I'm not bragging, but....

I rocked Primary singing time yesterday :)

My steady readers (hi, Mom!) know that one of the most difficult things for me is getting 12 or so hearing kids to pay attention to me at the same time without using my voice. They just prefer English. So why don't I just use English? Because someday, we could have a Deaf kid show up, and I want us to be ready, and I want that kid to have a good experience. But some days, I feel like doing singing time in ASL is an exercise in futility.

But a few things changed with the new year. First, we have shorter church. So the kids are less tired when I get them. Boo-yeah! Second, we had 4 little 3-yr olds come into Primary form Nursery. That meant we would have 5 big kids, 4 medium kids and 4 little kids. That's a lot of kids! We decided we could split our singing time into two groups. It's been the Best. Thing. Ever. I can be silly for the little kids without any eye rolls from the big kids, and I can do complex things with the big kids without losing the little kids.

I'll be honest that I've never been as good with the little kids as the big kids, even when I'm not working in ASL. But yesterday, I got all 8 of them paying attention, participating, and even (gasp) SIGNING!

I started off asking each one individually if they made a snowman when it snowed last week. This is because only one would look at me at a time for long enough to catch the question :) Ha ha. Then I started to draw a snowman on the board. And it was funny. And the kids started raising their hands to tell me what I needed on the snowman. They signed arms, so I asked if they wanted spaghetti arms. And I drew spaghetti arms, and they all cracked up. Finally, we drew an appropriate snowman, and I put up snowflakes with songs written on the back, and we picked songs and sang them. It was so fun. And we even learned our new song for the month!

I think not having any whiny big kids helped a lot. But most of all, I just felt like it was an answer to prayer and effort. I love these kids, and I just want Primary to be a happy place for them. What a blessing!

p.s. - after I wrote this, I realized what the sound was that got the children's attention - it was laughter.

Counting my blessings!

I was just doing the laundry, fishing Marriner's white shirts out of the dryer before they got wrinkly. A rustle of a grumble started in the back of my mind about how my life would be easier if my husband didn't wear so darn many white shirts! You know, I have to catch them right as they finish drying and hang them up right away, or they get wrinkly, and don't even get me started on how bad I am at that....

Woah, what if we'd been living this life 30 years ago before the advent of wrinkle-free shirts! What if I had to IRON all those white shirts!

(Not to mention that Marriner's dress code at work would have been more formal...more shirts to iron!! Ack!!)

Wow, I'm feeling so lucky all of a sudden :)

Snow Day!

Woohoo! No church today!

Ok, I don't really love skipping church. But I do love snow, and I love days to have church with my family. We have great discussions as we study the gospel together.

At some point we had to decide how much of church we'd do in English and how much in Sign Language. We decided to do Pajama Church as usual, in English, and Home Church the same as normal church, in (mostly) Sign Language. We haven't been practicing ASL as much as we should be lately, so we decided we still needed our weekly practice.

During Pajama church, we were learning about the stories of Mary and Elisabeth. Marriner read Luke 1:37, "For with God, nothing shall be impossible." We talked about things that are impossible to do ourselves, but happen with God's help in our lives. Whenever we said something impossible, we all signed "impossible" along with it.

from www.lifeprint.com

Suddenly, we heard baby Jane singing, "doo doo doo-doo doo."

Yeah.

We were very fortunate to have President Eyring and his interpreter come and speak to us today in church. It's always so nice, the way these well-loved church leaders make the effort to come to our family church days :)

My favorite part of the day is going on downstairs right now. Marriner and most of the kids are out doing service, shoveling walks for some of our elderly neighbors. (Since our nieghborhood was built in the 60's and 70's, we have plenty of those.) But Ellis is down on the computer having her Young Women's lesson with her teacher. This is something you can do with a small class. They're preparing for New Beginnings and all the things they were going to do in their class today. They started off talking, but it's really quiet down there now, so I think they've changed over to sign language. Either that, or they're all pondering a question at great length :) I'm really grateful for such amazing Young Women leaders in the branch that really love my daughter and bless her individually.

With the changes in church curriculum to be more home-centered, I thought of how prepared we were for a day like this. But I also had a realization of how beneficial it is to gather together and discuss the gospel with a wider group of people than just my family. Those lessons and discussions over the years have helped broaden my thinking and understand other people whose experiences are different than my own.

It was funny seeing how easily Marriner decided to cancel church. Saturday morning, he saw the forecast for 4-7", and he said, "Of course we're canceling church." No need to wait until the snow actually arrived. Even if the forecast was a bust, there would for sure be enough snow to warrant canceling church. And thus we see that after 9 years on the east coast, we've turned into Easterners. Utah friends and family, you may all laugh at us now :)

Hahaha....ok, the voices just turned on downstairs when Ellis exclaimed, "High School?!?!" and laughed her head off. "I'm in 6th grade! I'm only 12!" (From the computer): I don't know how old Beehives are any more!

