Busy busy busy

What do you get when you cross one very busy person with a boyfriend and a wedding to plan?  One VERY busy gal!!  We are feverishly trying to get everything planned and done and out of the way so that all of the rest of the 187 days till the wedding can be stress free (Ha ha, have you met me??) and it is crazy how much goes into this.  For those of you who feel like I've dropped off the face of the earth, you are correct!  Between work and wedding and spending time with my sweetie, I 'm not around much anymore.  It's funny to me how little time I have these days.  It's even funnier to me how little of that time I desire being away from Allen.  The time I have to spend at work is enough, thank you, to the point that when I'm not at work, it takes all my effort to want to be with anyone besides him.  My mom and I agreed in December that we'd get together every Wednesday and hang out and more often than not, Allen gets invited so I'll go.  It's all I can do to allow him time with his friends, which is only hard for them, because he also wants to be with me every chance we get.  We're that pathetic dating couple that wants to be left alone!!  Sorry everyone!  In the meantime, plans are coming along really well. Allen was ordained a priest 2 weeks ago and his Bishop is all about moving forward.  We are very happy and excited to continue on with our plans and have already made our appointment with the temple.  I spoke to my mission president who is a sealer at the Salt Lake Temple and he agreed to be there for us.  It's amazing to me how well everything is falling into place.  It's just another testimony to me that this is right.

Updates

So it's been a few weeks since that life changing event and it's still pretty much amazing!!  Every so often I have small panic moments when I wonder if I'm going to wake up and realize this whole thing was the best dream I've ever had, but so far the whole thing is legitimate.  Allen met with his bishop last week.  He could see a huge change in Allen, which is huge since his bishop is his across the back fence neighbor and knows Allen and his family pretty well.  He told Allen that if he came to church for the next few weeks he could be ordained as a priest, then if everything moves forward like the bishop figured it would, he could be ordained an elder by Stake Conference in June, and then they could set up the temple recommend interview.  We decided then that we would set the wedding date for August 29th as that would give us a couple of months for Allen to receive his endowment before we are sealed.  The engagement is unofficial... being as how he hasn't asked yet and the ring is in his possession, not mine.  People often ask if we're doing it a little backwards and Allen reassures them by saying that with the wedding date set, it just means that he knows what I'm going to say when he asks.  We are starting plans and I'm so excited that it is happening faster than we expected.  I can't wait to be Mrs. Allen McDonald!!  I've been trying to get my MRS degree for years!! I am super grateful for all the support we've gotten.  I'm super grateful for Skype, because without it Allen would have to wait till the wedding to meet some of my favorite family.  I'm grateful to be in an incredibly loving relationship.  This makes everything I've ever felt for anyone else seem artificial.  This is real eternal love and it's not going away and I've never been so happy with the way things are going.  My Heavenly Father is seriously blessing me.  He knew it all along, I needed to figure something out during this long wait, but here we are, and we are moving blissfully forward.  I love Allen McDonald!!  I love that I get to say that!  I love that I get to kiss him!  I love that we fit so perfectly together and I have absolutely no doubt about this thing at all!  I'm so unbelievably happy!!

