2012 – Page 19 – Andelin Adventures

Girl Scout Birthday Celebrations

Girl Scouts is celebrating it’s 100th birthday this year. What an exciting time to be a troop leader, or a Girl Scout for that matter! This past week has just been crazy with birthday celebrations. Last Monday Chick-fil-a in American Fork was throwing a birthday party for Girl Scouts. So we just had to go check it out! Here are a bunch of Girl Scouts that came to the event. Of those girls, only Tyra is in my troop.

And the cow is wearing a Girl Scout uniform!

We bought our dinner, but Chick-fil-a had birthday cake that they cut up and passed out, and they had balloons for the kids and free ice cream cones. Over the course of the evening we did see most of the girls from our troop, and it was a really fun family night activity.

Tuesday night, there was a city council meeting, that they asked all the Girl Scouts in Eagle Mountain to attend. The first item of business for the evening was to read and vote on a proclamation declaring March 12, 2012, Girl Scouts Day. Personally I was really excited to be there JUST to get a visual of how many Girl Scouts there are out here in EM, just because I know that my troop exists and that Tyra’s old troop exists, but other than that I kind of feel like our troop is all alone out here in the middle of nowhere. After the city council voted on the proclamation they wanted to get a picture with all the Girl Scouts:

Now I don’t know if that’s an accurate representation of ALL the Girl Scouts out here in EM. But I do know that only 50% of my troop was there. (They are the 4 brownies right in the middle). 🙂

Then tonight I had the opportunity to take my troop up to the Utah State Capitol building in Salt Lake City, for a birthday celebration. I just loved the view as we were driving up the street to the capitol building:

The building straight ahead, and flags all along the street announcing the 100th anniversary of Girl Scouting. So awesome! The party at the capitol consisted of singing some Girl Scout songs out on the front steps. They had some ladies from camp there, to lead the girls in singing some camp songs. Then we moved inside to listen to the program, which was made up of some state officials talking about Girl Scouting and how excited they were to be able to share in our special celebration. And we scored three different patches for each girl just by being there! (I love patches 😛 )

Here’s my troop out front of the Capitol building. It’s been a lot of fun to be the troop leader, and to be doing these things with my daughter and her friends, and in the process I’ve been able to make new friends too. 🙂

Crazy Hair

Dinah came up to me, this afternoon, with a handful of hair ties, and asked me to put them all in her hair. So this is what I did:

It made her very excited to have LOTS of hair ties in her hair. Just look at that goofy grin:

Lydia’s new trick

Standing!

Not walking yet, but she will stand up in the middle of the room without using something to pull herself up.

New Camera

Have you noticed the lack of pictures on our blog lately? That’s because our camera, randomly decided to die. It really bummed me out, when I picked it up and tried to take some pictures of my girl scouts all dressed up for international day, and it just wouldn’t turn on. Ordinarily you’d just think that I forgot to charge it and it had run out of battery power. But the thing is, I had JUST charged it, and it still wouldn’t come on. It just decided it was done working for us. So Kyle and I started researching digital cameras. We didn’t want anything big and fancy. I just wanted something I could throw in my purse and be able to take with me anywhere, but we did want something that produced better quality pictures than our Casio. We looked around on Amazon, and at Best Buy and ended up buying one at Costco. It’s small and can fit into my purse, but it doesn’t actually go into my back pocket as nicely as our Casio did. It is a 16 megapixel camera, which compared to our 7.2 megapixel Casio is a huge improvement. I’m still learning about all the different features and settings, and I’m sure that will take awhile to get used to. So I’m excited about our new camera.

Our Heritage

Shortly after Kyle and I were married, we discussed the topic of when we should start our family. Some felt that we should wait considering how young I was and our financial situation. But Kyle based our discussion on scripture. When we were married in the Los Angeles Temple we were commanded to multiply and replenish the earth. “The Family: A Proclamation to the World” declares:

The first commandment that God gave to Adam and Eve pertained to their potential for parenthood as husband and wife. We declare that God’s commandment for His children to multiply and replenish the earth remains in force.

From there we turned to Genesis. Genesis 1:27-28 reads:

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them , and God said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth….”

Looking for more about Adam and Eve bearing children I found this scripture in Moses. Moses 5:11

And Eve, his wife, heard all these things and was glad, saying: Were it not for our transgression we never should have had seed…

I felt that she was expressing her joy for the ability and opportunity to bear children. I felt that if Eve was SO happy to obey the commandment to ‘multiply and replenish the earth’, why would we want to delay that happiness, that joy in our family? After all Psalms 127:3-5 reads:

Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord: and the fruit of the womb is his reward. As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man’ so are children of the youth. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them…

I just knew that if we did all that we could to obey God’s commandments we would be blessed for our efforts. Here we are several years, and several children later, and I know that we have been blessed for our faith in starting our family when we did, and allowing our family to grow since.

In October 2011 General Conference, Elder Neil L Anderson spoke on children. He said:

It is a crowning privilege of a husband and wife who are able to bear children to provide mortal bodies for these spirit children of God.

I truly enjoy being pregnant. I look at my young children, and as I watch them grow and learn I find myself thinking “I think this is the best age, they are so fun when they are at this stage”. But as they keep growing, I keep thinking the same thing. Yes, my children do things that are frustrating to me, and sometimes make me ask “WHY?!?!”, but that’s just part of watching them learn. I only hope that I am doing a good job at teaching these little spirits. My life is crazy, my house is full of little people, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. I can’t wait for #7 to be born later this summer!