Lately

Remember that new fancy cleaning schedule that was going to make sure everything in the house was cleaned once a week?  Well, it partially worked.  Monday morning is vacuuming.  And now, every Monday morning I vacuum.  Unfortunately, that was the only the day actually stuck.  But it's one more thing I'm regularly doing that I wasn't before.  At this rate, I might have the other 5 days in place by this time next year...

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The Beth Moore study of the book of James is coming to an end tomorrow.  I love these studies.  They are helping me bridge the gap between my love of reading commentaries on scripture and actually reading scripture.  I have a hard time studying the scriptures on my own, because I love to hear all the history and background about it.  That's why Beth Moore studies are awesome.  My next goal is to read through the Book of Mormon as many times as I can in a month.  (Okay, hopefully I can get through it even just once in a month.)  I heard a challenge a couple weeks ago about a young man being told by his father to read through the Book of Mormon as many times in a month as he could, and then to write a one page essay on the Atonement of Jesus Christ based on what he'd read.  So that's my goal.

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Today I had a photography session with Juliette - Mommy and baby girl.  I take lots of pictures of Juliette, but I'm never in any of them because I'm always behind the camera.  She is growing so fast and  I wanted to have some artistic shots of the two of us, mother and daughter.  They are simply stunning.  Here's my favourite, that will probably be mounted on a canvas and displayed in our living room:

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Benjamin has started swim lessons.  He is surprisingly much less crazy than I thought he would be.  There are only three kids in his class, and they are the only class running at that time, so I think the peaceful atmosphere around him (the other two children are girls) helps in keeping him calm.  He is easily riled by people and things around him.  Eye-opening for me; something to tuck into my parenting back pocket.

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Colin is a real budding artist; no, really, this isn't just parent bragging.  He is really good.  He watched a film called "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" the other day, and asked James to pull up some images online.  Then he proceeded to copy what he saw.  (Not trace, just looking at the image and drawing it in pen on the page.)  They are really, really good.  In fact, they look like they've been traced.  His perspective and scale are bang on.  I told him that the next step is to try and make up some of his own characters using elements of the ones he's already drawn: one person's head, another's body, another's hair, etc.  Sort of like creating a mii character on the wii.  When I used that analogy (they love to create mii characters) it really seemed to click with him.  This new love of art has made me want to start an art club as part of my involvement in their school next year.  Actually, I just might try and institute something over the summer.

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Speaking of summer, the summer weather is HERE!  We've been outside non stop and I love it.  Biking, gardening, digging, walking, playing...Canadian winters are far, far too long.