Swimming Lessons, Silly Boys and Family Home Evening

Yesterday, Joshua finally got to start swimming lessons! He's been on the waiting list for the last three sessions and finally got in when they added an additional class. We weren't too sure how he'd do, but before we left to go to the pool, we said a prayer that he'd have the courage and strength to do what his teachers asked him to do and that he'd be safe and watched over. He did fine and afterwards told me that Heavenly Father and Jesus were watching over him and keeping him safe. He's so hesitant with the water...nothing like Nathaniel. Saturday, at Terry and Theresa's, we put water wings on Nathaniel and he was loving it! He puts his arms out in front and his legs behind him and kicks - he's a natural. Hopefully it will last and he won't get scared of the water like Joshua is.

I was trying to get laundry and stuff done in the morning before we had to go to swimming lessons. My ears and throat have been bugging me for a few days - thanks to my allergies - and I wasn't feeling that great so I just wanted to get done. Well, I didn't put the gate up because I was trying to get Nathaniel down for a nap and that didn't work and I forgot that the gate wasn't up. So he took off down the hall clutching a toy tiger. I finally caught him in our room with an empty (such a rarity!) laundry basket. He was putting the tiger in to the basket, so I just plopped him in it too and gave him a ride back out to the living room. He loved it! Then he wanted to play with the basket for awhile. I grabbed the camera and decided that the laundry could wait a little longer while I played with the boys.

Joshua loves pretending that the laundry basket is a cage or a trap, but he's getting too big for it! Nathaniel thought it was hysterically funny and enjoyed climbin in to the basket and just sitting there.

For Family Home Evening we talked about pioneers since today is Pioneer Day. Nathaniel didn't really care what we were doing, he just walked around and tried to grab stuff from everyone, but Joshua really seemed to enjoy the lesson. We started out by singing two of our favorite Primary songs about pioneers - "Pioneer Children Sang as they Walked" and "The Ox Cart Song"...Brian didn't remember the songs from when he was little, so Joshua loved teaching them to him. Then I gave them a pint jar half-filled with heavy whipping cream to shake and make butter. I've always wanted to do this and see if it worked, and was reminded of the idea when reading my friend Melanie's blog a few weeks ago, so we did it. Brian did most of the shaking and sure enough, before we were done with our lesson, we had a lump of butter sitting in some buttermilk. We had toast with butter on it when we were done. We talked about a couple of Brian's ancestors that were early Mormon pioneers, Solomon Hancock and Elizabeth Reese Craig. Solomon was an early missionary for the church (he's even mentioned in the Doctrine & Covenants) and died before the pioneers got very far on their journey to Utah. We have an interesting story about him that has been passed down and even published in the Ensign (a Church magazine) about how Solomon gave $5.00 to the Prophet Joseph Smith shortly before he was martyred. This $5 had been promised to Solomon's wife, Phebe, and at first she was less than thrilled about not having her egg & milk money to buy things for the baby she was expecting. You can read the whole story here: http://lds.org/portal/site/LDSOrg/menuitem.b12f9d18fae655bb69095bd3e44916a0/?vgnextoid=2354fccf2b7db010VgnVCM1000004d82620aRCRD&locale=0&sourceId=b27ad0640b96b010VgnVCM1000004d82620a____&hideNav=1

We also talked about other pioneers in the family - people who traveled in covered wagons and came to new territories, mostly in the western United States. Joshua learned a little bit about his great-great grandfather, Zachary (Jack) Taylor Sherrill, who at 9 years of age went with his family from Arkansas to Colorado, Utah and eventually Idaho and his father died along the way. This took place in 1889 and we are fortunate enough to have a picture of their traveling group. Joshua's great-great grandpa is the young boy near the center of the picture. We have an account of this trip from the memories of one of the other children on this trip...who was five at the time and he remembered walking barefoot through cactus and rocks and dry dusty land. That made Joshua think since he's only five himself. After talking about these two pioneers, and a few others, I think Joshua really appreciates living now!

Here's Joshua with the butter...