In the Specific is the Universal

"In the specific is the universal" is one of my favorite sayings. 

Speaking of favorite sayings, for the past couple of months, Evan does this thing where, if you do something weird or funny, he'll say with a shake of the head "dads..."

Like when Jim pours water into their cup and lifts the pitcher super high while still pouring, he says:

"dads...."

or when Andrew takes ornaments off the tree and throws them on the ground:

"Andrew..."

or when I randomly sing a loud song:

"moms..."

shaking his head. 

Back to the title of this post...

the other day my friend texted me this link to an old Ensign article. 

Read it. 

I got her text early in the morning while I was laying in bed in that quiet time before the kids are awake. 

 I read that article, then sat up straight in my bed totally on fire about it. It was everything I want to say about blogging. And it reminded me that it is good and lovely to record the most mundane and trivial of Larsen nonsense. 

It is good and lovely to take the ethereal memories and turn them into concrete moments that we can turn over in our hands. 

In these specific small moments of the mundane is where the universal head nodding happens.

Like this moment on the way home from piano. I had all three kids in the car. The roads were icy, and we were crawling home. 

I pulled up to a parking area to take a picture of this amazing sky, and the kids freaked out. They did not like deviating from the snowy course. 

"Take only one picture!"

then I took about three pictures, and Evan got mad about that. 

This Sunday we woke up to snow falling.

It fell all entire day, so church was cancelled. 

Avery planned a lesson and we sat at her feet and were taught for close to an hour (she made a family home evening binder at activity days, so there was an entire script/lesson that she followed closely).

For the activity, she gave us a piece of paper and told us to make a "Christmas symbol" with. 

I made a ninja star, Jim made a cool cootie catcher that included all the symbols. 

Then Andrew ate Nutella out of a spoon.

Yesterday we went to CreativiTea to paint ceramic ornaments. 

Avery methodically painted a pattern on her snowflake.

Evan...had a hard time. We made the mistake of picking one that needed specific face details, which were above his skill set. 

Andrew was so confused when we didn't get to take his penguin home. Where did that penguin go? 

Try and explain to the little boys about firing the items in a kiln. 

Also last night, Avery had a low key piano recital at her teacher's house. This cute teenager is her teacher. They played a duet of "jolly old st nicholas". 

Christmas card prep. Our pictures are always so second rate compared to the masterpieces that come through our mailboxes. haha That's how the Larsens do. 

See those socks in Andrew's hands? He would not put them down, so our Christmas card features a pair of dirty socks. We took a thousand shots because most of the time he was waving them in the air. 

Lastly, here is our outside tree decorated with snow. 

Isn't that beautiful?

The Whatcom County emergency plan for snow/ice on the roads is to wait for rain. After an entire week of iced roads, the rain came. It was such a surprise to look out the window and see the black road once again. The rain did it's job and cleared that ice.