I can do this...

...once a month blogging that is. I figure I'll keep everyone's expectations low and then I won't disappoint anyone. ;D Less is more, don't they say?

Life is cruising along quite nicely for our little family. Kids are happy at school and kindy, and DH is busy at work as usual, but not working overly long hours which is nice. I've kept myself busy with a lot of church stuff this month (activities, meetings, visiting the temple, maintaining the Relief Society Blog, visiting teaching, writing up newsletters and activity invites, helping feed the missionaries at their zone conference etc). Then there was Brooke's school gala, where I helped prepare stuff for the auctions, and set up on the day.

With Elisa we've been working on a letter a week. This week she's on the letter E. She learns to recognise it, write it, sound it out, and learn what words start with it. Some of the letters she already knows, but the phonics part is hard for her. I'll list some words that start with the E sound (egg, extra, each, elephant etc), then get her to name something that starts with the 'e' sound. She'll come out with something like "tree", "car" or "unicorn". *sigh* this may take longer than I thought. LOL. She does know words that start with each letter, but that's from memory recall, not because she recognises the beginning sound. Other than that part, she's doing really well.

On Friday the girls and I went down to Ngaruawahia and stayed at Mum and Dads. I went to the temple early the next morning (LOVE being there), then joined the rest of the family at Janferays to celebrate Petria's birthday. I love family get togethers. No stress, lots of food, great company, and the kids just adore being with their cousins. Elisa and Leah paired up, as did Brooke and Emmy, and Ammon and Grace. I decided I should do a layout about how the kids break off into their little groups:



That layout will go into my galleries in a couple of days, so you all have a little sneak peek now, aren't you lucky.

It wouldn't be a blog post without the rest of my layouts now would it:













I'm loving the ease of the P12 project this year. It's a breeze to collect photos from the month and add a wee summary.




The Visiting Teaching messages this year have so far been on the Relief Society's history. All good to know, but kind of hard to make into a 4x6 inspirational handout like I did last year. So... I took inspiration from the internet and came up with these babies. The pringles cans were for February (found it on THIS blog) and the Cookie cutters for March. Originally the cans were supposed to have oatmeal cookies in them, but after cooking a batch myself and tasting them, figured if I still wanted my sisters to talk to me, I better not make them eat my baking. ;) That and it was just easier to leave the pringles already sealed in the can.

I still give them our newsletter with the full VT message, so don't worry that I'm straying from the theme. The response has been really good though, and I enjoy making things like this.




I'm excited about our Relief Society Birthday activity on Tuesday night, and to get as many sisters there as possible, made up a personal invite for each of them and handed them out on Sunday. Nothing like leaving it till the last safe minute huh.



As for this week.....I need to book in for a dental check (got a great deal with GrabOne vouchers), and get my hair cut using a voucher I won at the gala last week. Brooke wants friends over after school, and Elisa wants Katy over again, so we'll try and organise that too. Saturday morning I have Toy Library Desk Duty, then Michelle and Colin are bringing Zachary over for the first time. He's about 6 months old now and I still haven't met him, so I'm really looking forward to that. Hope you all have a great week. My prayers continue for those in Christchurch and Japan who have suffered from the earthquakes and Tsunamis. Holly, I'm so glad you and your family are OK.