In a Relationship

It's amazing how much one's life can change in a short amount of time.  3 weeks ago I would have never imagined the changes that have occurred in my life in the last week.  Needless to say, I have figured out something I've been praying for, for years.  I found my future husband.  I found the man that I am going to spend the rest of eternity with and let's be honest... I can't stop smiling.  Let me tell you all what happened.  In December of last year, we hired a new cook at work named Allen.  He was close to my age, drank, smoked, and had been previously married.  I never looked at him as anything besides a coworker.  Each morning we would open together and since that affords you about two hours of time together we just talked about whatever was going on in our lives.  Fast forward about 9 months.  Allen had been put in charge of the training program at work and I was going to train him as a supervisor.  One Saturday morning, he failed to come to a training meeting and I thought that was pretty strange since he'd always been very punctual.  When he didn't show up for work, I knew something was wrong.  The Allen I knew didn't do that.  Pretty early after opening one of his friends came in and I asked him if he knew where Allen was.  He explained to me that Allen had gotten arrested the night before coming out of the bar.  I couldn't believe it.  I knew Allen had an interesting past, but he'd been doing so well and had even expressed to me how careful he was being to not go back to jail.  A few hours later, Allen's parents came in to talk to me.  They explained to me that Allen was hoping to keep his job and that they were sorry this had to happen and his mom cried a little and told me he was doing so well, she couldn't understand why.  The way it turned out though jail was the best thing that ever happened to Allen.  About 3 weeks after this, I received a letter addressed to everyone at Arctic Circle.  He explained how sorry he was that he was in jail and not with us, but that he would like to have some pen pals and would people please write him.  He also specifically asked for me and a girl named Kira to write, as he had important things to talk about with us both.  We went to the post office to get the necessary post cards and I sent off a letter that mostly talked about work and how much we missed him there, and didn't really say anything personal.  A few days later I got a letter explaining that jail was good for him because he was quitting drinking and smoking.  He was also reading the scriptures, and going to church.  He asked me to send some of my favorite scriptures.  I sent him a list of scriptures that had to do with mercy, and repentance, and encouraged him to continue on the path to change.  In the next few months (he was in jail about 3 months) we exchanged letters, and before long he was working at a food pantry and earning a little bit of money that he could buy phone cards with, so he called a few times.  I was always happy to talk to him, but still didn't think much of it.  He was set to get released on December 17, and about the beginning of December I started to wonder about my feelings for him.  As I analyzed how I felt in quiet moments, I realized that I no longer just thought of him as one of the cooks.  I started to have moments when I would wonder what it would be like to hold his hand or be held by him.  At first these feelings kind of panicked me.  Relationships are not allowed at work and I knew we'd be breaking some serious rules if I entered into such a relationship.  Also, with Allen's past being what it was I wasn't sure I could forgive him or  work out our differences.  On Sunday December 9, I was sitting in sacrament meeting where the youth speaker gave a talk about forgiveness, the next speaker talked about the prodigal son, and the last speaker spoke on charity.  I felt like each one was talking directly to me about Allen.  I wrote an entry in my journal describing my feelings, and I wondered if Allen felt anything for me.  In my mind there was nothing worse than discovering you have feelings that you don't really want about somebody only to have them not return your feelings.   I wasn't sure how to bring it up, so I waited for him to get out of jail.  On December 15, he called work and I was so excited to talk to him, but then as we talked I started feeling dejected because we didn't talk about anything personal.  The morning of the 17th I was a mess.  I didn't know what I would say or do but I had a lot of ideas in my head about how I thought it should go.  Shortly before 10, he knocked on the window and as I went to let him in I shot him a giant smile.  I opened the door and while holding the door with my foot, launched myself into his arms.  I found out later that it took him by surprise because we had never really had any physical contact.  His first words were, "Honey, I'm home!"  The rest of the day was kind of awkward.  I had ideas about what I wanted to happen but had no idea how to approach it.  Two weeks passed, and while I never really expressed my feelings, I think we both knew that something had changed.  On December 29, we were working together and I was talking to him.  I made this joke about him being my boyfriend and then laughed it off and immediately went to the office to text my friend Aubrey (who knew before he was out of jail that I liked him) and told her what I had said.  She told me to tell him that it wasn't a joke and I told her maybe I'd do it by text that night.  When I got home from work, I was trying to decide if I should tell him that I was only half joking and so I texted Aubrey again and she told me to flip a coin to decide whether or not to tell him.  Heads I send the message, tails I don't.  I grabbed a dime out of my change and threw it in the air.  It came down on tails, and my first thought was "No one flips a dime, you dummy.  If you really want this to work you need to flip a quarter."  So I went into my kitchen to find a quarter.  I flipped the quarter and got heads.  As I stared at that coin, I thought to myself, "Do or die."  I typed a quick message that read "Confession:  I was only half joking about the boyfriend thing."  I stared at it briefly and then hit send.  As I watched that message go away I was panic stricken.  What had I just done?  I then immediately texted Aubrey and told her I had done it.  Not too long passed when I received a text back from Allen that said "I know."  I was stunned!  I asked him what that meant and he asked what company policy was.  