Painted Book of Mormon Activity

Today for FHE we talked about syzygial relationships...or how thinking celestially can help us align with God. Really I just thought it would be fun to talk about alignment today, after watching the eclipse. And I was in luck because this month's Liahona had a couple of articles about just that—aligning our hearts and wills with God. I gave the kids a head's up about today's topic at dinner and told them all to come prepared to share something and everyone (except Alexander and Phoebe) was ready to share. 

We talked about some of the General Conference talks we listened to this past weekend and shared thoughts we had about scriptures we'd been reading recently. So it worked out well!

Last week we finally got around to painting the covers of our copies of The Book of Mormon. We'd seen many people do this and decided we wanted to do it as a family and told the kids they could choose whatever language they'd like for their copy of The Book of Mormon. Rachel is just finishing up her second semester of Spanish, so she chose Spanish. Miriam has been studying German for quite some time, so she chose German, as did Alexander (who studies languages by whim...the other day he told me about the "galactic" lesson he'd recently completed...but he mean Gaelic). Zoë has been learning French at co-op, so she chose French. Benjamin simply wanted English. That's what we did for Phoebe as well. I chose Russian. Andrew chose Italian. 

So we ordered all these books months ago and some of them came in right away, but the Spanish and French books were on backorder for some reason. But eventually—at long last—we received another package...with only a Spanish book in it. And then waited and waited and waited some more and finally— finally!—Zoë's French book arrived. 

We painted our books last Monday. It was pure chaos, but everyone had a good time.

We covered a portion of our table in paper to keep the little ones from accidentally (or purposefully) scribbling on the table with the paint markers.

I didn't take too many pictures of the process because Phoebe was...yikes...so involved in her artistic endeavors (and I was her facilitator, passing her colours as she called out for them and making sure everything got recapped and so forth). But I took a few pictures at the beginning of the process:

Phoebe announced she was going to draw a snowman on the back of her book, and then went and drew this masterpiece:

We were all very impressed, especially when she asked for orange so she could add a carrot nose. She put that carrot nose right in the middle of the middle snowball, but still! It was a pretty awesome snowman.

Here's Alexander with a temple that he drew (and before his book turned into the "German Book of Mormon Party" book, bedazzle with so many snazzy bedazzlements):

I worked on my book after Andrew finished his and we decided that Phoebe needed her painting privileges revoked. He took her away to get her ready for bed and to read a few stories, giving me some Phoebe-free time. 

Here are our more-or-less finished projects:

Rachel is grinning fiercely as a joke in that picture (don't mind her). 

Here she is with everyone assembled, looking a little more normal:

Here are the fronts of everyone's books:

Top row (L to R): Zoë, me, Alexander, Andrew; bottom row (L to R): Rachel, Benjamin, Miriam, Phoebe. And there's a bonus Spanish book on the far right—that's also Miriam's. 

After Miriam did finished her German book she asked if she could also decorate a Spanish book that she found kicking around. While she's been studying German for several years now, she's recently begun studying Spanish more earnestly as well (since she attends the Spanish ward, playing the organ for sacrament meeting and the piano for primary singing time). She's been doing lessons on the church's language portal as well, and she just thought having a Spanish copy of her own might be nice. Here it is:

And here's Phoebe's (you can see the carrot nose on her snowman now):

She been loving sitting down for family scripture study with her own set of scriptures.

Here's Miriam's German Book of Mormon (her little bees ended up so cute):

And here's Benjamin's book, which we were all rather impressed with:

He started out with plain circles and when we commented that it looks planetary in theme, he took that idea and ran with it.

Andrew used an ancient Christian seal that he'd used in his design of Ancient Christians:

Alexander turned his book into a "German Book of Mormon Party" book:

I took inspiration for my book directly from this blog post (and haven't had time to even think about decorating the back of it, so the front will just have to do):

Rachel came up with a beautiful flower motif for her book:

And Zoë had Easter on her mind while decorating her copy:

We've been reading the Book of Mormon together this year and all year long I've had my Russian copy out alongside my English copy. I read along in Russian while other people are reading out loud and then switch to English when it's my turn. It's been a fun challenge to try to keep up (translating as I follow along) and now that the kids more or less all have a copy of The Book of Mormon in a foreign language, they've also been following along while translating.