I'm so loved...I think...

So tonight Talia gave a beautiful prayer in which she was so heartfelt in asking for her Dad to want to join the church and be baptized so he could baptize her. After the prayer was finished, I told her that I thought she had said some beautiful things. She tearfully said "I really want him to be baptized, because I want us to be all together in heaven...

"[see, the LDS doctrine is that lots of good people are in heaven - there are 3 'levels' of heaven, but to be in heaven as a family, that is, to be all together, the parents and the children need to be "sealed" together in the temple,
and of course to do that you need to be a member of the church; see mormon.org for further clarification - or just ask! ]

...and Talia continued saying ..."I want him to be with me in heaven because I kind of like him better than you."

I really had to stifle the laughter. She cracks me up. Not only that but she went on to say that the reason she likes Dad more than me is "because I'm a girl and I'm the firstborn." Not much birth-order theory here, is there???

It's good that I am secure enough (today) in myself and my parenting that she can say things like that without hurting my feelings. She's so funny!!!!

Talia's Song

Talia wrote a song. She wrote the lyrics, and created the melody. I added chords to suit. Here she is and ain't it grand!

Lyrics are as follows:

It's snowing, it's snowing down from the sky
It's winter, it's winter and the ground is white
Snowmen, snowmen are being made
The trees are bare, the trees are bare,
Everything's covered in snow

Winter: December, January, February, March
Spring is coming
Birds are chirping, sprouts are blooming, time is changing, snow is melting
Getting warmer, school is one hour earlier

Then snow falls, snow comes down on it all
I'm so bummed the snow is coming down again
It's snowing, it's snowing down from the sky
Still winter, still winter and the ground is white

Being All-Inclusive is an Art!

Lately, Talia and Malachi have been trying to include every possibility in their prayers when it comes to asking the Lord to bless others. Talia was including spiders for awhile, and there were some prayers that followed "please bless all the spiders" with "and all the reptiles and all the mammals and all the fish..."etc. etc. Malachi got in the habit of including all of our ancestors, but upon discussion with Talia decided to extend it to "all the people who ever lived before us." They used to talk about how if you blessed everyone in the world and everyone in outer space, you'd forget about the astronauts who were sort of in-between - you know, outside of the world but still enough within the atmosphere that they weren't in "outer space." Then we had a lot of astronauts included in our prayers.

Well, tonight I heard a prayer of maximum inclusion. Malachi said "please bless everybody in the universe, and everybody in any other universe..." and then he thought for a couple seconds and said "...and everybody who isn't in any universe!"

Afterward, he and Talia agreed that finally, this time there was nobody who was left out.