Edit: Now Lige is getting together with his fellow YM (Young Man) and discussing this week's lesson. These kids are so darn awesome! I just love it!!

Following the Prophet

Marriner and I read (separately) and discuss (together) a couple of talks from General Conference every week. The idea is to make it through all the talks in about 6 months :) This week, we made it to President Nelson's talk to the women of the church from last October.

We all know that President Nelson asked the women to do 4 things in his talk:

1. Read the Book of Mormon before the end of the year, highlighting references to Christ
2. Establish a pattern of regular temple attendance
3. 10 day fast from social media
4. Participate fully in Relief Society

I felt pretty good about myself for having done all 4 of them, especially finishing the Book of Mormon on time. But as I re-read the talk, I found he'd asked us to do a lot more things than just those 4!! Here's my list of OTHER requests from the prophet that I haven't done yet:

1. Pray to understand my spiritual gifts, then cultivate, use and expand them
2. Overcome my fear to pray, "Whom wouldst Thou have me help today?"
3. Help gather scattered Israel
4. Record and follow through with each impression after thinking about changes prompted from social media fast
5. Be intentional about talking of Christ with family and friends
6. Teach the people I love what I'm learning from the scriptures
7. Seek to know and understand more about temples than I ever have before
8. Study the current RS purpose and declaration

So, I'm putting this here to hold myself accountable until I've actually done ALL the things the Prophet asked. 

Here' the talk in ASL, if you want to watch it: https://www.lds.org/study/general-conference/2018/10/sisters-participation-in-the-gathering-of-israel?lang=ase

Following the little promptings

Tuesday night is Marriner's "Branch Night" - he doesn't come home for dinner, he just goes straight to the church from work and gets his church stuff done. And, you know, our branch consists of a large number of Night Owls, so he's sometimes home pretty late.

Last night, I was really dragging around 10pm when I realized I had to be up early in the morning to take Lillian to violin lessons (our first one after the Christmas break). Marriner usually texts me to say when he's coming home, and he hadn't texted yet, so I gave up on seeing him and headed to bed.

About 10:15, just as I was crawling into bed, Marriner came in the door. I admit, I almost stayed in bed and acted asleep, because I knew if I got up and talked, we'd be up for another hour, and I was tired! But I got up. Marriner apologized that he'd forgotten to text when he left. He'd been working frantically along, trying to answer questions people had sent him, when he got a text from his Branch Clerk. It said something along the lines of, "I made it home. If you're still in your office, you should go home, too. The church things can wait, but your wife and kids won't."

I imagine the Clerk arriving home and having an idea to text President Merrill. Then he shrugs it off, thinking, "It's not my place to tell him what to do." Then he responds to himself, "but what if that was a prompting from the Holy Ghost?" After a few back-and-forth thoughts, he decides to just send it. And President Merrill gets the text, packs up his stuff and goes home, just in time to talk to his wife for a few minutes that day.

And, just to give you the end of the story, Marriner didn't stay up and talk, he hurried to hop in bed with his wife, and we all slept happily ever after for 8 whole hours!

New Year, New Church

A few months ago, we got the earth-shattering announcement that our church services were going from 3 hours down to 2 hours at the start of the new year, to allow families more time to study the gospel together. This didn't mean we got to sit back and relax with our extra hour, we needed to use it!

With Marriner being the Branch President, we weren't sure how this was going to look in our family. For one thing, I think we're pretty good at teaching the gospel to our kids already. And Marriner could use the extra time to visit and minister to Branch members. But we realized that nobody wanted to meet with him in the morning, so we decided to save 8:00 for family gospel instruction.

Last night, Ellis was up in the middle of the night with an upset stomach, and as I was helping her get settled a phrase I didn't even know I needed came to my mind. "Pajama Church." Maybe it came to mind because I knew it was going to be tough to get everyone up and going by 8am if we were up in the middle of the night with sick kids. Or maybe God is just way more fun than I am. And Marriner was maybe a little sleep deprived, so it seemed like a good name to him, too! Thus, Pajama Church was born.

What did we do for Pajama Church? We sang a song (because we like singing) and said a prayer, then I taught about what the New Testament is (that's our course of study for the year) and we did a little activity from the lesson manual about the parable of the sower, to help us get ready to be responsible for our own learning.

I liked the way it changed our Sunday morning from sitting around and reading while you wait for your turn in the shower to doing something together. Even though we had to wait our turn for the shower after the lesson was over, people were reading scriptures, looking at the lesson for next week, and other much better activities.

One thing that really made Pajama Church successful was Ellis's Family Home Evening lesson on Monday that introduced the topic for the week and invited everyone to read about it during the week. She put together a chart with a section to read each day, and if you reported on what you read to her, you got a star on her chart. This was great for Sam, who read scriptures by himself for the first time in his (short 6 year long) life this week. It was great to see him really trying to understand what he was reading so he could answer Ellis's questions.

