Primary

The theme for Primary this year is Choose the Right. There are two pretty cool incentives that the Primary is doing to help encourage the kids to choose the right. First is the CTR Heros. When the kids choose the right, they can get their CTR hero and ask me to take their picture. Then it is sent to the Primary president and she shows everyone during church. It then gets put on the bulletin board.

 Hailey and Robert were very excited about this when it was first presented. Robert got dressed into PJs all by myself without constant reminders or supervision. Hailey ate most of her food and cleared up her place at the table.

I should talk to them more about making bad choices and good choice instead of demanding things my way.

The other thing that Primary is doing is having the kids earn stickers to get a CTR ring.  Robert has to get three stickers since he is three years old and Hailey has to earn five.

You get a sticker by:
*having a CTR hero picture
*memorizing the month's scripture
*learning the month's song
*coming to church for a whole month
*preparing your talk or scripture before hand when asked.
*each Sunday the president picks one or two kids who were the most reverent and involved

I know Hailey can memorize the articles of faith so I decided to make a little sign that has the month's scripture on it so she can read it and memorize it. She loves this. She even wanted to find where the scripture is in her Book of Mormon.

Speaking about scriptures, last year the primary theme was "I know the Scriptures are True". So in her old primary they gave out stickers for who brought their scriptures every week.  So Hailey has her own Book of Mormon (it's actually a triple since that's what they had that day) and it has her name engraved on it. Since then I decided that once the kid started going to Primary, they get their own Book of Mormon. This will help them learn how to take good care of them and not lose them. Then when they are baptized they will get a nice, full set of scriptures and a scripture bag. I still have my scriptures from when I was baptized and it is still the only hard bond set I have received. So today, we got Robert's Book of Mormon with his name engraved. He is very excited about it. I just need to decorate a book for it.

The other thing we have started as a family is reading out of the Book of Mormon itself. Up until this point we read from the picture scripture readers so the kids can learn the people and stories better. Since the ward is doing a big push to have everyone read the Book of Mormon this year and since Hailey is starting to read, we decided it is the best time to switch to the actual book. Hailey likes to start reading and she does about a verse or two with help. It's fun to have a reader in the family. I'm excited for the kids to grow older and being able to do more with them. Though I will miss the cuteness of tiny babies and just being able to snuggle them all the time. I'll also miss the baby stage of them not moving and not talking back and fighting with each other. I guess I'm a little torn and am just trying to appreciate each stage that we are in.