Baby showers, milestones and christmas parties

Jada will now grab onto things that are put close to her (within arms reach). She reminds me of a little kitten grabbing at anything that dangles in front of them with their paws and batting at it. She just gets cuter and cuter everyday.

My visiting teacher threw a baby shower for me and another girl who is due in 2 1/2 weeks. It was a lot of fun. Instead of games like the traditional baby shower, their was a bunch of appetizers and then we each were given a square of material that are going to be made into baby quilts for the two of use. They had some patterns for things we could embroidered onto the square of material or we could make something up. I thought that was such a cute idea. I embroidered a panda and the word china on my square for little boy Hunaker. He will be born in China. There are actually two babies in the branch under six months, one is Jada, who were born here and another 3 pregnant ladies who are having there babies here. That's a lot of babies for our little branch. I love babies, so I am excited.

It was also the ward Christmas party yesterday. Jada got a picture with Santa. We will post it as soon as we get it. We didn't bring our camera so we are just waiting for a member to email it to us. It was a fun Christmas party. We started out with a potluck dinner, and then the primary kids acted out the Christmas story, Santa Clause came, the kids went to do some activities and the adults watched part of the first presidencies Christmas message, then we sang Christmas carols.

We had spent a good portion of the say at the silk market Christmas shopping, which was really fun, so it was a full day for the whole family. Jada got really tired near the end but she had a lot of fun as well.

Belated Birthday Dinner

Mike made me a belated birthday dinner (we had to wait until a day off because he doesn't get home until close to 10 p.m. on work days). It was a redition of a special dinner mike prepared for me on our honeymoon. It was the same style of pasta, candles and music.

A few things have changed over the past few years: One being the location, and another a baby. But something that has not changed is that my husband is still have very loving and romantic. It was a beautiful evening. Thank you my love. And thank you to his mother for raising a great cook.

Be your posterity's best ancestor

As far as an update on Jada, she is adjusting well now to her new environment, I think she is even starting to enjoy all the attention.
There is a missionary couple in our branch, they teach english and are over family history and a bunch of other things here and there. The wife of the couple taught sunday school two sundays ago and while her lesson was on family history work she really emphasised what we can so now to be a good ancestor. She said, all of you who have children are already an ancestor. What legacy are you going to leave behind for your children. She showed a homemade decorative cloth for the table. It was nothing special looking, stitches were uneven and the pattern was unporportionate. The she read a quote from an elderly ladies journal who had pasted away. Through the journal entry we found out that this lady had made this for her granddaughter as a wedding gift. She had talked about the special relationship that this granddaughter and her had and how much it meant to her and she said "you know how I always say that the dinning room is the center of the home so I wanted to make something where a part of me could be in the center of your home. We also found out this lady had been practically blind at the time that she had made this.
The main point of her lesson I think was to encourage us to keep a journal with our experiences and testimony that our children, grandchildren, ect. will be able to benefit from. "Be your posterity's best ancestor."
Mike and I got this idea to create a book of a collection of recipes that come from our growing up years, foods that bring back memories and were traditions from each of our families. We also want to include comments and short stories that correspond. So far we are still working on jogging our memories and compiling lists of all the recipes we want to include. It will probably take some help of our mothers and grandmothers. We think this would be a unique and great way to leave behind a legacy of family traditions for our posterity. And it will help our children to feel connected to their ancestors and extended family. We have already made a recipe book that covered both of our missions and our goal is to at the end of our lives have made a recipe book series of all the major time periods of our lives, the places our family travels to and the traditions that come into our own home. I am really excited about this project. Food brings people together and so many of our best memories of family bonding moments and even outside the home are connected by a recipe.