I told him it wasn't allowed but we could hide it.  He then asked if I wanted to try.  I told him I did want to try, because I was feeling very differently about him and wanted to know if it was something.  He had told me a few letters back that he wanted to be my personal genie and grant me three wishes and so now he asked me if this was one of my wishes.  I told him this probably equaled all three and he said he would only count it for one since this was something he wanted as well.  I told him we needed to talk about this face to face and we decided that we'd get together Sunday and talk about it.  From that moment on our text conversations got a lot more personal and I was overwhelmed, freaking out, and basically Butterflies had taken up habitation in my stomach.  I went to dinner that night with a friend and could hardly eat, let alone concentrate on anything going on around me.  In fact we had gotten together for the sole purpose of exchanging Christmas presents and I'd forgotten hers completely.  When I was driving home, my sister in law Nicole called and asked what was new so I told her.  It was weird to talk about it when it was so new, but I was pretty excited about the prospects of what was happening.  Later that night, I was on the phone with Aubrey and he sent me a text that said "did you go to sleep without saying good night?"  I assured him I hadn't and that I was just talking to Aubrey on the phone.  A little later I texted him that I couldn't keep my eyes open anymore so it was probably time to say goodnight.  He texted "sweet dreams, sleep with your angels and think of me."  I texted back "I've been thinking of you for weeks" to which he replied "Ditto Kiddo."  The butterflies went crazy again and between the cough that I've had since the middle of December and the butterflies, I think I got a total of about 3 hours of sleep that night.  Sunday he sent me a text wishing me a good morning and then we texted throughout the day.  He asked about church, told me he was bored at the birthday party he had to go to and was begging people to leave early.  He told me he'd probably be at my house around 10 and asked if that was too late and I told him I didn't care, because I couldn't wait another day to have this conversation.  He convinced his family to leave early so arrived at my house around 9:15.  Earlier he had asked me what was going to happen.  I told him we definitely had to talk, I would love to repeat the hug I got when he got out of jail, and whatever else happened happened.  When he got to my house, he knocked softly and I ran to the door.  When I opened it and he stepped in I gave him the hug I'd been craving and then kissed him.  Later we talked about who kissed who and he said I did it and I said he did it, but either way I think we both wanted it.  The next day I admitted to being the one who kissed him.  I'd been imagining it for weeks.  We sat down and the first thing I told him was that regardless his intentions, I was getting married in the temple.  He said he knew that and then said, "No offense, but I'm not going to the temple for you."  I told him I'd be offended if that was the reason he wanted to change his life and he absolutely had to do it for himself, not for me.  I then asked him how long he saw this going for, and he said, "I'm too old to start anything I'm not in for the long haul."  I agreed.  We talked about a lot of things that night.  We began delving into his past.  We asked a lot of questions.  We kissed some more.  I told him I wanted to be kissed at midnight on New Years Eve.  He asked me where I'd be.  I told him I'd be home in time.  He left pretty late that night and again I didn't sleep very well.  He wasn't working Monday but he told me he'd come in.  It was kind of hard, because we weren't telling people.  After work I went to my Grandma's house for our New Year's Eve party where I proceeded to tell my parents and grandma about him.  He texted me around 9:30 asking where I was and I told him I was at my grandmas and asked if he wanted me to leave and he said yes.  I left immediately and went home.  We met at my house and talked for 2 hours until just before midnight.  I turned on New Years Rockin' Eve and about a minute before midnight he started kissing me.  I pulled away and told him that I wanted to wait til midnight and he said he had to get 2012's kisses in.  About 20 seconds before the ball dropped I pulled back and we counted down from 10 seconds and then kissed again.  The next few days we decided we shouldn't keep the secret anymore so I called my boss to tell him and he told me Allen would have to be transferred, but that we could have a month to a month and a half so that he could train the cooks to replace him (he's really good at his job!) .  After Scott knew we decided to tell people at work.  We were met by looks of disbelief.  Almost no one took us seriously.  When I told my assistant manager that I had to transfer Allen because I was dating him she didn't believe me.  I called him into the office to tell her and he full on kissed me.  She freaked, my other supervisor shouted "I knew it!"  That night we made it Facebook official and people still didn't believe me.  We have spent time everyday since then together.  We've been out to dinner with friends and relatives, he's met my parents, we've been to his house and my nephew's birthday party.  The next Sunday we went to church together where I was grilled by the Bishop.  I told him I had never been more sure of anything in my life and I was going to marry Allen.  He told me he couldn't argue with that and assured me he was there if I needed anything.  We are now in the process of figuring out when Allen will be able to qualify for a temple recommend because that's the next stop.  We've been together less than 2 weeks and I've never been so happy.  I've never received a stronger answer to a prayer and I know that he's a changed person and I know that we will be together forever.  It's not going to be easy.  There are a lot of issues that need to be dealt with, but I've forgiven his past.  I love him more deeply than I've ever loved anyone.  We've talked about everything and anything and I know he is my Eternal Companion and that we will live and love forever.  That's really all that matters anyway and I'm really excited to get started!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Here are some pictures of my decorations including the wreath I made with Mom on Tuesday and the cute new nativity I got.  Merry Christmas!!

