Personal Progress, goodmail, and a sneak peek!

4 more days and only 3 nights until London!

At the LDS Distribution Center are these little books that help YW through their personal progress goals and award. My personal progress book is in storage, but I absolutely loved to go through it and word towards my award. The summer before my senior year in HS I tried out for cheer leading and gloriously made it for the football season. Unfortunately it meant that I couldn't go to camp, because they were on the same week, which also meant (not quite clear why) that I couldn't obtain my award. Perhaps my memory is off, and maybe I just didn't aspire to it as much as I should have - but in the end, I skipped my last year of girls camp and my personal progress award. I've heard of women finishing their award as mother's and "grown-ups" and would very much like to be one of these women.

My girls are only five, yet I feel a strong obligation to them to start talking about the YW values The value of there virtue and personal strength is upon my shoulders as their mother. We started last FHE by presenting them with the value of "good works". I printed off photos of people doing "good works" and we talked about how they could serve others. I will present one of these values a month and rotate back to the beginning when I'm done. The lesson was maybe five minutes long - short and to the point; my girls don't have that long of attention span!

These books I also purchased at the distribution center, they are pocket-sized like the books above - but they are blank inside. I use this book to document times when they were "amazing"; when they went out of their way to help me and others. For instance, last night I stepped on a piece of glass from a frame that had fallen off a window sil because of the wind. Craig, who loves to do "minor surgery" on these types of home injuries is trying to get it out of my foot. Cici and Nini sat on either side of me holding my hands to make me feel better. Afterwards, Nini came in with her treasured superman blanket and put it over me. She also put my sock on my for head copying a cold compress; they both were concerned and showed their feelings by talking and helping me. I documented it in their book and put the value I think it represented under the date. I just want them to know they can make a difference.

Thank you to Rachel for the Time Alive book she gave me at the blogger party. I've just had a chance to start reading it and I love it. It's so uplifting and to the point -thank you Rachel for your inspiration to give this to me! Natasha sent those cute little Thanksgiving stickers that I will be using in the girl's scrapbook - thank you! And Barb, what an amazing card and I love the cute book mark - it's already in use my friend!


Here is a sneak peek at the quiet books we will be making for a ward. We just had two new families in our ward, one from Haiti with five children and one from Brazil with six children! Our enrichment activity couldn't have come at a better time. We will be making 10 of these along with lots of other quiet-type books. I'll dedicate a whole post to it when I've got everything put together.

Do you have any great quiet book ideas for our ward?

Have you seen these pocket-sized books before?

Do you live next to a distribution center?

PS If you are unfamiliar with personal progress click here. This link will take you to a PDF file of the book in the first picture.