleaning on that day is much greater than any other day of the week. Maybe it’s because she loves routine as much as I do and is happy to be at home and doing normal things after our sometimes irregular weekend?

The B usually does her part by napping extra long after a fatiguing Sunday at church with missed naps. Today she napped a total of over three and a half hours!

So what did we get done today? 2 loads of laundry, vacuumed downstairs and up, made two loaves of Friendship bread, put toys and clothes and papers in their place, and made a quick trip to the store. The Ant Bug and I even had time to do some building with Jenga blocks and made some paper farm tools for the “pretend Farmer Brown and Mrs. Farmer Brown”. She was very diligent in feeding and watering the pretend cow and horse and pig and duck.

The girls and I usually do end up leaving the house at some point, usually just a quick trip to the store or a walk around the neighborhood, because who likes to be cooped up inside all day?

And then after dinner we spend time as a family in Family Home Evening. With young children, our lessons are pretty brief. Tonight we used this activity from The Friend, and were surprised at how many animals are mentioned in the Book of Mormon.

At the end of the day, I curl up in my comfy bed with clean smelling sheets. That’s where I’m headed right now.

Happy Monday to you.

To the Mothers in Zion: Be at the Crossroads

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In 1987, President Benson gave a wonderful address entitled To the Mothers in Zion. In his talk he offers ten ways that mothers may spend effective time with their children. I think this talk is so good that I’m tempted to include the whole talk on this blog.

But rather than throwing you the entire talk at once, I will be offering it a snippet at a time. I don’t know about you, but I know I learn better one step at a time. So for the next little while, I will be featuring the wise words of President Benson. Here is the first installment:

“Mothers in Zion, your God-given roles are so vital to your own exaltation and to the salvation and exaltation of your family. A child needs a mother more than all the things money can buy. Spending time with your children is the greatest gift of all.

“With love in my heart for the mothers in Zion, I would now like to suggest ten specific ways our mothers may spend effective time with their children.

“Be at the Crossroads. First, take time to always be at the crossroads when your children are either coming or going—when they leave and return from school, when they leave and return from dates, when they bring friends home. Be there at the crossroads whether your children are six or sixteen. In Proverbs we read, “A child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame” (Proverbs 29:15). Among the greatest concerns in our society are the millions of latchkey children who come home daily to empty houses, unsupervised by working parents.”

Ezra Taft Benson, To the Mothers in Zion, address given at a fireside for parents, 22 February 1987.