February, Five year olds, Fashion, First Steps & Forever Families

Clearly, February was an alliterate month!  :)

Much like January, we spent a lot of it inside due to colds and allergies.  It has been such a mild winter that everything has continued to bloom here in AZ and nothing has frozen and died and therefore everybody seems to be miserable.

We did spend a TINY bit of extremely limited time outside. What is the point of living somewhere where it is 70 degrees outside in February if your/your kids allergies are so bad you can't go outside??

 I also won an awesome giveaway from flower bucket boutique, who sent me all this cool stuff:

 Matt went and saw Mitt while he was in town, he took this pic with our camera.  Kinda looks like a stock photo, but its not :)

Kate FINALLY started walking, though she still is pretty tentative and mostly crawls, but we can coax her to walk here and there and she will do it when she thinks no one is looking.

Lily turned 5 in February, and I simply can't believe it.  5 seems to be a whole other world.  She is now in a different category.  She'll start kindergarten this fall.  I am not ready for this.  I am such a proud momma though.  She is a good egg.  On birthdays I let the girls wear whatever they want and she picked out this dress up/gymnastics combo.  She helped make the cupcakes to take to school, including putting on all the sprinkles herself.

She wanted a Tinkerbell cake, this was the best I could free-hand on short notice with only being able to find 2 icing tips (I have since bought 6 more and am very anxious to make more cake and try out different things...)

We had a very small get together, with Lily's grandparents, Uncle Charlie, and Nana's best friend Sister Student, who brought her grand daughter.  We had dinner and cake and ice cream right after Daddy woke up just before he had to go back to work.  I was very tempted to do a friend party for Lily this year.  She has been invited to several, and I know she would have loved one, but I hate to set the precedent right before we go away to school, so we didn't do one.  She did get to go to lunch with Nana after school though, and had a very fun and eventful day.

Lily got 3 new church dresses for her birthday, which is what she really needed, and they are all SO cute!  My little Fashionista!

 We also got to go back to my home town for a quick visit, it was filled with wonderful little moments like this one, of GG rocking Katie to sleep. 

Though technically we went to Thatcher at the beginning of March and not February, we missed our original planned trip (during Valentine's day) because we were all sick.  While in Thatcher we got to go to the LDS Temple a couple of times and I had a really nice experience while I was there that I wanted to share and kind of "journal", so forgive the next couple of narrative journaled paragraphs.

If you don't know much about the LDS church, here is a brief sum up of what we consider saving ordinances.  Like many Christian faiths, we believe that man must be baptized in Christ's name to be saved, along with receiving other ordinances, performed by someone with the proper priesthood authority, and by making covenants with God, and living a worthy life, continually striving to refine oneself and improve oneself through a lifelong learning and repentance process.  The first step is to be baptized into the church, then, if members are worthy, and choose to, they can receive further ordinances and make more committed covenants in the temple.  Men and women who have each been through the temple for themselves and have individually received of the ordinances of the temple have the option of being married in the temple.

A marriage in the temple is different than a marriage outside the temple, because we believe that ordinances performed and promises made inside the temple are done with the authority to be bound eternally.  Therefore, we do not believe in 'til death do we part.  We believe that be will be bound forever, and that children who result as part of a covenanted union made in the temple are also bound to us eternally, as long as we live worthy to claim the blessings extended to us. 

We also believe that God is a loving a merciful Father, and that he wants all His children, even those who did not live in a time when they were able to hear the truth of the Gospel to have the option to choose whether to accept these ordinances for themselves.  Therefore as a member of the church who has gone through the temple and received of all of its ordinances for ourselves, we no longer need to ever go back (kind of like baptism, its really a one time thing), but we return and serve as proxy for deceased people, who we believe on the other side will have the opportunity to accept or reject the proxy baptism, other ordinances, and even marriages to their spouse (that we call "sealings").  We believe that this work is a service, that is is not being forced upon anyone on the other side, but that the Gospel is being preached there as it is here, and that there may be many spirits who reject these ordinances, but that there may also be people waiting on the other side, hoping for baptism and for a sealing to their family, just waiting for someone to perform their ordinances for them.  I may not have explained that perfectly, but if you have more questions, please feel free to ask!  I can at least put you in contact with someone who is sure to answer them more eloquently than I can.

Anyway, back to my story.  Lately I have been able to do a lot of family history work.  Its really thanks to my awesome brother Charlie, who is not a member of the church, but who does share a love of our ancestors with me.  Since we have never really known our father very well, and my Papa died when I was 12 (he being my only link to that side of the family) we have never really had much information at all about my Dad's side of the family.  Just that my Papa's family came down from French Canada, and obviously my brother Charlie is a IVth (well maybe you didn't know that, but my brother charlie isn't just a Jr or even a III, but a IVth.  He hates it.  He actually had it legally changed this year).  Anyway, BACK ON TOPIC JENN!  Goodness, I am sorry!  Anyway, Charlie went to Quebec last summer and brought back SO much FASCINATING information about the history of my St George/Laporte side of my family, and translated it all (or at least most) into English for me (it was all in French).  Anyway, from this we were able to construct a family tree that goes back 10 generations.  Something I never though would be possible.  I have been able to construct a connection to these people that I come from that I never thought I would have.  It is a beautiful thing.

In August I put all of their information in the new family search program and my mom and I have been doing their temple work.  Mostly my mom has been doing the leg work, since she lives about 2 minutes from the temple and doesn't have a job.  However when we were there this past week I got to do some and then also we arranged to do several family sealings, my GG came to do the sealings with me along with my mom and Hank, Aunt Colleen, Uncle Seth, Matt and a few others, it was such a great experience.  HERE IS THE REAL STORY>

We had sealed several families together, including my Great Grandfather to his parents, and I was having such a beautiful, wonderful experience, when suddenly, during one of the sealings, I had the distinct thought that the family being sealed was incomplete, that several children were missing and weren't being sealed to their mother.  I had entered these names 6 months ago and had entered in dozens of families, large, catholic families with lots of children, so there was no way I could be sure of these facts in my mind.  After we were finished, but before we got home I mentioned the feeling to my mom and told her I wanted to check it out.  Later that night she reminded me to check on it, and sure enough, 3 children were not included.  My mom had not noticed when she printed off the family that 3 children didn't have their work done, but the underlying fault was mine.  When I entered their information in originally I had left off a birthplace, though I had a specific date entered in for them all, the place section was left blank, and apparently they will not let you do any work without this information.  It was my stupid mistake, and I was SO grateful for a prompting from the Lord so that I could fix it, and I did.  It was quick and easy to get the needed information into the computer so that their work can go forward.  What a blessing.  It was a HUGE testimony building experience for me.

After all that typing I though I would  leave you on a nice random picture of my sweet blonde baby making her, "Who, ME?" face