Young Women bracelets

The Young Women's President and I decided we wanted to give something special to our girls at our New Beginnings program this year. It all started with our theme "Testimony...the oil in our lamps" which is based on the parable of the Ten Virgins. I found these cute oil lamp charms at www.charmingldsgifts.com and thought we could make a cute beaded key chain with a bead for each of the 8 YW values. Then I thought, it won't take many more beads to just turn these into bracelets. I didn't know at the time how much bigger it would get. I then decided one little charm wouldn't do because we could fit seven on the bracelet between each value. So we looked at the rest of the charms and decided on six more that we could tie a gospel principle to. After lots of test runs and MANY trips to the store to buy or return beads to make the perfect bracelet, I finally had a cute finished product!





For those who may not know or remember, the 8 values and colors are:

Faith - White
Divine Nature - Blue
Individual Worth - Red
Knowledge - Green
Choice & Accountability - Orange
Good Works - Yellow
Integrity - Purple
Virtue - Gold



We plan to present the bracelet and the oil lamp charm at New Beginnings then have a special lesson or activity to gradually present the rest of the charms. From left to right shown on the picture above (5 1/2 of the charms are seen), this is what each charm represents:

Girl praying - The importance of prayer and continuous communication with Heavenly Father
Crown - Our "royalty" as daughters of God and the importance of our divine roles
Salt Lake Temple - The blessings of the temple including eternal marriage
Heart - The unconditional love our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ has for us
Liahona - Obedience to the Lords commandments and the direction we may receive through the Holy Ghost
Smiley sun - Remember to find joy in our journey here on earth and bring joy to others
Oil Lamp - Building a testimony of our own that we may be prepared at the last day

These ended up costing more than we thought, mostly the 7 charms per bracelet. But I found a new hobby and it is way easy to do. I also have lots of my own beads now to make cute bracelets! Even just doing the beads for each value would be cute. Maybe other YW leaders out there could use this idea for their Young Women too. Enjoy!

Update:
We gave the bracelets to our YW last night and they were really excited about them! I was really worried that they wouldn't care, lose them, and end up being a waste of time and money. As soon as the meeting was over though the girls came straight up to where I had the bracelets and stuck their wrists out waiting for me to clip theirs on. Yeah! They like them and it was worth it!

First Snow of Winter

I know I am way behind on this post considering this first real winter storm was on December 9th. However, I went to all the trouble taking pictures so I decided I'd still write a post about it. This day was very, VERY cold and very, VERY windy! If you combine extreme cold, wind, and snow you get what sounds like your house being sandblasted. You could see each individual snow flake because it was so cold. Because the front doors to the town homes are set further back than the garage, the wind would swirl around the corner and blow a bunch of snow up to the front door. This is what it looked like.



And looking from my door outside...



This is after I shoveled the snow off the driveway. I started off with one snow shovel and realized quickly I was going to kill myself before I finished. So, I drove to the store and purchased a plow type snow shovel that I could just push. Much better!



The dark spot in the top right corner with a small line of snow is our mailbox. It was covered up to the box. With everything I shoveled off the driveway it looked like we got a lot more than we actually did. We got about 10-11 inches in that first storm.



We have had a few other big snow storms since. I've been out to shovel snow about 7 times now. The last storm only left about 4 inches but the snow plows come by and throw a foot high pile of snow right at the end of your driveway like a barrier. I shoveled up to the last section where all that snow was and decided to leave it for the next day since it was still snowing. I went out the next morning and had to re-shovel everything again up to the end of the driveway. Then it took two more times going out before the driveway was completely clear. That's quite a workout! December was really our coldest month so far with temperatures in the negatives. That's when the cold is painful and it doesn't matter how many layers you have on. January has been more mild with only one snow storm and temperatures in the upper teens to the low thirties. Not bad. I hear this is very mild for Wisconsin. If that's the case, I don't want to live here another winter. I just wasn't made for the cold. Our neighbors keep there heat set to 68° which is what I ONLY set it to at night. I have it set to 72° or 73° during the day and I still require a jacket, socks/slippers, and sometimes a blanket. Wherever we end up next better be warmer than Sparta, Wisconsin!

Military Ball

Back in November, Jaren and I attended the Military Ball for his Brigade. We got the picture back and I finally got it scanned so I can post it. Here it is...



(If you click on the picture you can see a larger image that will show a little more detail)

For those that may be wondering...yes, I'm always that much whiter than Jaren. Such is the life of those with fair skin. It almost looks unnatural. Oh well. Thanks to Teresa, Whitney, Mickell, and Ashley for helping me pick out a dress! It was great fun shopping!

Our Christmas and New Year

Jaren decided he wanted to continue to work through the holidays so we didn't go home to visit family. I believe this was our very first Christmas that this was the case (aside from Jaren being in Iraq last Christmas). His work schedule wasn't too bad though. The Army takes all Federal holidays off and usually even throws in a 3 or 4 day pass. The Mon.-Wed. before Christmas, they worked half days and went home. Then we got a 4 day pass! Wahoo! Off to go visit the next best thing to family...friends!

We drove out to visit Jared and Jenny (Jaren's best friend and his cute wife). The drive to Kentucky was only supposed to take about 9 hours but we added an additional 2 hours to our trip with tolls going by Chicago, snow and freezing rain, holiday traffic, going home from work traffic, and accidents from bad weather traffic. Regardless of the less than pleasant drive down, we were really happy to finally hang out with Jared and Jen and their funny dog Charlie. We only took one picture right before we left and I can't even post it because Jared took it on their camera. Ours was already packed in the car. While their we got to see a booming metropolis compared to Sparta, WI. We watched movies on Jaren's new blu-ray player, Jared and Jaren played their computer game together, we ate lots of good food, and enjoyed a fun Christmas morning opening presents together. We were sad to leave and afterward I started bugging Jaren about finding a job at Ft Knox somewhat close to Jared and Jen. It's not likely though.

We stayed home New Year's Eve. We are probably really boring by some people's standards because we just watched several episodes of our new favorite show that is no longer airing...Stargate SG-1. Yes, we both like it and I know we're probably geeks for it. I think we paused right around midnight to kiss and say "Happy New Year". Then we finished the episode and went to bed. I thought it was a great night! The next day we went down to Madison to do a bit of shopping and looking around. We stayed at the Great Wolf Lodge in Wisconsin Dells (an hour north of Madison). They have an indoor water park so we ate dinner and played there the rest of the night. We decided to be adventurous and drive out to Milwaukee the next day to see Lake Michigan and tour the city. Our real excuse was that Jaren's favorite Italian restaurant, Carrabba's, is in Milwaukee (the closest one). We went there for a late lunch and then saw Lake Michigan, drove through the city, went to a cool museum, made a stop at Cabela's at Jaren's request, then drove the 3 hours back home. It was a lot of fun just hanging out with Jaren. I think we really need to have some kids soon though. Christmas morning just isn't as fun without them! All in good time. I hope everyone had a fun and safe holiday season!