Play Eat Play Eat Play Eat

Stephen had to work and Nathan was busy, SO the girls and I decided to have a day to ourselves. My first instinct was let’s get some spring cleaning done. However, the more I thought about that the more I didn’t want to do that. PLUS, the weather was going to be in the low 70’s. We had to get out and enjoy it! Plans were made and off we went.

We started at the movie theater for the first showing of “Lion”. I bawled like a baby at the end of the movie and was embarrassed to look at people as we left the theater. The movie is about a young boy in India that gets lost from his brother. He ends up in Australia and the story is about trying to find his way home. I couldn’t help but be overwhelmed by the mother bond that he had with both mothers. Anyway, it was a really good movie!

We then headed over to a fun pizza place to grab some lunch. We needed a little energy to hike.

My kids know how much I enjoy hiking and are sure good sports to put up with me. Kaylee practiced with her camera for her photography class. Rebecca told us all of her drama at school and the little girls rolled their eyes at all of it.

We hiked a little trail near Garden of the Gods. Such an absolutely gorgeous day!

Oh how I love these sweet girls and their different personalities! Oh how grateful I am that one of them didn’t end up in Australia like in the movie!

Selfies always make me smile!

We hike Pancake Rocks a lot. The girls thought the different layers in the rock looked like bacon and deemed this the Bacon Rock Hike.

As soon as we were good and tired, we headed back to the van. I knew that we had burned quite a few calories so we needed something else to eat….

Mixed with Costco’s smoothie we were able to replenish our sugar levels. I have decided that days like this are what I enjoy most. They always involve, play, eat, play, eat, play, eat….

We ended the day going over to a friend’s house for dinner and then a really fun Family Home Evening that I will have to post. It was a beautiful day with my four beautiful daughters! SO grateful for the time that I have with them.

Baby Projects

My baby still loves showing off her projects and tests. My high schoolers tend to hide their tests and papers in their backpacks, but not Jerrica.

She still posts her spelling tests on the fridge, has a grin with her school projects, and gets so excited for special days at school that you would think the day was her birthday.

She came home last night with a “Cursive License” and you would have thought that she was 16 showing me her drivers license. We immediately put it on the fridge for all to see! This included the appliance repair man that stopped by last night. He saw it, and oohed and ahhed all over that cursive license. The smile that shined through her braces as he was praising her made me gush!

So I must post all of her stuff least we forget. There was Viking Day at the first of February.

Complete with making shields, stories, drumsticks and rice pudding. Jerrica believes that this would have been a fun time period to live in, yet I beg to differ. Why did they have to wear such heavy furs and coats? Ugh, because it was awfully cold where they lived.

Here is her animal puppet that she had to make to go with her animal report. She also dissected an owl pellet that was filled with little bones. They had to put the bones together to prove that the owl had eaten a mouse. Then of course a colored and labeled 3-D globe that can be hung up in her room.

School is AWESOME, according to Jerrica!

Expensive Cheap Art

I absolutely LOVE art! There is something about it that moves me, makes me think and feel. I love the messages that are sent through art.

My problem though, is that it is very expensive. I sometimes dread telling Stephen how much I spent on some home decor item. He never sees it as a need such as food. However, I enjoy nice things to look at in our home, and I believe that art brings a spirit into a home.

ANYWAY, I have loved this piece since I first saw it. The painting is by Brian Kershisnik and is called “She Will Find What is Lost”. Here is what Brian said about his artwork….

“If I may ask it of you, I ask that you respect that my intention for this piece was to speak to the most intensely private and intimate kind of supernatural interference, influence, and assistance, whatever your particular experience.  I don’t have to agree with you to believe that whatever your gender, circumstance, or issue, many unseen forces are interested in you, love you, and work to influence matters for your profound benefit.  Most of what we all do is resist it, misinterpret it, or mess it up, but my experience indicates that these unseen efforts persist impossibly.  I thank God for that.”

I love it and can relate to it! There are SO many special people in my life guiding and helping me, some I don’t even see. Not a day goes by without someone influencing and helping me. I am not alone! Each person reaching out to me keeps me smiling, keeps me learning, keeps loving me, and keeps me going.

Art is definitely not cheap. It shouldn’t be either considering  all of the time and creativity that goes into a piece. So to have this expensive art, I cut up my magazines for it. Yes, there are parts of the picture that don’t make it into the frame because it had text on it, but the parts that DO make it into the frame remind me of why I enjoy it so much. Anyway, my Ensign from this month is now cut up and framed AND we are enjoying it!

Why do bad things happen to good people?

I have found that is EXACTLY why bad things happen because they are good people!

I see time and time again sweet, kind friends being hammered with one thing after another. I think to myself why do they have to endure so many trials and problems. I remember Nathan’s junior year during soccer when he got hurt and a few others were out with ACL’s and other injuries. I started wondering, why is it all of these good kids that are getting hurt, why not some of these punks?!? As I was voicing my frustration to my sister Alesha, she told me “maybe that’s why they ARE good kids because of the trials they have had to go through”. That hit me hard because it rang true to my heart!

