I organized an event recently to hear Jack Monnett speak. If you don’t know who he is, just Google his name and get his books and read them. They will open up your eyes more than ever to the truth and relevance of the Book of Mormon to today. After reading snatches from his books, more than ever, I feel a desire to be close to my Savior Jesus Christ and have the Holy Spirit to guide me through these troubled times. The contrast between the absolute, tremendous goodness of the Savior and the evil in the world has become in sharper focus for me. I am so grateful for His birth, sacrifice, and life.

Less than a week before my oldest son’s service project was due for one of his Williamsburg classes he announced that he didn’t know what he was doing. The one idea he had planned couldn’t go forward because of the weather. So we gave him the idea of making hats using those circle looms and he led the family in the project. We got five made by the following Friday. So I learned I need to have better mentor meetings with him where I ask specifically about each class he is taking, as in, “Do you have any major projects that are due this week?” Making these hats as a family gave such a cozy, warm feeling to the atmosphere. We should do family hand-crafting more often.

He also took the ACT a week ago. The week before he took a practice one at Weber State and got a really good score. We are talking a score good enough for a scholarship! I’m so grateful that he’s so smart. (Maybe it’s because I didn’t eat any white sugar when I was pregnant with him. I was so much more careful back then. It gets harder as I get older and have more kids to be so virtuous.) So now we are waiting for the real score to put on college applications. We are thinking of BYU, GWC, SVU, and even Harvard. I just found out this week that GWC has a competitor, started by some George Wythe types, including Dr. Shanon Brooks, and my neighbor up the street, Dr. Slade. It’s called Monticello College. http://monticellocollege.org. The web site says that the next fall semester is 2012 so I don’t think that fits Hilton’s plans. We’ll have to see. He just finished his finals with Williamsburg. I’m so thrilled for him!

After the ACT we went to my nephew’s baptism. His mom is my little sister. Her husband comes from a family of eleven children (eight of them boys, whoa! His dear mother has a special place in heaven reserved for her). Most of them live out of town so we usually don’t see all of them at family events like baby blessings. But this time, it just so happened that the baptism was the same day as my brother-in-law’s grandmother’s funeral. So all eleven kids had flown or driven in, and a lot of them with a spouse and kids.

To say that the tiny two bedroom house was overflowing with people for the family dinner, after the event, is to put it mildly. But it was so fun! I loved talking to my sister’s in-laws. Her brother-in-law and his wife just had twin identical baby girls three months ago! They were so darling! I caught a picture of one, lying next to her aunt’s leg. The other was asleep, esconced in the master bedroom. The twins’ mama also gets to keep up with an 18-month-old and a 4-year-old. “I didn’t know what busy was before I had twins,” she said to me. I apparently don’t know what busy is either, compared to her. Keeping up with homeschooling my brood and home management after baby#7 has been a challenge but I can’t imagine mothering twins and an 18-month-old and a four-year-old. She actually looked and sounded remarkably calm. I enjoyed hearing her tell me that she enjoys breastfeeding the twins.

It just felt so good to be with so many good people who believe in family and Christ. It felt like Christmas had come early, even though there were no presents. Actually, there were. It was also my mom’s birthday so I had brought a present and so did my sisters. Her grandson got baptized on her birthday. Interestingly enough, my son got baptized on his other grandfather’s birthday and my daughter on her other grandmother’s birthday as well.

This Christmas time I am actually doing and enjoying things I usually don’t. We went caroling, and I usually don’t like that because it’s always sooo COLD! But this year we went with my son’s homeschool group on that balmy Friday, with no snow on the ground, before the snow kicked in on the weekend, and it was 50 degrees. That morning I actually baked cookies with my children and had a fun time doing it. It helped that I had put my baby down for a nap.

We read some fun Christmas LDS stories tonight as a family from those little pamphlet-type books that Covenant Communications puts out. I can’t see enough about how fun it is to read aloud together as a family. It’s cheap, it creates family bonds, it’s better for your brain than DVDs, and it feels so old-fashioned and homey. (Although I do break down the week before Christmas, when we watch a few holiday movies every night, see my discussion forum on this site.) Yesterday I caught my nine-year-old son spontaneously reading Holly Claus to his younger sibs. I felt like he had just loaded in his plate into the dishwasher for the first time without being asked. Such an accomplishment! I can’t wait to reread The Read Aloud Handbook in January like my friend Shauna Bird Dunn does in order to renew my dedication to having reading time be the chief form of entertainment for this family.

I am working on a pilot project for the Closet Coach and feel a little stuck since I’ve been asked to write down my homeschooling schedule for one of the assignments. Sometimes I have a hard time being structured. I would rather have a rhythm than a schedule.  I just have so many good things going on in my life that sometimes I just want to keep doing some of those good things, multitasking, and I push other things down the schedule. We will have to see what I come up with.