Thoughts...

So, I was driving to the Church last night to run some music I will be singing with a group for our ward Christmas party on Saturday. As a practice, I often pray before I leave my driveway (for safety, for my family, etc.). After my prayer, I turned on some music to warm my voice before I was to sing. I skipped through a few songs to find one, and the shuffle selected "Give Ye to Me" by Hilary Weeks. This song is one of my favorites. Period. The words and principles taught have strengthened me on many occasions. The message is that the Savior can make up the difference for me and consecrate my efforts just like He increased the food with the loaves and the fishes from the little boy when He fed the 5,000 (which, incidentally, is a miracle that I hold very dear). So I sang. And sang. And as I sang, I felt the power of the message: "Give ye to me all that you have to offer, and I will bless it, and I will make it more, and you will have all that you need. Though it seems there's not enough, I'll make the difference up; give ye to me." I know that as we turn our hearts (and our problems) over to the Savior, that He indeed has the power to make up the difference. He will bless us. He can make us whole. He is able.

Hilary Weeks Christmas CD

So, want to win Hilary Weeks' new Christmas CD? I do, too!! :) I have loved Hilary Weeks since I heard her first at EFY 1993 in Tampa, FL. Her song, "He Hears Me" spoke to me (and I am sure so many others), and I have been a devoted listener ever since. Her first Christmas CD, Christmastime, is one of my fav Christmas CDs--in fact, I pulled it out just after Halloween. She is having a contest to spread the word about her CD, which is available at http://deseretbook.com/hilaryweeks or here on her site. Happy listening (and good luck to you if you enter)!!! God Bless Your Way!
K.

Happy Boo Day!

We have been celebrating Halloween all week! Wednesday night was our Fall Festival at church--and we had a great time. Trevor was sick, so he missed it...but he did manage to take a few pics of us before we left. When I was pregnant with all these little ones, I didn't realize that I would be the mother of a Jedi knight (Jakob), a beautiful princess (Rachel), a Storm Trooper (John), Dora (Lissa), a king (Joshua), and the cutest puppy dog I have ever seen (Hyrum). :)




Even though I didn't expect the vast array of characters in our home, I am still incredibly grateful for ALL our little ones--and for their dad, who is the love of my life!

On Saturday, we went to Magic Kingdom to get Jakob's bday gift card. Since he was turning 10 (an adult in Disney terms), he got a whopping $78 to spend around the park. His kind mother let him get about three items and appropriated the rest for Christmas presents. :) We walked right on to Big Thunder Mountain, Splash Mountain, Pirates, It's a Small World, Speedway, and waited just a bit at Buzz Lightyear. All in all, we had a super morning, and everyone was kind and stayed together!! Hooray!

(Joshua requested that I post this picture of him by himself!)
In the evening, Farfar (my dad) took our five older children to his ward's trunk-or-treat while we made Jakob's cake. When they came back, we went trick-or-treating around the neighborhood and enjoyed being together. Hope all of you had a wonderful Halloween weekend as well!

Pumpkin Glee

I am soooo grateful for the blessings of having our twins in school right now! As the number of children in our family has grown, my desire to do lots of crafts and fun projects with them has, I am sad to say, diminished a little. I have been elated that our children have all been blessed with fabulous teachers to pick up where I have lost a bit of energy and enthusiasm--especially around holidays! The last two days, our twins have brought home these sweet pumpkins.

They are so excited about them. :)

I have been so busy with this and that lately, that I have neglected our family blog a bit. If you want to know about what is going on in my world at least, feel free to check our site often: http://www.mpowergen.com or our blog: http://www.mpowergen.com/blog.
Happy Halloween!

Love Lissa!!

This week, I was driving home from picking up our older three children from school. Our Suburban was filled with all six of our little ones, and I heard a gleeful voice from the middle seat (Lissa) singing:

Daddy and Mommy sitting in a tree
"Q-R-S-S-T-U-V!!!"

I completely chuckled that she got the double "S" right in order to spell

"K-I-S-S-I-N-G" while at the same time using a piece of the alphabet so it fit!!

For those of you who know Lissa, you know she is happy, exuberant, and amazing! We are so glad that she is in our family.

Lissa, we love you!!!

MPower Generations

I have been a part of a project lately called MPower Generations. The site is http://mpowergen.com. The goal of MPower Generations is to support women in our joy as mothers, grandmothers, sisters, aunts, friends, and all the other roles in which we work--to MPower us to fulfill our purposes in this life. I hope you will find a place here. The blog is on my blog list. Hope you will bookmark it, too. We are looking for guest writers to post on our blog soon, and when the site has its official launch, we will have opportunities for fun stuff through give-aways to you, our site visitors! I appreciate feedback and hope you enjoy mpowergen.com!! Will you bookmark it?

Kitchen...Really?

So, our kitchen is basically in the middle of our house. I like the kitchen to be in the middle of the house for a few reasons: a)we spend a lot of time there and so I like to be around everyone going and coming through the house; b)it pretty much has to stay clean because to get to most of the house, you have to walk through it; and c)I really do believe that the kitchen is the heart of the home.
Well, in the past few days, our kitchen has also been the place to take photos of surprise happenings. First, I walked from my room into the kitchen to find this:

Hyrum was standing by the kitchen table with spoon in hand digging into a HUGE container of chocolate ice cream. I had to grab the camera and snap a few shots!!


Then, Joshua decided to empty a cabinet or two (three, really) so he could fit inside it...!

Later that afternoon, after our older children came home from school, Hyrum decided to put his hands in John's tennis shoes and crawl around the house!!

I am so glad that I was often in our kitchen this week to find all the cute things our children have been doing. Seeing the sweet moments help me get through the other times when motherhood is more difficult! How blessed I am to have our sweet little children!! :)