Introducing Our Newest Acolyte!

Kaylin went through acolyte training at the first of June and was able to be an acolyte for the first time on June 20th. What a good job she did! She was very proud of herself. I'm so glad that she wants to be a part of the church in this way! Here she is looking over the handbook at her training and learning all the terms she needs to know. Checking out the acolyte closet. Getting ready to practice for the first time! First time with fire - they were excited about this!

And here she is doing it for the first time "for real"! She was SO excited and did great! Waiting for church to start...

Walking in

Lighting the candles. She had a hard time getting it lit because the wick was too low, but she eventually got it.

All done and about to leave at the end of the service.

Annual Conference

The church's Annual Conference was in Lakeland this year and since none of the other spouses that we knew came, I wasn't expecting it to be an especially exciting conference. However, the girls and I found plenty to do and ended up having a fabulous time! Of course, I knew it wasn't going to be too bad when I walked into our hotel room and saw this out the window! We spent 2 of our mornings hanging out over in the stores because we didn't have the van to drive anywhere else. We found other things to do at the hotel as well. We swam quite a bit and the girls loved it! We discovered that Elianna is a little dare devil in the water. She loved going under! We also had a "movie rest" each day to give us a little down time. The girls didn't complain a bit, I think they were glad for it. I also brought a couple craft projects to in the hotel room, because that's one of my girls' favorite things in the world. But our most favorite activity we found was the day the we took Jeff to his meetings and kept the car. We found a children's museum that was so much fun! They had it set up like a town. There was a bank theater firetruck news station dress up area for children's stories (here Kaylin and Annlee are taking turns being Little Red Riding Hood school grocery store boat airplaneand doctors office. Downstairs was an orange grove where they could pick oranges send them to the factory make orange juice and even sell them at the grove stand. Elianna enjoyed a few minutes playing in this little area that I thought looked like a baby jail! And they all enjoyed a few turns on the slide in the orange grove.