SNOW is falling all around,
on the house tops, on the ground,

SNOW is falling every where,
on my head and hands and hair.

I don't know who wrote that song but we sang it in primary ( primary: a class where LDS children sing songs and learn about the basic principles of the gospel of Jesus Christ)

Just so you know, it also snows in you car if it is really powdery and your AC is accidentally set to bring in the air from out side. It is not much but is still a weird thing when you are driving.

Happy February.

Monday at EFY

All this summer I have been being an EFY counselor. It has been a fantastic experience. I have learned so much. I loved going to EFY as a participant. I started looking forward to next year the day that is ended. Being an EFY counselor has been 1000 times better. I grew spiritual and learned valuable lesson. Those lessons came not only from my fellow counselors, BCs, coordinators, teacher, directors and their spouses but also from the youth themselves. I was also better able to learn from the spirit.

So what do we do at EFY an why do we do it? Here are some photos, thoughts and explanations. Some of my explanations are the reasons that made sense to me others are what they told us. There are also random thoughts I thought I would throw in. Lets start with Monday.

MONDAY
Check-In
This is when the youth say "I'm here. Um, now what do I do" It is intersting to see how nervous some are. Thats ok though becasue we give them things for braving it. The things are a handbook (this thing is actually cool. It doubles as a journal, hymn book, agenda and study guide), a lanyard, nametag, cd, dvd and shirt.

Meet Your Counselor
After they spend sometime practicing patients we divide them into groups. Normally each councelor has about 10 youth. Here we do a get to know you game (Mine involved starbursts), out line the rules, set personal goals and I gather up the information I need. In my case this came to involve taking pictures so I could write down there names and study who they are. These are some of the pictures I took for that reason. Aren't my girls lovely.

Meet Your Company
This is when my girls meet the other counselor groups in our company. There is always at least one boy counselor and one girl counselor. Here we do more get to know you games, make a short cheer, tell the kids what our company name is and from what scripture it was taken.
Orientation
Here we gather as an entire EFY session. It is when the youth first meet the session director and are told about things like the BIG FIVE. The BIG FIVE are the rules that when broken the youth will be sent home with out question. This is also when the counselors perform the legendary EFY dances.
Dinner
If you want to eat first on Monday you had better hope your counselor can dance because that is how they decided who gets to go next. This dance competition is held in front of the entire youth so hopefully your not to self conscience. If you're a counselor you probably aren't.
Session Director Lesson
This is basically the spiritual part of family night. The lesson is taught by the session director to the entire session
FHE Games
I like these games allot. These are played in a company. One of my favorite games was Anteater. In this game 3 or 4 youth are pulled from the company. They are the "Anteaters". Their job it to tag the other youth or the "ants". The other youth start at one end of the field and try to get to their "ant hill" at the other end of the field. Once the game starts the only safe side of the field is the ant hill. If the ants are tagged as they try to get to the ant hill they must lay on their backs with their feet in the air.

Then the other ants try to rescue them. It take 4 ants to rescue a fallen ant. The 4 rescue ants must carry them back. While an ant is attached to a fallen ant they are safe unless their are more then 4 ants attached. In order to win all the ants must make it back to the hill. It is a fun game.

