Talk on Agency

Elsie was asked to give a short talk in church today. We worked on it all week and she did a great job memorizing it and saying it today. She even helped to decide what to say in the last three lines. Here she is reciting it after church with Daddy's help.

I put the talk here too in case you can't hear it. 

Agency is the gift to choose for ourselves.

Heavenly Father sent us to earth so we could learn from our choices.

When we make good choices we have good consequences. 

But if we make bad choices we have bad consequences.

If we choose the right we will return to Heaven and live with Heavenly Father and Jesus again.

Chores

Elsie has started helping do some chores. Nothing major and a lot of it is just helping like mopping. She just helps for a minute or two then goes off and plays. But it is her job to empty the silverware holder when the dish washer is done. She does a few other things like pick up her toys and clear her dishes after eating but those are a really just a given! She also likes to help clean the toilets with the brush of course. 

Charity's visit

Elsie Aunt Charity and Uncle Greg came out from New York to visit just after Christmas. So here we are celebrating the big holiday with them. They were also here for Uncle Levi's birthday so we celebrated that with them too. It is always fun to have visitors.

Cute

Here is Elsie with some cute hair. She asked for 6 pony tails so that is what she got that day. She also got some cute sticker earrings from Spanish preschool so she is showing them off below. At her school they get little tokens when ever they speak correctly in Spanish. At the end of the day they count up the fichas and get a premio or prize depending on how many fichas they received. Luckily she has not demanded prizes from me for every good thing that she does at home. She understands that is what they do at school not home.

Christmas at Grandmas and Grandpas

We headed to Will's dad's house in the early afternoon and had Christmas all over again! It is always fun to be with family. Will and his little brother Steven always have joke gifts for each other and this year was no different. Elsie got some nice new clothes and some more princesses and a new princess game too. Will's dad had been working hard on a great meal. We sat down with Will's family including Great Grandpa Shumway and one of Will's uncle and his wife. It was wonderful. The rest of night was spent relaxing. Elsie is trying to hug Great Grandpa Shumway in the last picture in case you were confused. We did spend the night but Will still had to work on Monday! But I think Christmas was a great sucsess. Elsie was awesome and waited her turn to open presents and helped pass out gifts. Even though she got a lot she did not get too caught up in it and I hope she gets that we give gifts to show our love and that Jesus' birth is the real reason to celebrate.

Christmas morning

Christmas morning was fun this year. Elsie is getting older now and was pretty excited to get to the presents. She got the stocking first and ran it back to our rooms and emptied it right in the hall! It was rather cute. We did make her lay in bed with us for a bit but then we let her wake everyone up. Just like the last two years we had Will's mom and siblings spend the night. This year it was just Julia and Levi since Tyler got married and Charity lives out of state. But it was still tons of fun.

Elsie was very confident that she would get what she wanted. And thanks to a certain auntie she did get a pillow pet. If it had not been for this auntie she would not have gotten one as I was done with my shopping by the time she finally asked for it! I hope she spills the beans a little earlier next year.

Will, his mom and I opened our stockings first. Then we started in on the pile of presents surrounding the little tinny tree! Elsie was excited for her pillow pet, the castle, the princesses,  the water balloons and all the other fun stuff. She got a lot of toys and games. We might sale it back next year if we can stop ourselves. After we were all done Tyler and Katie got there and we ate breakfast! Then since it was a Sunday we went to Church. We went to another ward though as we wanted to go before 1pm! After church we packed up and headed to Will's dad's house.