spiritual moments with the kids

Every morning, Abbi and I have been reading from the Book of Mormon.  We read for just a few minutes after breakfast while the car warms up for us to go to school.  Alternating verses, we each read aloud and sometimes pause to talk about what is happening.  Once in a while, when I tell her what's going on in our story, she interrupts and tells me.  Abbi's reading has improved a lot this school year and I am so proud of her while we read the words that she can do on her own.  Each morning, she gets out her brand new scriptures {from her baptism in December} and turns right to where we left off.  While we were in St. George, she still remembered and wanted to read and even read on her own a little bit.  I love this time with Abbi.  I have lots of good memories of reading scriptures at my parents' breakfast table and I hope Abbi will, too.

While we were in St. George, we visited the St. George Temple and the Visitors' Center.  Abbi and Noah loved that there were missionaries there.  They spent a lot of time in the display about the life of Jesus Christ.  Abbi and Marlie loved the diorama of Jerusalem.  Noah asked me to hold him and we walked around the edge of the room and talked about all of the pictures of Jesus.  He worried about the picture of the Savior hanging on the cross but it was such a special experience to talk about the Savior's love for every person.  Instead of telling him how Christ did that for everyone {because that's probably hard for his mind to understand} I talked about how Christ did it for Noah, for me, for Abbi, for Dad, etc., because He loves us SO much.  Noah's favorite painting was Jesus with the children after He was resurrected.  For his birthday, Noah wants clothes and a hat like the little boy standing next to Jesus.  This was a great few minutes with Noah because his little attention span loved it and he was so interested.

To think, I could have been at work or we could have skipped the temple visit or that I wouldn't have these great kids makes me all the more grateful for them and for this season of my life.