After they play the game for awhile we sit down and ask them what they have learned. They come out with all sorts of things. Then we have them find examples of what they learned in the scriptures. As counselors it is our job to direct them. One question I would ask is it was more fun to sit in the ant hill and watch or was it more fun to go save the ant. They always say it is more fun to save the ants. When they do I turn them to D&C 18:15-16
"15. And if it so be that you should labor all your days in
crying repentance unto this people and bring save it be
one soul unto me how great shall be your joy with him
in the kingdom of my Father!
16. And now, if your joy will be great with one soul that
you have brought unto me into the kingdom of Father,
how great will be your joy if you should bring many
souls unto me!"
After that I asked them how they could apply it in their lives. So I will ask you too.
How can you apply that lesson in your life?
After they think about we move onto the next game and do the same for it.
Goal Setting
Goals are important things to have. They help you get the most out of life. Because we want our youth to get the most out of EFY we have them set personal goals. We also set company goals. That we do during this time. There are four areas the the youth set goals in. They are physical, mental, social and spiritual. We as counselors are not to set the goals. We collect there thoughts and compile them into to one goal that seems to cover what they hope to achieve. Then the youth agree with it or not. Through out the week we review these goals.
Counselor Devotional
After we do goal setting we break off into counselor groups. Mondays devotional is on recognizing the promptings of the spirit. I think this one is important to have on Monday because the youth will have many opportunities to feel the spirt and be prompted by it. We want them to realize where those feeling and promptings come from so we teach them.
Personal Scripture Study/Journal Time
It is rather selfexplainitory. We have it though so the youth can learn the good habbit. Why is writting in your journal important. It helps you remember the feelings you have and put them into words. Then later when you read them again you can feel the same feelings you had. This is important becasue we want the youth to take home what they have learned and felt at EFY.

Prayer Meeting

This is with the session. It is when a few of the youth share something they liked about the day and then we have our clossing prayer. Then the youth go home

So...What do we do when the children go home?

EFC!!!

This is when we share some of the things we liked about our day, ask questions and get insturciton. It is also where we are aloud to give hugs.

Going Home

This weekend was a blast. Today I fly back to Texas and to my family. I am happy to go see them but I am also sad to leave all the wonderful people that are here (or just left). On the bright side I will be back up here at the end of May. Yea!
So do you want to know all the fun things I did? To bad. You have to wait until I get home, sort through my General conference notes and get my pictures from cousins. Hopefully that will be soon.

Future Blog Makeover

So I get to go home on Wednesday. After I have hugged my family set up the two remaining Christmas trees, grown two love handles (one for fudge the other for caramel) I am going to give my blog a real makeover. My own personal header and everything. I am so excited. My mom is really good at it and can teach me to use her program. I admit that it is rather pathetic that my mother has to teach me a computer skill when computers are so post to be my generation. On the bright side having my mom teach me things makes me feel like a kid again.
Lucky Amber gets home on Tuesday. I am so jealous. That is ok though because then I don't have to compete for arrival competition. Hopefully I will have lots of pictures to show you soon of all the fun projects we are planing on doing. Of course there will be lots of pictures of my family. All 13 of us.

A Walk in the Snow

Today I was woken up to someone telling me it had snowed. A minuets later someone came and told me breakfast was ready. I must admit that if you have to wake up that those are some great things to wake up to. A special treat to breakfast was hot chocolate. Thank you snow for giving me an excuse. The snow also canceled church. I guess people are a little scared of snow here or maybe it is way worse in other places. Oh well. To substitutes church we watched music and the spoken word along with other programs from the BYU channel via the Internet. The music was especially wonderful because it is Christmas music. I love Christmas music. After lunch we went on a walk. Here are some pictures for you.

A little lesson from a little branch. This branch is very thin yet supports allot of snow. I think people are like this. We are very little, yet we can support allot of things.

It's a Wonderful Life

For years I would never watch It's a wonderful life because all I could remember about it from my childhood was the sad part from when he jumps off the bridge and then no one knows who he is to when he gets back to the bridge. I don't think I ever really got to see the end where things go back to being happy. So today, after Uncle Garn reassured me that it was not sad, I watched it. Very very good movie. I did ALMOST cry though. I wold also like to add that James Stewart is a great person from what I can tell. Someone went to do a Biography of him and they couldn't find any scandal that he had been involved in. That is awesome, especially when you work in Hollywood.

Ward Christmas Party

This morning was the ward Christmas party. Part of the activity involved making gingerbread houses. Here is mine and Autum's. Do you like our deck?

Here is Wes's. He is very proud of his garage.Jeramey had a house but he had a tornado come through and destroy it. It was actually rather nice. Not your normal gingerbread house though. He had done something different with the roof.

