Mother's day paper chain

1. For my Young Women's lesson today, I taught about keeping family history records. I am the link (and each young woman, for that matter) that joins past generations to future generations, and I demonstrated this with a paper chain. Then I shared some gems from Grandma Helen's book, the life story she printed a few years ago. I was demonstrating that the lessons taught by telling her life story are a treasure to me and my children because of the things we can learn from her, about her, and through the gospel testimony shared therein. It was a great Mother's day activity for me to read her book all morning and try to decide which stories to share. (And I needed to shed some worthwhile tears, of course!)

2. Today as I sat in Sacrament meeting, I noticed several familiar things that reminded me of my mother. Leah sat on my lap playing with my necklace and batting at my earrings. It reminded me of sitting on my mother's lap and doing the same when I was a child. I can picture her necklaces. Then Leah layed her head on my shoulder and I twirled her hair in circles around her ear. I always loved it when my mom did that, and now I notice Leah reaching for my hand and placing it on her ear. I will probably start picking through Leah's hair looking for lice some day, something I made my mother do for years after having head lice the summer before 5th grade. (Although I certainly will try to avoid a lice infestation...) Interesting what little things I picked up. Of course, there are big things, too many to name right now.

3. And for a little something from the one who first made me a mother. Today while Leah played with a toy train I heard her say, "This train can be INvisible and it can be OUT of visible." It amazes me her rationality with language!

As only a four year old can, she has quite an imagination. She thinks up all kinds of "What if" scenarios all the time. The other day, this is what she came up with: "Mom, what would happed if a person pooped in the street?" I responded that they would probably get in trouble by the police and could maybe go to jail. Then she asked "What would happen if a dog or a cat pooped in the street?" And I said "Nothing!"

And tonight she was playing with the magnetic letters on the fridge, asking me to pronounce the cominations that she came up with. "What does this word say?" I respond, attempting to pronounce phonetically "mosgrajkfi." "What does it mean?" "It's not a word, honey, it doesn't mean anything." Then she started singing a song about her made up words. It's the tune of "Are you sleeping" and it consists of letters, followed by "That spells ____." Well today her song was "Mosgrajkfi, Mosgrajkfi, That spells nothing, that spells nothing."

What moments have I provided to her that will permeate her childhood and be remembered when she is a mother?

(Pictured: $3 well spent at the dollar store.)