Pay your Tithing...or not?

I love the way Collin's mind works. Yesterday as we were driving, he started asking about living in a desert, how can this be a desert even though it gets cold? is Utah a desert? do Matt and Abby live in a desert? you get the idea (the never-ending list of questions).

He wanted to know where was "not a desert". I told him, Pennsylvania...a few seconds later he pipes up, "oh, do they pay lots more tithing? I said that I didn't think so, "well," he responded, "that Snowy guy said to pay tithing and you will get lots of rain." ...a few more seconds of silence... "has Cort paid his tithing yet on his babysitting money, I hope he doesn't because I don't like rain!"

5,6,7,8 Dance!

Collin is dancing at his Aunt Deonna's studio just like his big brothers and sister did. He takes lessons on Thursday mornings and he is a hoot! He was struggling all the way through the first half of the year, I couldn't believe how hard it was for him to learn the dance. He is the oldest and yet he was having such a hard time.

About a week before his Christmas performances we were eating lunch one day when I asked him if he liked dance, he said that he liked to dance; but dance class was boring. He wanted to do his own "Collin Dance" and couldn't understand why he had to do the same dance every week.

I explained to him that everyone learned the same dance and did it the same way so that it would look really good on stage. "On Stage! I get to dance on Stage?!" he was so excited about the idea and totally understood the point of learning the dance well. We went to the first recital and he was great! I guess he knew it after all; I just hadn't thought to explain the point of it all. Who knew?

So, You Think You Can Dance?

Addy is our resident dancer. Any time she hears music with a beat, she is moving. I am amazed how well she can stay with the beat. One of her favorite places to be-bop is in front of the dishwasher, so she can watch herself.

This picture quality isn't great, I was attempting to make a video; but I accidentally muted it and had it turned sideways. So these are shots from the video. I'll try again with the video function, maybe I'll figure it out.

Santa's Workshop

What always starts out as a very sweet, memory making activity often turns into frustration at our house. This one actually worked well. I can't believe how grown up my kids are getting. The older kids were able to do so much by themselves.

Cortland and Chandler don't get too excited about "crafting" gifts for their friends, they chose to give popcorn and candy canes. All they had to do was wrap them up. This was the right fit for the amount of time that they wanted to spend.

I love crafting with Alexis. She is very artistic. She chose to make domino necklaces for her friends. She had to cut the paper for both sides of the domino, glue and glaze and then assemble her necklaces. She did such a great job. I tried, fairly successfully, to back off and let her do it--my perfectionist tendencies cause us both stress sometimes--

Forward, Backward...what does it matter?

Collin has developed a funny quirk lately. He switches off writing his name forward and backward. If it is on the front of a paper, he writes it forward and on the back, of course, it is backward.

Makes sense to me. What a fun, goofy kid he is. I am constantly amazed at how his mind works.