Favorite Five for the Week

Piano Lessons Finally!- We have been on the search for almost an entire year to find somebody to teach Lewis the piano. There has been nobody that lives on our side of town and that could make our crazy schedules work, until now! We are soooo stoked about the great teacher Lewis gets to learn piano from. She is the organist in our ward and taught lessons for a long time while her kids were growing up. She is an older lady with the most fun, awesome personality and she decided to pick up a few students to teach after work a few nights a week (she works full time and could only teach lessons at night-um PERFECT for us)! Anyway, it was so fun dropping Lewis off at her house the other night and watching him settle down to the piano with her. Of course, he was stoked to come home and show off his stuff. He is a natural and is picking up fast. I spoke with his teacher at church today to find out more about their frist session and she said she really enjoyed Lewis' company and that he ia a natural (I suspected):) She said a lot of kids have trouble with timing initially, but Lewis was great. He has already been working hard on the first half of his first book and I am looking forward to some Christmas entertainment this year. He is on fire!

Election Day!It was soooo much fun to share election day with our boys this year. Having them both be old enough to understand the process and make formative opinions was something I wasn't expecting but was pleasently surprised by. A brilliant teacher at our school (Lewis' teacher actually) set up a mock election for our students to participate in. She even registered the children to vote(she thought of every detail). She set up this bulletin board in our school that showed all the candidates, both local and national, and posted results of the election through our mock votes as well as the real deal so we could see the comparisons. She taught the children in her class about the candidates and their different platforms and encouraged the other teachers to do the same in their classrooms before the kids voted (I'll admit, we did not get far in kindergarten-we are still trying to figure out the difference between Mrs. Peterson and Mr. Peterson - I am still being called Mr. Peterson in this late date in the year). Anyway, through this mock election experience, the kids were able to learn all about the elephants and the donkeys (and what they stand for), how voting effects our country and most importantly that every vote counts! In our house, we were all unanimously McCain, but overall, Obama won the mock election at our school. It was fun to see the boys get passionate about "their" candidate and tell why they supported him. Lewis blew me away with his growing political mind. He is already surpassing me in knowledge and this scares me! I thought I had a few more years before he realized that really, I don't know much. Anyhow, we really had a fun election day this year, and although our first choice did not pan out, we still live in a great nation!

THURSDAY NIGHT- Usually, this is our busiest, craziest day. A couple weeks ago, I posted "a day in our lives" and it was a pretty busy Tuesday, but seriously, that day doesn't hold a candle to what our Thursdays are usually like! I think it is so funny that every thing gets scheduled for Thursday nights these days? I guess it is a good night for most families? Usually our Thursday involves needing to call in some extra help from friends and neighbors to make it all pan out-but this week was different! Steve usually has meetings on Thursdays leaving me to run ragged getting the kids to and fro. Everything seems to start at the same time and on opposite ends of town. Luckily, this night-Steve was home! He ended up droppping Lewis off at scouts and taking Conner to his football game. Leaving me to only have to pick Lewis up from scouts and take him to his football practice. THAT is do-able! We actually were able to eat dinner as a family around the dinner table! It was GREAT! I know this seems so lame, but for me, it was a nice change.

Primary Program- Our primary put on their annual sacrament meeting program today and it was such a good one! I have been the CTR 6 teacher for almost three years now (and I hope they keep me there forever. . .I LOVE IT) and I gotta say, this has been my favorite since I've been in the primary. The theme for this year, "I am a Child of God" was presented in such a cute, special way. The kids knew the songs really well too and I think that makes a difference. Their voices were just awesome! Lewis actually had a chance to give a talk in our program and I gotta say, he was very impressive! He spoke very clear and loud and even made EYE contact from time to time! Who taught him that? Actually, he has been surprising us a LOT lately with his little hidden talents. He was in charge of our Family Home Evening lesson this week and all we did was give him his scout book and showed him the page he was supposed to present to us. The lesson was on "Cooperation". He was a NATURAL at teaching the concept and THEN, he came up with a little game to go with it. He actually came up with little scenerios and we had to guess if it was an example of cooperation or not. Steve and I about died at how cute this lesson was and we were left scratching our heads as to how our son became this great little presenter/teacher?

DAY OFF- The best part of our week is that we have a three day weekend this week! So, more fun to be had tomorrow! Here's to a great week next week too:)