Light the World!

After a month of an Attitude of Gratitude during November, it is time to "Light the World!" This is an effort by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints worldwide to spend time serving others. It is so fun to do.

We sat down as a family and discussed all the things that we could do and what we wanted to do. For the first weekend of December we went to the Festival of Trees to honor Pluba. She is still in Europe with Papa on her mission in Europe so she could not make it. I love going to the Festival of Trees, it brings good memories of when I was younger and the Festival played such a large part of our lives. Maybe that is where I learned to love decorating for Christmas.

The Festival of Trees is a large fundraiser for the large regional children's medical hospital in Salt Lake City, UT. We talked to Lucky Dragon about the way the trees and decorations are donated by people for the children that need to have medical care. He understood that it was the same hospital where Koala Bear almost died this year. When I reminded him of that, he said, "No, she did die at the hospital, remember? Then the doctors got her to come back to life." Such a smart little guy. Nothing gets past him. After he understood that the money helps the hospital he wanted to buy one. He was determined to buy something to help out.

As we walked around and admired the many trees, we stopped and looked at the photos of the people they were memorialized. I tried to read him a few of the short stories about those people, but had to stop when two different stories of infants dying choked me up so bad I could not speak.

We loved the trees, our favorites included a half BYU and half UofU tree, two different Harry Potter trees, a Lego tree and many many more.

The gingerbread houses were also well done. In some ways they were better than the trees. The detail on some of them was amazing. It was such a blessing to go and see how selfless people use their talents and creativity to help children.

 Koala Bear loves snowmen. She wants to look at all of them and see of they are Olaf. She squeals at every snowman that she sees.

We then went to a funeral for one of Lady Hiva's cousin's children. Seeing the little casket there as we stood in the cold, all I could think about is our children that we have buried in Hawaii. What a blessing to know our children are taken care of. I walked past all of the little headstones and read the names. All I could think about is what those families must have gone through, or still are going through. My heart went out to them, at the same time I know we can say "you will make it" to them, because we too experienced it and survived.

We played in the beautiful white snow that fell on Sunday and tin the evening we decorated cards together.

He read books to her until she fell asleep

Lucky Dragon wanted to cut out his own words...and this is what he chose to say

Koala Bear and Lucky Dragon loved the lights. She was really wary of the Santa that canoed out to us to tell us jokes. That was until he offered candy and started to leave, then she thought he was pretty cool. Today we went to the Provo River light cruise in Provo. It was fun to go see the lights. I think we were the only people crazy enough to be out in the cold.

Our two little muggles are so fun. Lucky Dragon is loving finding opportunities to help and serve others. The other night Lady Hiva was sitting with Koala Bear and was saying, "Say I" She would respond, "Aye." Then "Say love,"  "Lov." "Say you!" "You!" "Now say it all together, say I love you!"  A moment's pause then I hear a little voice, "HUGS!" haha. I guess that works too.