Full Bloom, Full Blown

Monday, December 29, 2014

Christmas Morning 2014

It's all about "The Light"

Being a goof

Pinterest...you've got nothing on this guy!

Getting ready for college

A box full of hand crocheted ornaments sent from a lady on Mikayla's mission

A toy for the big boy

Going on a scavenger hunt to find his gift

Sisters trying to trap him under the mistletoe

Finding her scavenger hunt gift in the bathroom

She really, really likes it

Another scavenger hunt

More "light"

Being his" normal" awkward

Friday, October 31, 2014

Harvest Celebrations

Owl cookies from my Visiting Teacher

Our favorite neighbors--At the stake Harvest Celebration

Abrahm--trying to eat in peace

My little Eden--Face Painter Extraordinaire

Family Home Evening Pumpkin Carving--With Power Tools!

Messy business--My kitchen didn't look much better

Because "he's Batman!"

"I don't want to drive up to the pearly gates in a shiny sports car, wearing beautifully, tailored clothes, my hair expertly coiffed, and with long, perfectly manicured fingernails. I want to drive up in a station wagon that has mud on the wheels from taking kids to scout camp. I want to be there with a smudge of peanut butter on my shirt from making sandwiches for a sick neighbor's children. I want to be there with a little dirt under my fingernails from helping to weed someone's garden. I want to be there with children's sticky kisses on my cheeks and the tears of a friend on my shoulder. I want the Lord to know I was really here and that I really lived." (Marjorie Pay Hinckley)

"To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places--and there are so many--where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand Utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human being s should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory." (Howard Zinn)

“God made the world for the delight of human beings--if we would see His goodness everywhere, His concern for us, His awareness of our needs: the phone call we’ve waited for, the ride we are offered, the letter in the mail, just the little things He does for us throughout the day. As we remember and notice His love for us, we just begin to fall in love with Him because He is so busy with us--you just can’t resist Him. I believe there’s no such thing as luck in life, it’s God’s love, it’s His.” (Mother Teresa)

“[To have Faith in Christ] means, of course, trying to do all that He says. There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice. Thus if you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing the things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you.” (C.S. Lewis)

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Monday, December 29, 2014

Christmas Morning 2014

Friday, October 31, 2014

Harvest Celebrations