Our Little Village

The longer I'm a mother the more I appreciate the old saying about how it takes a village to raise a child. Two of the people in our village are Peirce's primary teachers. They're a husband and wife team and two really terrific people.

Their influence is often shown in our conversations and things that happen in our family. Some examples are:

- One week for FHE we went for a walk in the park and then sat on a bench and shared our favorite scripture stories. Mine was those two midwives in Exodus that can't seem to get to the births quick enough to kill of those little baby boys they've been commanded to get rid of. Allen's was The Brother of Jared and how he forgot to pray for 3 years. Peirce's was, of course, Jonah and the Whale. Then there was Jill. She said her favorite story was Bro. L sharing his testimony last Fast Sunday. He had just seen the new Spiderman movie and said that at the end Spiderman says that you can always Chooes the Right (that's in the scriptures??)

- One of Bro L's dreams was to play in the NBA. When he was growing up Bro L went to a camp with Michael Jordan and MJ told them to always eat healthy as a part of being a great athlete. Specifically, he told them to not eat junk food....so Bro L never ate junk food from then on. Our kids were amazed at that. We do eat junk food...but hardly ever without someone commenting that Bro L never eats junk food.

- Jill has been having trouble with a "friend" at school. This is a girl she would really like to be friends with, and has been friends with her for a while - but lately the girl isn't very nice. I think she just doesn't quiet understand what makes a good friend quite the same as Jill does. The result is that Jill often comes home with a sad story of something unkind this girl said or did. A little while ago we went to Jill's school and the first thing Peirce did was march up to this girl and tell her how she needs to be nicer to his sister and that he doesn't like seeing his sister coming home and crying about mean things she has done. I was telling this story to a friend whose son is also in the same primary class and she said that Bro L always tells the boys in the class that they must look after their sisters. Apparently the message is sinking in!

- Today Peirce was playing with playdough. He made a guy with long long hair and announced, "Look mom! It's my primary teacher." Sis L has, in Peirce's words, the longest most beautiful hair ever. Actually, whenever one of my kids has a towel on their head, or a costume with long hair, or a wig, they say, "Look! I'm Sister L!"



- At a RS event recently, I mentioned how cool my kids think they are and another lady at the table said her kids are the same - and they're not even in their class. Apparently whatever Bro L says is gospel to many of the older boys in primary too.

I think Bro and Sis L are the greatest too.