Alden's Faith and Busy Summer

I just read a cute story about my friend Kristin's little boy on her blog and it reminded me of a cute little incident I wanted to record but hadn't yet.

Last week we got a fragile book out of the library.  It was about the history of trains and had these pull-out sections that expanded the trains.  It was pretty tricky to get the pull-out sections back into the book so I asked the boys not to read it without my help.  They wanted to read it one morning and I told them to wait a minute while I got Gracen occupied.  When I came back into the room, the book was ripped and the two of them work trying their darndest to get those pull-out pages back together.  I asked what happened and Alden started crying.  With big teary eyes he said, "I said a prayer to ask Heavenly Father to help me fix the book and it didn't work!"

I couldn't help but chuckle.  And then I gave Alden a huge squeeze.  What a cute kid.  It absolutely made me happy that in his little time of distress, he thought to call on his Heavenly Father for help.  And it opened the door for quite a conversation about why his prayer wasn't answered the way he wanted it to be.  I don't know how much he got out of that conversation, but it's easy to see that Alden's on the right track.

I am grateful in my own prayers every night that I am so blessed with GOOD little kids who want to do the right thing!


We've signed up for our library's summer reading program and it's going to be an awesome summer of reading!  The kids were asked to make their own reading goals and then each week they complete them, bring in their log books for to the library for a prize.  The prizes range from a "treat coupon" to tickets for rides and indoor fun zones and the movie theatre.  Since this summer has become so busy so fast, I set a pretty non-challenging goal for us to keep reading 20 minutes every night before bedtime.  We did add to Alden's that he would read one book himself each week (a Bob-books type book).  He's really picking up on reading and the small Bob books are so perfect for him: words that are easy to sound out and short enough that he can finish the entire book and feel some accomplishment.   Gracen is becoming interested in sitting through storytime as well, especially if we've got a book about kittens or ducks in our stack.

Summer has become so busy all of a sudden because Jaron and I have both been able to find jobs.  Because we missed the financial aid deadline and weren't able to start rotations in May, we've found ourselves with a summer without school (for Jaron anyway) and decided it would be best to make some money if we could to help ease the financial strain during the next two years of rotations.  Jaron was able to get a job driving a delivery truck that has plenty of overtime - about 65 hours per week total.  I also got hired at a discount clothing store on evenings and weekends.  Thankfully my mother-in-law and sister-in-law Kayla are awesome and are willing to watch the kids any evenings our two jobs overlap.  Add in the library reading program, swimming, park runs, bike rides, and my Ethics and Law class (I'm 1/6 done my masters!! :-D) and this summer has gotten BUSY really fast!!