Faith...

Believing gets you there...
Knowing keeps you there...

Live like you believe...
Live like you know...

It's one sure way your faith will grow.
Listen to your heart
Search in your soul
And you'll find the strength that you need
When you live like you believe...

I Am Thankful...

We celebrated Thanksgiving with 29 of our closest family and friends. Everyone had a wonderful time and stayed until 10:30p.m. My brother in law even said...You need to say, "We need to go to bed dear, so these fine folks can go home now.." The food was delicious. I'm so grateful for my sweet husband who worked so hard getting things ready for our guests. He transformed our garage/man cave into an inviting space for our family. He set up tables and cooked the turkey and carrots and onions in the dutch oven. (Ricardo's brother gave us onions and carrots from his garden and they were delicious.) I couldn't have done it all yesterday without him. I prepared the gravy, stuffing, yams, green bean casserole and a carmel apple salad. I should have doubled the carmel apple salad, that went fast.... Others brought homemade rolls, mashed potatoes, green salad, Dixie salad (a family tradition), pies and yummy pumpkin bars. The kids all worked so hard getting ready for our company. Getting our house ready is quite a task. We worked in the house and in the garage/man cave making sure everything was clean and organized. It was a wonderful day full of fun memories and togetherness. I am so thankful...my heart is full.

If I Could Turn Back Time...

This year for Christmas instead of buying each other family gifts on my side of the family we decided to make a family calendar. Several years ago, before digital scrapbooking, we each made pages for a few months, made color copies and then had them spiral bound. I know...it was a LONG time ago. But when we were at my new niece's baby blessing we were talking about favorite gifts we've received and the family calendar was one of the ones we remember with fondness. It was so fun to have pictures of family members and reminder's of birthday so we knew this HAD to be our gift this year.

Luckily we spent a week together this Summer for a Family Reunion so we had MANY pictures to choose from for the calendar. Here are some of my favorites that I used on the calendar. Since I was somehow put in charge of the calendar I took creative license at the expense of my brothers and used whatever pictures I wanted to of them. But for the women in our family, I did what I would hope that others would do unto me....I chose the best pictures possible. Oh, and as I listed our birthdays, I made sure we were ALL celebrating our 29th one. If I am in charge of the calendar next year, I will continue the 29 tradition for the women, and the men will age appropriately. It's my own version of stopping time...

The Latest Niece...

I had so much fun with this sweet little one. She is darling. We bonded. My sister in law called me the baby whisperer. I didn't want to put her down. I was so glad that most of the family members in attendance were sick so I got to hold her a majority of the time. This picture was taken during Sacrament Meeting. (We were being reverent). So fun. I will take nieces and nephews anytime. No more sleep deprivation for me! I will leave that to my sister's in law...

The Whole Family

Back To Life....Back to Reality

We celebrated our annual Girls Weekend Getaway this past weekend. We left Thursday morning and got home Sunday evening. We rented a gorgeous home in St. George for all 13 of us to fit in. It was a 5 bedroom 3 bath home with a ping pong table and a pool. We loved every minute. We stayed up until 3 or 4 each night (morning) talking and sewing. We stayed up later than the girls did. They konked out around midnight each night. We wore them out.

Our ward is doing a Celestial Ward project. I'd never heard of it before, but it's a pretty neat goal. Each of us are responsible for finding names to take through the temple from baptism to sealings. Our ward goal is 400. The size of an actual ward, but "celestialized". So my Mom sent me three male and two female names for us to do. "A" and I thought we'd start our girls weekend by going to the Temple. "A" did the two baptisms and confirmations. Our ancestors were her 5th and 7th great grandmothers on my father's side. They were born in the early 1700's. "A" got all ready and we headed into the font. We were the only ones there. Right after we were done a huge group came in so we were grateful we had gotten there when we did. I had the opportunity to witness the baptisms and I was so overwhelmed at the wonderful feeling of the spirit that was there. They had been waiting about 300 years to be baptized and they were there to accept those ordinances. It was a wonderful experience.

We met up with the rest of the girls afterward and went shopping to stock our rental home for the weekend. We were so happy to be together to spend some quality time. It was me, my four cousins who are sisters, a cousin's mother in law and then our daughters. We laughed until we cried all weekend. We enjoy each other's company so much. They are not only my cousins but my dear friends who love me no matter what! I'm so grateful for our close relationships. There wasn't any drama this weekend. The girls loved spending time together and didn't want the weekend to end.

We made scripture bags, bracelets, rings, headbands, necklaces and earrings. We took pictures of every activity. We took the girls to the beauty college for up do's and manicures then we went out to dinner to show off their awesomeness and attractiveness. We ate late, stayed up late and only REALLY slept in on our last morning together. We decided to do a service project and made 7 blankets and got two more cut out to donate to the local hospital. They turned out so cute. We all wanted to keep the blankets, but we knew that the hospital desperately needs them to have for the new babies. Well, at least 9 of the babies. We are going to do a service project each year from now on. We also decided that next year we are getting up do's and manicures while the girls are getting theirs. We wondered why we were just waiting for them and not doing it along with the girls.

So now it's back to life and back to reality....Until next year....

2nd Day of Spring Break

We woke up to 6 inches of snow today. And I'm not April Foolin'. I'm so glad we didn't try to go camping. For a long time we didn't trust the weatherman. If he said 40% chance of rain it wouldn't rain at all. And we would go about our plans without hesitation. Lately, if the weatherman says 20% chance of rain, it not only rains, it snows or hails. I won't look at the forecast for tomorrow. I'll tempt fate. We want to enjoy this "spring" weather while we've got it. We're getting cabin fever. Come on Spring....we're waiting...patiently.

Totally Blogworthy...

On Saturday A and I attended Especially For Youth that was hosted by our Stake. I was able to go last year with a few of the girls and we all loved it. So when they advertised it this year I wanted to get as many of the Young Women there as I could. I bribed my Mia Maids with a pizza party afterwards. One of my girls told me later, "Sister S, you don't have to buy our love with food." I told her, "It's lunch time. And everyone eats lunch."

Anyways, back to EFY. It was wonderful. The most touching part I felt was when John Hilton showed a video of a song I'd never heard before. It's called "I Am" by Nichole Nordeman.