These last few days have been hard for me. On Saturday Stephen was hit from behind at a stop light. The other driver tried to create her “own” lane and pull up to a stop between the two lanes WITH two cars that were already there. She didn’t have any insurance. As I talked with Stephen I thought that everything would be fine since we have comprehensive insurance, yet he reminded me that we would still have to pay the $500 deductible. What? She doesn’t pay insurance AND gets to walk away without fixing our vehicles?!?!?

Then Tuesday morning Stephen walks out to the garage to clean off the back window of our new to us car, that we had just bought that weekend. Somehow the window shatters, not just a crack but SHATTERED! Once again that’s $250 to replace and so now within a few days we are up to $750 to just fix what we already owned! I immediately start thinking what are we doing wrong, but after studying this for a while now, I should immediately ALSO think what are we doing right in our lives to make Heavenly Father think that we are ready to grow more.

I thought of this quote when I was thinking about my original question, “Learning often becomes more acute and precise and has greater depth when brought about by adversity.” Good people want to learn and progress. They don’t want to remain stagnant. Adversity brings on that learning needed to really grow.

I have been reading and studying this book lately and loved this quote in it, “Heavenly Father would not deny enriching but stretching divine tutorials to ‘any’ who follow Him, especially those who have already done much to prove their love for Him and are thus ready for further lessons.” He gives trials to those that he LOVES!

I need to step back and realize that sometimes it takes a life lesson to help me grow. I also need to think that it’s not just what He is trying to teach me, but what he is trying to help me BECOME!

I love the quote by Neal A Maxwell, “Life lessons and trials, whether slow and stressful or sudden and harsh call for us to ponder, again and again, the implications of His divine perspective “the Son of Man hath descended below them all, Art thou greater than he?”

So as I’m studying and putting all of this together I start thinking of dear friends and family, I start analyzing different events from my life and how they have affected me and made me who I am. I couldn’t help but agreeing with my sister about that’s why they are good people, they have endured challenges and are stronger for it. “We have to develop our spiritual muscles, build up our spiritual wind, strengthen our spiritual endurance if we are going to win this race and claim the prize. You don’t run marathons by taking a taxicab across the route several times. You don’t gain patience by getting instant gratification or relief every time you call on the Lord.”

Then comes in the well known analogy by CS Lewis of the house ….

Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace.

Yes, he can build a mansion out of me. I don’t want to be some little shack that shakes in the wind and cold. It will be a pain as I’m thrown challenges during my remodeling, but each stage I will grow stronger. Therefore, I need to take each challenge as an offer for growth and see it that way.

“If you focus on the hurt, you will continue to suffer. If you focus on the lesson, you will continue to grow.”

AND then to remember in the back of my head… Psalm 34:19 “Many are the afflictions of the righteous but the Lord delivereth him out of them all” There is an end, there is a deliverance.

Of course with all of this thought and study, I had to delve into Job. Here is a man that even the scriptures said was “perfect”, in Job 1:1 it states that there was a man named Job who was “perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil”. Job literally had it ALL going on with family, work, life! Then of course as we all know he lost his animals, servants, children, health.. he suffered enourmously “yet I trust in Him” (Job 13:15) was Job’s response. I can’t even imagine all that Job gained in the eternal scheme but in the end the Lord even gave him “twice as much as he had before” (Job 42:10)

Everything will work out, it ALWAYS does. I just need to remind myself that there are things to be learned and growth to be made that couldn’t occur otherwise. I just had to get my thoughts out because I’m sure just like I go back to this blog for recipes and photos, I will need to go back for some comfort when my future challenges are at the door.

Prayer FHE

This month for FHE we are focusing on prayer. One night after our dinner prayer and then later the family prayer, I just couldn’t take it anymore. I felt like we were going through the motions, saying the same lines, rotating through turns of who is supposed to prayer, and basically just doing it because it was routine. I knew that we definitely needed to study prayer as a family a bit more.

We started out with this video montage of movie prayers and talked about how awkward some of the prayers were because there was no relationship or experience praying, yet how heartfelt and sincere other prayers were.





I had printed up the talk from Elder Richard G Scott, “Using the Supernal Gift of Prayer”, and handed out a copy to everyone on Sunday. I told them to highlight and bring it to FHE the next night. I smiled at Jerrica’s copy because it was all a solid highlighted pink. We had an amazing discussion about this incredible talk that is filled with thoughts and ideas on prayer.

Then the pressure was on Rebecca to end our FHE after having just analyzed prayer, but of course she was all over giving the most beautiful prayer ever! We then had to end with a trip to Auntie Anne's because they have a buy one get one free deal. Pretzels are actually associated with prayer because of the monk that designed them YEARS ago so that the children would remember to fold their arms and pray.

I stuck this on our fridge to help us remember our lesson during the week.

I'm really excited about next week's lesson!

One Second Every Day

I LOVE the One Second Everyday App! It is so incredibly easy to use and does all the mashing for you. Then by having so many busy girls asking and taking videos it makes doing it even easier!

I enjoy the little glimpse it gives into our lives and the memories that come alive when I see these seconds. It doesn't take very long to do, only one second! ;)