Monday, April 11, 2011

10 April 2011 - Primary Activity

The weather has been more spring-like this week -- it only snowed three out of seven days.  On Saturday it was a nice 61 degree day which gave me a chance to spread two cubic yards of mulch in our flower beds and on our trees.  My lower back is still sore.

Saturday was also a primary activity for the girls.  I thought the presidency did a really cool idea.  Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of pictures because I spent most of the morning out doing bishoply stuff.

The activity was a drive-in movie.  The kids started off by getting together with their class and planning a skit.  Each class was assigned a story from the scriptures and their skit had to depict that story.  Once they had their parts and their lines, the went into the "studio" and they were filmed performing their skit.  From there, they went into the gym and got a cardboard box and made a car to drive to the drive in.

You can't see it in this picture, but there was white tape down both sides of the hallways and yellow tape down the middle, sometimes two stripes, some times one dashed stripe, so the hallways looked like a road.  Well, from my observation, the girls thought it was a road and the boys thought it was a race track.
Judging from the size of Jessica's car, this was likely her last primary activity (she turns 12 in August).

The kids drove their cars to the primary room movie theater, where their skits had been deftly (and rapidly) assembled into the premiere event.  They found shoe boxes with popcorn, juice boxes and M&Ms for them to clip onto the side of their cars using binding clips.  Although I didn't get to see the final product, I'm told it will be nominated for and Oscar next spring.

The girls still haven't tired of cupcake making.  Here are some of Joanne's fresh flowers and some marshmallow cupcakes.

Grass is turning green, and warmer weather is in the forecast.  Soon will be lawn mowing season.

3 Apr 2011 - General Conference

Welcome to April in southwestern Pennsylvania!

These photos were actually taken April 2nd, in between sessions of General Conference, which we enjoyed thoroughly by the way.  My favorite quote was from Cecil O. Samuelson:

"We should not have higher standards for others than we do for ourselves. Too often we may let the mistakes or failures of others, especially leaders or Church members, influence how we feel about ourselves or our testimonies. Other people’s difficulties are not an excuse for our own deficiencies."
 

I also appreciated Dieter F. Uchtdorf's counsel to Priesthood brethren on Saturday evening.  He challenged each of us to read Doctrine and Covenants 20, 84, 107 and 121.  Yesterday at church I asked how many of us had heeded that council....

On Sunday, when the sessions were all over, we had two families in the ward over for Sunday dinner.  One of the families is relatively new.  They moved to PA from Utah last summer.  The girls, not having lost interest in the cupcake cookbook, made these sugary monstrosities.

Despite the snow, there are definitely signs of spring and we're looking forward to a little warmer weather.