Faith in God Award

I've been meaning to post this for a while! B finished up ALL the requirements for his Faith in God Award in Primary. We are so proud of him! This is not an easy thing to earn, AND he finished with a few months to spare. He turns 12 in June. The Bishop came into Primary to personally award his certificate to B. He memorized all the Articles of Faith, wrote his testimony, finished at least 8 requirements in 4 different categories, and had interviews with the Primary president and the Bishop. Phew! He'll get a little break before he enters Young Mens and starts working on his Duty to God ...

Primary Water Activity

Yesterday morning, our primary had their quarterly activity at the park. The theme was "Waters of Mormon". We rotated the kids through 3 stations. I was in charge of the water balloon launcher, which was a HUGE hit with both the kids and adults. The Bishop and 2nd counselor were there and they enjoyed launching some balloons, too! Most of the work involves filling the water balloons. Luckily, I had some help from my friend and her family.

Here's B getting ready to launch a water balloon

J is going for some real height on this launch! The other stations involved a slip-n-slide and a 'soggy jog relay'. Needless to say, the kids got wet. Oh, and since we had A LOT of water balloons, we had a water balloon fight. Lots of fun!!

Here's T with his buddy N enjoying popsicles. We had a wonderful time. It's so fun to play together. I love being able to get the primary kids together outside of the Sunday time together. It's fun to watch them interact and have fun with each other.

Primary Program : DONE!!

We had our annual Primary Children's Sacrament Meeting Program today. The kids did great. T kept coming down to me from the stand. But what do you expect from a Sunbeam?! G did a great job on the piano, too. N & I sat together in the congregation. It was kind of weird just only have the two of us sitting on the bench. G & I gave the opening and closing prayers, too! We did have our Primary Celebration with the entire primary afterwards. Boy, they were wound up! We have such a young primary that it made it really challenging. Regardless, we were able to watch a slide show, have fruit, play 'name-that-tune', share our testimonies, sang along with G playing the banjo, ate rice krispy treats, and watched a church DVD. The match game I had planned got canned after the kids were too wild. Oh well. I'll just use if for FHE. Score! The kids left with a personalized certificate of achievement and some yummy popcorn balls (from our music leader). I left sweaty & worn out!

Primary Talent Show

B playing a song. Notice the lack of shoes? The kids like to slide across the floor in the Cultural Hall.
J's display of some of his art. He really likes to draw and he's quite good at it. He also brought some Lego creations.

Here's B's Lego display. He made a huge shopping mall with a parking lot and cars. In front, he made replica's of the GameBoy and the GameBoy DS.

It was really fun to see many of the talents today. We had two big display tables full of art, writing, cross-stitch, Legos, and quilts. There were a handful of performers, too. We heard piano songs, jokes, guitar, and some singing. We even saw some great soccer tricks and some tap dancing! The kids each got to decorate a brown lunch sack with markers and stickers. Then, they got to fill it with fresh popcorn from the popcorn cart! They sat on blankets and watched the show. It was really fun. At the end, our Primary President talked about the Parable of the Talents, and how we need to develop and share our talents or we may lose them. We've each been given these gifts to bless us and others. The kids were each given a little bag with chocolate coins to represent their talents. It was a great activity today.

Quarterly Primary Activity

Yesterday morning we had our Quarterly Primary Activity. We centered the entire event around the Book of Mormon. We started out with a brief lesson on "Feasting on the Word". Then we broke into 2 groups to rotate through 2 stations.


The 1st station was "Lehi's Dream Obstacle Course". After a brief recap of Lehi's dream, the kids worked in groups of 3 and took turns being blindfolded, being a guide, or being the "mist of darkness"/distraction. So the guide had to get the blind-folded child to the end of the obstacle course safely while the 'distractor' tried to complicate things. The kids really had a blast doing this. In this picture, J just came out of the obstacle course as a guide. We recapped at the end and related this to listening to the Holy Ghost. There may be bumps in the road, but if you keep listening to the Holy Ghost, He will not lead you astray.

Here, B (on the right) starts his work as a guide through the obstacle course with his friends. Once you started in the course, the guide and the distractor were not allowed to touch the blind-folded person. They had to use their voices! Kinda tricky.

The other station was "Moroni's Title of Liberty". Again, after a brief recap of this story, the kids then were given a special piece of cardstock to write their OWN 'Title of Liberty', things that are very important to them. They wrote things like: family, friends, temples, gospel etc., and some drew pictures, too. We are going to laminate them for the kids so that they can keep these in their scriptures. Oh, and we are going to burn the edges to make it look really cool! (thanks, Jamie!!)

Here, T sits with Dad feasting on fruit .. as in the 'tree of life'. We finished the activity with several types of fruit. The kids could pick what they wanted and so they all were delighted. We had strawberries, watermelon, pineapple, grapes, bananas, and apples. We had plenty of fruit, however, we didn't have any left over! Overall, it was an awesome activity. The kids (and adults) had fun and there was a deeper purpose to it. We missed several of our friends due to baseball and a scout camp-out, but we did have a great turn-out. It seems like no matter when we would have planned the activity, it wouldn't work for everyone. But that's okay. We had a great time.

We Have a Primary Graduate!

Today was N's last day in Primary. He turns 12 on Tuesday. We sang "Happy Birthday" to him AND our "Good-bye" song (we change the words to the "Hello" song, and sometimes G will play it in a minor key--The kids LOVE it!). N hammed it up and pretended to sob when we sang good-bye. He has to wait until after General Conference to be sustained and ordained. It will be a little strange not to see N in sharing time because it's been a family-affair for so long! When I asked N what he liked and will miss about Primary he said (1) the family, (2) sharing time, and (3) the Primary Program After Celebration. He has completed his Faith in God, and will be awarded that certificate after Conference, too. We're so proud of you, N!!