Give a Day, Get a Disney Day

This is a picture of the ticket vouchers I printed off for Disneyland. Our family did the Give a Day, Get a Disney Day program. We made birthday bags for the juvenile justice Services and a quilt. The kids decorated each paper bag and put in a candy bar, drink, chips and a homemade card. We made 60 bags and Joseph tied a fleece quilt. We had a fun time doing this for family night. I was surprised at all the different opportunities for the children to serve as I browsed through the different options, I think I also found a Eagle project idea for Jake . This was a great way to serve as a family with the added perk of a free visit Disneyland.

Dresses for Less......formals on a Budget

A stag dance.

Her other dresses

Last summer I was on a mission to find some formals for Natalie as I garage sale shopped. I ended up with finding 6. I then found 4 at a thrift store. A manufacturer had donated their old inventory and all the dresses still had the tags on them. Some of these had original price tags of $200. The thrift store sold each of them for $35.00. It was always a risk when I purchased these at the yard sale, because Natalie usually was not with me, but I figured I could always alter them or or resale them. I think only two of the dresses will not work. One, Natalie does not like and the other requires too many complicated alterations to make it work. Here is what I spent;

garage sales:

black dress 8.00

red dress with shawl 15.00

short green dress 5.00

light blue dress 8.00

light blue dress (one she doesn't like) 3.00

red dress (too many alterations) 40.00

thrift store

light blue sparkly 35.00

royal blue 35.00

magenta 35.00

princess blue one 35.00

TOTAL: 196.00

That seems like a lot, but I figured she has 8 dresses she will wear and it works out to be about $26 a dress. I told her earlier that I would buy her one dress a year, so this year for the price of one she has 8. I do need to work on my sewing ability, though. The top light blue dress, she is wearing above, I had to take in and altered the sleeves. When she gave her date a hug goodnight her right sleeve ripped off. hahahah :)

Have I Done Any Good in the World Today?

On New Years day I shared this wonderful story with the children (it actually is about Natalie's friend's grandfather). I then also reminded them of President Monson's recent talk on service. After reading the story and talking about service, I gave each of them their own notebooks. I told them as a family we will try to do an extra service for someone else each day and record it.

Well, we have been doing this for over a month now and I must report that some children are better than others in recording their good deeds. I keep most the notebooks in a basket by the table and some of the kids have their notebooks by their beds. Tomorrow we may pull out these notebooks to review how we are doing after family night. This video below would be good to show if you are doing this for family night.

Have I Done Any Good in the World Today?

Josh--BYU Idaho!!!

Josh found out yesterday that he was accepted to BYU Idaho. He is really excited and looking forward to attending school there next fall. WAY TO GO JOSH!!!!