I wanted a snowman wreath to go with my idea of someday having a snowman themed Christmas.  We found the stuff at Hobby Lobby and this is what I came up with. 

When Mom and Dad moved she didn't want to take the Christmas village because she didn't know where she would put it.  I didn't want it to get taken to DI so I took it and set it up on my coffee table.

My Christmas tree.  Mom and Dad and Grandpa Piercy (who passed away November 7) are responsible for most of the ornaments on this tree.  Mom wanted to make sure when we were grown up we'd have enough ornaments to decorate a tree since she and Dad didn't when they got married.  It's been fun collecting the ornaments over the years and then reminiscing about where they came from every time I put up my tree. 

This was a gift from my visiting teachers a few years ago. 

This was a gift from my dear friend Nicole last year, and since it fits the snowman theme, it gets a special spot outside the front door. 

This is my newest snowman set.  A snowman nativity.  I love it!!

Christmas Countdown

I decided this year that instead of letting December get away from me like normal I would do something every day that reminded me of the season.  Whether it was reading a Christmas story or watching a movie, listening to Christmas music or going to see the lights I would make this December memorable.  I started by making a calendar and planning out the whole month.  So far it's been really good.  On the first, I was in Idaho so I took Santa Maybe with me and read it in my hotel room.  The second, since it was Sunday I looked up all the scriptures under the heading Jesus Christ, Birth of in the Topical guide and read them all. I also listened to the Forgotten Carols and read the story.  On the third, Mom and Dad came up to my house and helped me put up my Christmas tree and decorate.  The fourth, Mom and I decided to make wreaths and listen to Christmas music.  Then when I got home I put up the Christmas village and watched White Christmas.  The fifth, we made a few Christmas treats.  Tonight, I'm watching the Forgotten Carols DVD and eating Christmas treats.  It's been fun so far and I'm excited to continue.

November 22

Happy Thanksgiving! Today I am grateful for so many blessings. I am so grateful that I am a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and that I believe in a living prophet and continuing revelation.  I'm grateful for eternal families and the opportunity to spend time with some of them today.  I'm grateful for the opportunity to be in Arizona with my brother's family today and to be able to celebrate Thanksgiving with them.  The kids want to list all the things they are thankful for and it can go on and on.  I love it.  I'm so grateful that I live in this free country and that I have the opportunity to vote and make my voice heard.  I'm so grateful for the blessing of prayer and for the support I feel from my Heavenly Father.  I'm so grateful for the opportunity to have this day of gratitude to help me focus on how many blessings I really have.

November 21

Today I am grateful that we had a safe drive to Arizona.

November 20

Today I am grateful for paid vacation.  Mom and Dad and I are leaving tomorrow to go to Arizona to spend Thanksgiving with Todd and Nicole and I get paid to be gone.  Kind of great!  Next weekend I get to go to Idaho for my friend Nicole's baby's blessing and since their church is so early I wanted to go up Saturday and try to get in a few temple sessions.  Again I get paid to be gone.  I've worked hard to get to this point where I have so much vacation to look forward to and I'm grateful.

November 19

Today I am thankful that I work at a place that is run by people who work together to solve problems and figure things out. You may have heard about Wonder bread closing down. The people at our corporate office had already been in negotiation with a different company to supply our buns and so with some careful planning on their part we should be able to be into the new product without any hiccups in our business. There has been a run on other bakeries to provide buns for all the food places and they are having to turn people away.  I'm happy that our corporate people make my job easy.  

November 18

Today I am grateful for my Savior Jesus Christ.  Today in Sacrament Meeting we had a high council speaker who spoke in depth about Jesus Christ as our advocate with the Father and he quoted 1 Nephi 19:9.  It reads: "And the world, because of their iniquity, shall judge him to be a thing of naught; wherefore they scourge him, and he suffereth it; and they smite him and he suffereth it.  Yea, they spit upon him, and he suffereth it, because of his loving kindness and his long-suffering towards the children of men."  He said he's not grateful that Christ was scourged, smitten, or spit upon, but he was grateful that Christ suffered it because it was because of His suffering that He is able to succor us.  He said, "As Christ ministered on the earth he represented the Father and did his will.  Now that His mission is finished, He was able to ascend to heaven to represent us to the Father.  Jesus Christ is fighting for all of us to get to come home because of His suffering.  He is pleading my case in front of Heavenly Father and now my role is to choose the right and keep the commandments.  How grateful I am that He finished His mission.  How grateful I am that He loves me.  How grateful I am for his long-suffering and loving kindness.  I make too many mistakes over and over and I'm grateful that He continues to fight for me.  I'm grateful that He wants me to come home.  I'm grateful for the opportunity to finish my mission and then to be able to return Home.

