YW in Excellence - Standards Night

Young Women in Excellence 2018 - Standards Night

We decided our girls needed a good reminder of the standards that are set from For the Strength of Youth. I feel like limits are constantly pushed as we bend the rules and make exceptions for choices we make.

The Bishop spoke along with me and talked about the Savior vs Satan. The Savior teaches line upon line, precept upon precept. Satan teaches lie upon lie, deceit upon deceit. He also talked about the standard height for a basketball hoop. The standard is set no matter the height of the player (he compared Shaquille O'Neal to some short player I didn't know and can't remember) Standards aren't meant to be raised or lowered depending on the person, the standard is set and its up to us to keep to our Standards. We love our Bishop!

For my talk, I made a spiritual warrior by dressing a volunteer in 8 pieces of armor that represented the 8 values. My secretary works at a seminary building (as a secretary - imagine that!) and was able to hook me up with some legit looking armor from one of the teachers. One of my counselors also had a friend (whom i've never met) who made us a girdle simply out of the goodness of her heart. There really are amazing people out there and I'm grateful for that random act of kindness that saved my bacon ;)

Here is the link to my value armor references. 

I issued a challenge to our girls to complete their personal progress and earn their medallions in ONE year. The plan changes in 2020 and I really want to push them to finish! I found a cute blog with a 12 week plan, so I used that, but adapted it to make it a yearly plan. Here is the link to print the 12 month plan.

The girls all made "standard" flags, or their own "Title of Liberty" where they decorated flags with their standards or things they are willing to fight for. I thought they turned out cute.

Jeff and I made the wooden "scroll" frames shown above to hold their pics for the year. Super cheap and easy to make. Wood, magnets, twine and super glue ;)

We got a Ward Photographer this year (I didn't actually know there could be a calling for that) so she took all the pictures and did an amazing job! We went to the Jordan River Temple and were done in less than an hour. The pics turned out fabulous! One of my favorite photo sessions so far. 

 

2018 was a great year for the Georgetown Young Women!

Ellie lately....

Ellie started dance class! Hopefully this makes up for the year without school. She LOVES it. When I picked her up on her first day she had sparkles in her hair, and "salt and pepper" feet (a white dot on one foot and a black dot on the other) She also gets a sucker on the way out which is just the icing on the cake!

I was only able to go to one class, and only for a small part of it. While I was there Ellie was super distracted and wouldn't listen to her teacher. So...I got kicked out haha. Turns out she does a lot better at listening without me there.

Ellie also likes that she gets one on one mom time while Boston is in school and Rylee is napping. 

We like to bake things so we have a snack for Boston and Daddy when they get home. We have made cookies, banana bread, pumpkin bread and pumpkin roll and all sorts of things! Ellie has learned to crack an egg all on her own, and Mom is learning that its OK to make messes in the kitchen ;)  

It is sometimes impossible to get a picture where Ellie looks normal. The more Jeff yells at her to "be normal!" The more she looks like....well, this:

Jeff and I laughed for a long time over these.

We recently found out just how much Ellie loves her siblings when we told her (on a particularly annoying Ellie day) that we were going to send Rylee back to the store we got her from. We reassured her we would get another baby and we could name the new baby Rylee. She completely flipped out. Screaming, crying, throwing a complete fit. And not just Ellie, Boston ran to block the door and was trying to stop Jeff from putting her in the car. He had a look on his face of...i'm pretty sure they're kidding, but just in case, i'm going to try and stop this haha. And just because we are cruel parents, Jeff got all the way to buckling Rylee in her carseat and the car started before we caved and told her it wasn't possible to send Rylee back to the "store." Two minutes later when she had calmed down enough to start being annoying again, she fell for it AGAIN and started throwing a tantrum. Its going to take some work to teach her the beauty of sarcasm, and i'm going to enjoy every bit of it. We love this crazy little Ellie girl!