Christmas Card Garland

Aj was telling me how she will sometimes hang the Christmas cards she gets. She already had some red yarn so I decided to dress it up a little. This is what I came up with. It only cost about $5. Don't you just love the dollar store. Now all I have to do is hang up the cards on the red string.

It doesn't show up on the picture very well but there is glitter glue on the pine cones.

Christmas Movie

Every year at Christmas, and sometimes when its not, my family watches Miracle on 34th street. Lucky for me my family here has the movie too. I am watching it as I type.

Another movie my family likes to watch at Christmas is Christmas in Connecticut. What holiday movies dose your family love?

Pepernuts

A Christmas tradition from my Mom's family is the making of pepernuts. We made them a few days ago. Sometimes it is a long process but when you have 3 other pairs of hands to help out it it makes things go fast. We had all the cutting done in about an hour.

Cut,

Place,

Cook,

Eat.

St. Nicoals Day

This morning my Uncle Garn woke me up saying that the kids wanted to wake up now and see what St. Nicolas left. Huh?.......Oh yah, we left our shoes out last night so he could fill them with candy and presents. For those of you who don't know St. Nicolas day is a German tradition like our Christmas, just on a smaller size. Because Garn and Aj lived in Germany they celebrate it too.

Thank you St. Nickolas.

Here are some pictures.

Waiting for everyone to get up is Autum and Wes.

Here are my shoes, and they've never looked better.

Hidden behind all my candy was this book.

St. Nicolas must have been inspired because when I opened it the first few instructions were things I need to remember. One thing I really like about this book is that below the instructions is a scripture to go with it. I love having the scriptures right there to back guidance and instruction up. I think Santa would be well liked by any young adult or teenager for leaving this in there Stocking. I know St. Nicolas is.

Thanksgiving Activies

My Thanksgiving Started off fixing the pumpkin pie mistake I had made the day before. Thankfully, after a call to my Grandpa N, I was able to fix it. I was told by many a person that it tasted great. That made my day.

After that we went on over to the zoo. They were having free admission for everyone in thanks for the tax money that is going to be given them by popular vote. It was nice of them to say thanks.

In case you didn't know, elephants are my favorite non-Australian land animal.

They also have a little museum in the zoo dedicated to elephants. It was full of statues am a baby elephant bike. The bike is much bigger then it looks

This is Wes. He stopped to smile or me.
I just love these turtles
This hippo turned around just so I could take it's picture. Apart from that the view was non to pretty.After that we went home and prepared the last touches for dinner. Then some friends came over. It was cool because we had ran into all of the people that were coming to our house at the zoo.

Thanksgiving

Every Thanksgiving my family watches A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. I got to watch it last night. It made me happy.

Traditions are wonderfull things and I am thankful for them. Here are some other things I ama thenkful for

Amigos: They make me feel special.

Books: They allow me to have adventures without risking anything.

Cooks: They make some of my favorite things.

Dogs: They chase cats and can tell when you are having a hard day.

Education: It empowers your mind.

Family: Sorry there are to many reasons to list.

Games: They keep me entertained.

Heavenly Father: He loves me and let his son die so I could live with him again.

Instruments: When played well together creates music that arouses the soul.

Jesus Christ: He died for me and in doing so gave me so much.

Kids: Their innocence and simple happiness brings joy and life to everything.

Laughter: It chases tears away.

Money: It allows me to do the things I need/want.

Notes: A simple thing that can make a persons day.

Opinions: People have such interesting ideas sometimes.
Prophets: They tell me what I need to hear.

Quotes: They make you think, laugh and/or smile.

Religion: People who actively practice a religion are know to be happier and have more hope.

Scrapbooking: It allows my creativity to flow.

Telephones: They let me call home.

Utah: It is where the saints found refuge and I always feel extra good there.

Voting: It lets me voice my opinion even when it is not popular

Work: When accomplished it makes a person feel good about themselves

X I'm substituting it with the letter H: Holy Ghost: It is the comforter and tells me things I need to know

You: I'm sure you've done something nice for someone which makes me happy.
Zoos: I have lots of fun memories at them.

Happy Thanksgiving!