In Full Voice

Sometimes I wish I had recorded more little tidbits of Camille and her quirks or little moments. Somehow I just lost all those with her. The trauma of her accident seemed to hard wipe my memory.

Anyway, so I am determined to record more fun little moments of my other kids and I had a great one today. We were sitting in church. The opening song began. All the kids had migrated down the pew from Jon to me. :) I smiled at him and told him they like me better, to which he nodded in agreement.

Noble was sitting between Sabrina and Ann Marie. The girls each had a hymn book open and we were all singing the opening hymn when suddenly I realized that we were ALL singing (in full voice) the opening hymn. There was Noble (who can barely say anything understandably) singing the song --- or some song that was supposed to be the song. He was singing just as loud as any other person. His own melody that sometimes hit the right pitch and mostly hit other notes but never sounded terrible. His words were just nonsense vowel sounds but they didn't seem so different so as to be distracting. He wasn't trying to be silly. He was just ... singing with us. It was awesome. :)

When the song ended he closed the book and put it away and sat right back up on the pew between his sisters. He did the same thing for the second hymn too. Now I don't want to give the impression that my family is this perfectly behaved little group all in a row all of sacrament meeting. That is not reality. Both Jon and I had to take Noble out to the hall today during one point of the meeting or another. And he still threw a Book of Mormon hero figure about 3 pews over. But at least for that little space in time, he was just awesome. I haven't ever seen a kid so young sing along with hymns so well. I can tell he just LOVES music.

Harrison is getting cuter by the day. I am eating him up.

Annie cracked me up the other day. She said she was sitting in bed trying to fall asleep and she was thinking about my cookie truffles. (insert my smile here) She said as she was just thinking about those truffles she thought they were as good as See's Candies and then BAM it hit her. (her words) We should open a candy shop and sell my truffles. Then we could all work there together and Daddy wouldn't have to have a computer store.

I can just imagine her 8 year old brain thinking about how great it would be to all own and work in a candy shop together as a family. I told her I loved the idea (which she was very serious about) and she ought to go ask her dad about that. He informed her that he makes more money selling computers than we would selling truffles and her dreams were dashed. Then just yesterday I made about 250 truffles in 6 different varieties for a baby shower I was helping with. Annie was with me at the shower and people were admiring the truffles. Annie pulled me aside and said, "See Mom, I told you people would buy your truffles because look everyone loves them so isn't it obvious that they would by them!"

Not sure I will be going in the truffle business anytime soon but I told Annie I would consider it when she was a teenager and could help me make them. I just love her brain (and the rest of her too.)

I have a post to write later this week about my Lauren and I just wrote about Sabrina so enough about the kids for this post. Just a few notes about questions from the comments:

Casey Anthony trial - someone wanted my take on that. That tragedy went down so soon after Camille died that I purposely did not watch any of the media coverage. It was just too much when I had such a heavy heart and so much grief. I couldn't watch news of a child who died and a mother accused.

I haven't followed it at all since then for the same reason. I didn't want to watch and find I believed the mother did it because that would just make me so mad that a mother would have so little value for the precious life entrusted to her. I also didn't want to watch and find I felt the mother didn't do it because then I would feel extra sorry for the mom who was grieving her daughter just like I was and also having to deal with being accused of causing her death on top of it. Whether she did it or not I didn't want to watch. So I really have no opinion on that case because I am completely ignorant of any facts more than a child died, a mother was accused and tried and from what I hear acquitted.

Harder to be LDS in heavily LDS populated place or sparsely LDS populated place - I have lived in both and would say that for me it was harder to live in a densely LDS populated place. Being LDS is part of how I define myself. It is a strong component of my personal identity. It is what makes me different. When I moved to Utah for college it was hard to find the other things about me that also make me unique outside of religious and LDS cultural norms. Maybe for some with less strong personalities it is easier to live in a highly LDS populated area because they have a harder time going against the norm. Maybe for some it is easier to go to church when everyone else is doing it too. But for me, I would go no matter where I lived. I'd even go if everyone in my ward hated me. I don't go to church for social reasons (they are just an amazing side benefit) so it doesn't matter. We have about a 10% LDS population in Vegas and I like that because you are still different but not usually totally unfamiliar.