I think I like this idea of introducing the topic to the family on Monday, studying individually throughout the week, then having a lesson Sunday morning to cap it off and prepare us for sharing what we've learned at church. I'm not sure it's sustainable, but I really want it to be.

The other part of my life that changed today was our Primary schedule. Now we only have 1 hour of Primary! I spend that hour teaching singing time to the little kids, then the older kids. I LOVED having my two groups split up for the first time. I love being able to be cheesy with the little kids without the big kids rolling their eyes at me. I love singing with the older kids without having to put on a circus performance to keep the little kids engaged. And what I loved best was going home right when the kids started to get tired and hungry :)

My sister-in-law, Katie Ann, gave me the great idea for singing with the little kids today. Our theme was "Come, Follow Me" which is really important. But I knew the little kids just wanted to sing "Head Shoulders Knees and Toes" and other such songs. I mean, half of them went to Nursery last week, where they got to play the whole time. So Katie Ann's idea was to have them practice following the leader on all the wiggle songs. Ah! We had a great time.

This week was Martha's first week in Primary (coming from Nursery). She was just excited that our friend Michai was going to be her new teacher! And Michai was fabulous. But she commented after that she'll have to get used to some of the songs that have really weird actions. And I thought about all the actions I've done my whole life, and I had to agree, they don't really make sense unless you grew up with it :) But we'll get her used to them fast! We have an odd mix of ASL and traditional little-kid actions mixed together, sometimes I'm worn out trying to get all the actions in. But the kids don't care about the ASL, they just want to jump on "Jesus wants me for a sun-BEAM" And I guess that's just fine.

Sending out the old year with a bang

 A funny story that we'll want to remember from Sunday:

Lige, as you know, is a Teacher now, which means he's responsible for setting up the Sacrament. I'd always thought of this as a not-very-exciting advancement, and I see now that I was mistaken. Preparing the Sacrament is complex!

For example, getting the bread ready. We have some Sacrament bread in the freezer at the church. Last week, Lige took out the 3 pieces we use (or however many it is) and put them in the microwave to defrost. He defrosted them until the bread was warm all the way in the middle, about 2 minutes. Alas, the bread was rather crispy by the time it was passed. So his mom made some defrosting suggestions, and Lige was ready for success this week.

I was in the bathroom with Martha when Ellis came running in, telling me to go help Lige urgently. Taking a hint from her facial expression, I left her with Martha and went to find Lige. The easiest way to find him would have been to follow the smell of smoke. When I walked into the kitchen, I saw Lige standing nervously next to the microwave  with a pile of black something burning inside. Yes, he'd forgotten to take the twist tie off the bag. Bread bags burn really well, it turns out. I blew out the fire (Lige had been afraid to try to put out the fire, lest he use the wrong method and make it worse.) and we cleaned up the charred plastic and bread. Then we found the bishop of the ward that was currently meeting and let him know, just in case the sprinklers turned on or something. The fortunate thing was that Lige had brought some extra bread from home, since the loaf at church was almost gone. So despite his learning experience, he saved the day by planning ahead! We were happy to be able to have the Sacrament without any disruption.

A little rant

I talked to a friend today. She had an internship, which turned into a permanent job offer with the federal government. It wasn't anything fancy, especially for a person with a Bachelor's degree. But today she was asking me for advice on what to do: she got her job offer in March, and now it's January and she hasn't been able to start yet.

I don't know why on earth it would take 9 months to do all the paperwork it takes for a person to start their job. I do know the government is slow - when Marriner was hired, it took 2 months for the official job offer to arrive. But really, 9 months?!? I looked at the emails she had. In April, they asked for fingerprints. In June they asked for a form requesting reasonable accommodations. In August they needed a phone call to discuss reasonable accommodations. In October, they asked for finger prints again. In November they started a bidding process for an interpreter. I can't think of any reason why they didn't just send her all the forms on Day 1. And I don't know why it would take 2 months to process each form.

I feel like this sort of experience is surprisingly common. People are so afraid to hire someone they can't talk to, and even when someone is willing to hire them, the process is twisty-turny, complex and confusing.

In contrast, here's a story from New Year's Eve. My sister Ashley and her family were visiting from Baltimore, and Michai was over, too. Ashley knows ASL, her husband is learning, but her kids haven't learned much by absorption. Still, my 10-yr old niece, Anne, was looking for someone to talk to, and came over to Michai.  She just started finger spelling! Michai talked back to Anne. After a while, Anne got tired of spelling every word, so she went and got a paper and pen, and they had this cute conversation. 

Ok, so I know a cute conversation with a kid isn't the same as communicating with your employer, but still, I think we're way more intimidated at getting along with deaf people than we need to be. And it makes me sad that so many bright and talented people struggle so hard to get a job, just because they can't hear their would-be employer.

So, be like Anne, all y'all.

Ok, rant over.