You finish the story...

Once upon a time I was hiking in the woods when I came upon a baby boy...

Thinking of writing a ya novel?

This is the best blog post I've seen in a long time. Check it out:

http://jbsorensen.blogspot.com/2010/09/how-to-write-best-selling-ya-novel.html

A Gift For You, CH 1

48 hours ago we were members of the Chapel Hill First Ward. Yesterday it was announced in church that the ward boundries in our stake are being redrawn and about 16 or so families are getting cut out of the CH1 ward. We are one of those families, and we will be joining the Burlington 3 ward with a bunch of other Durham Stake refugees until a building is built in our area.

I thought about my wonderful friends that I wouldn't get to see as much any more. Then I remembered something that President Monson (that is the prophet of the LDS church) said in his talk last week at General Conference.

I wrapped some presents and displayed them on the table on a cake stand for the girls to see when they got home.

When they asked "Are those for us? Can we open them? What is inside?" I just shrugged my shoulders. This drove Naomi nearly bonkers.

I kept them on the table for dinner, so everyone could look at them and salivate.

Then, for Family Night I spread a big paper on the table, under the cake stand.

We thought about all the people in our ward who made a difference in our lives.
I gave everyone a few minutes to write down as many names as they could.

Then I directed their attention to the presents on the cake stand and asked them two questions:

1. How would you feel if I told you you could open up these presents right now? [exclaimations of joyous insanity]

2. How would you feel if I told you that there is something very special for each of you in those boxes but I will never let you open them, and that I am just going to keep them myself. [boos/hisses]

Then I had Sophie read a quote from Presdient Monson's talk last week:

A grateful heart, then, comes through expressing gratitude to our Heavenly Father for His blessings and to those around us for all that they bring into our lives. This requires conscious effort—at least until we have truly learned and cultivated an attitude of gratitude. Often we feel grateful and intend to express our thanks but forget to do so or just don’t get around to it. Someone has said that “feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.”¹²

^{I asked them each to pick one name on their list and "give a gift" to them by thanking them with a note. Then we addressed them.}

Then they got to open the gifts!

(Which were thank you notes from me to them. Yes, a little anticlimactic, but at least they didn't show it.)

I will miss you, Kramers, Dorrances, Hansens, Peets, Nelsons, Empeys, Stanleys, Austins, Prietos, Street, Parcell, Neal-Ewings, Molnars, and all of my other dear friends of the Chapel Hill First Ward.

I will miss you,

Scott will miss you,

and the girls will all miss you.

(Dan, maybe not so much.)

As Joseph Smith used to say, "Friends at [chapel hill] first are friends at last."

See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil

The motivating factor for everything I do in my life is to somehow teach my children to make good choices. Although right now I have power over virtually every aspect of their lives, my power (especially with Sophie and Syrena) is fizzling. But if I can teach them now to see things for what they really are, and to give them tools to use when they are in trouble, they will make choices that will open doors for them and bring happiness into their lives. Sounds easy.

As you can tell, from my last few posts, my kids are CAH-RAY-ZEE about Harry Potter. They make potions on the back porch, "fly" around on brooms, and Syrena wears my old glasses all the time, pretending she is Moaning Myrtle. We had the missionaries over for dinner last week, and my kids and the missionaries spent the entire dinner talking about Harry Potter. BOTH elders knew everything there was to know about Harry and totally charmed my kids. I realized that those elders were of "the Harry Potter generation"--those lucky kids who got to grow up along with Harry.

One reason why I love the Harry Potter books is that they go right along with my motherly agenda of teaching my kids how to thwart evil influences. And J.K. does it so effectively.

The other day Sophie was making "Hogwarts" letters for everyone in the family. In the first Harry Potter book it mentions that the letters were "sealed with the Hogwarts coat of arms." Being a smart figure-it-out-for-yourself kind of gal, on the envelope she drew a jacket surrounded by a group of severed arms.

Well, we talked about what a "coat of arms" really is, and then I got one of those brilliant ideas that you know only comes from heaven. Lets make our own Dyreng Family Coat of Arms! (minus the severed arms.)

So using the Hogwart's coat of arms as a reference, for family night we brainstormed our own version and came up with this:

Lest you think that we had a delightful evening discussing what makes our family wonderful and how we are going to preserve our children's purity forever, let me just tell you that Danny was screaming, Sophie and Syrena kept pulling out their books to read and Naomi insisted on climbing on my head. When the torture was finally over, the girls all decided to make their own coat of arms. Syrena's motto at the bottom of hers was "Stay Away From Dementors."

So you've made it to the bottom of this post which is amazing because I never read blog posts this long, but I did want to mention one more thing. Having the desire to lenthen their childhood as long as I can I've told them that they have to wait to read the 4th Harry Potter book. ("But don't worry, you can read the 1st, 2nd and 3rd books as many times as you want!") They moan and groan...I tell them I was 25 when I read the forth book! For some reason that doesn't stop the eyes from rolling. But I still have some power over them, and I will wield it while I still can.

Too Much of A Good Thing

Last week I discovered this written on the wall. In pen.