November 17

Today I am grateful for a clean kitchen.  Keeping my kitchen clean is so hard for me.  I don't really know why but I let the dishes get stacked up for days and then I (and my Dawn) have to work harder to get the dried up food off.  Why do I not just clean up when I'm done??  Someday I will learn to figure that out, but in the meantime, it only took me about 20 minutes tonight to make it pretty, so feeling pretty good about it!!

November 16

Today I am grateful for my job.  I am so blessed to have a good paying job, that enables me to have the life I do.  I can afford to pay all of my bills and live in a pretty nice apartment, and eat every day.  In today's economy that's a really nice blessing.

November 15

Today I am grateful for sleep.  Nuff said...

November 14

Today I am grateful for nature.  This morning I went out with Todd and Nicole and Andrew and Rory and my mom and the dog and we went for a walk around the Jordan River parkway where my mom lives.  There was still snow on the ground, but because the snow came so suddenly there were still leaves on the ground as well.  There were ducks in one pond, but ice in another.  It was like we had entered a place where fall and winter collided and were trying to one up each other.  It was fun to watch the kids running around and throwing snow balls at the ice and chasing the ducks back into the pond after they fed them some bread.  I'm happy that I live in a place that has all of the seasons and I'm grateful for the time to go out and appreciate God's beautiful creations.

November 13

Today I'm grateful for sunshine.  We had the funeral for my grandpa today and we were a little worried that it would be a miserable day based on the fact that we got a lot of snow last weekend.  As we came out of the church to go to the cemetery the sun was bright in the sky.  We got there and it wasn't too cold and we were able to enjoy the graveside ceremony.  It was a really nice day.

November 12

Today I am grateful for extended family.  The viewing for my grandpa was tonight and a lot of my cousins and my mom's cousins were there.  It was a great opportunity to meet together and visit and just catch up.

November 11

Today I am grateful for music and the power it is in my life. I have the opportunity of being the choir director in my ward and as we learn the Christmas music that I got to choose it makes me happy. Today also was our Primary program and I just love hearing the kids bear their simple testimonies through music and word. I also get a great deal of inspiration from hymns and other songs and I'm grateful for the gift of music in my life.

November 10

Today I am grateful for weekends!!!!!  It's been a seriously long week.  When I made the decision to go to the temple everyday this week, it didn't occur to me how difficult that would be.  I've been so blessed to be able to spend a few hours of the last five days in the temple, but it's hard work to get dressed up and drive up and rearrange my schedule to make it work.  Today as I sat for an extra long time in the Celestial Room, because I had "nothing better to do" I was thinking about how drained I am.  Almost immediately the thought came into my head "I never said it would be easy, I only said it would be worth it."  I smiled to myself, as tears came to my eyes, because it has been 100% worth it.  It's the best gift I could have given myself.  Now that I'm done, I am going to curl up on my couch under my new blanket and just enjoy the nothingness for a minute, because that's about all I have!!  Happy Weekend!

November 9

Today I am grateful for friendly happy people.  It's been kind of a weird day.  It's been snowing since about 7 this morning. Snow at Arctic Circle means that a lot of people don't roll down their windows all the way and it's really hard to hear them, and then when they pay they roll up their windows, so you're standing at the window waiting for them to notice their change or credit card, and then they act surprised to see you standing there... I love snow days!!  Anyway I had to work a 12 hour shift today and I started at 6:30 this morning at the temple so it was a long day.  About 40 minutes before I got off, I had pulled a car up so I could get a cone out to the car behind them and when I ran the food out after a few minutes, they thanked me sincerely and wished me a good night.  That happens quite often, but for some reason this time it touched my heart.  After so many people who were somewhat difficult to work with it was nice to be sincerely thanked.  It was nice to know that they were grateful to me for coming out in the snow... at least that's how I took it.  Sometimes I feel like I work in a thankless job.  It's almost as if people in the drive thru treat me like I'm somehow less intelligent than they are or that what I do for them is somehow below recognition, like it's expected somehow.  I appreciate people who recognize me as an intelligent human being and are sincerely thankful for what I do.  Those people are few and far between and they make me grateful.

November 8

Last night at 11 my grandpa Piercy passed away.  Today I am grateful for eternal families.  My grandpa was almost 90 years old.  He's been sick for several years.  He's been unhappy about being alive for a really long time, so in reality it's a serious blessing.  When my mom called to tell me today I was in the temple, and so didn't get the message for a while.  I reflected for a few minutes on the fact that I had made myself unavailable to find out such important news, but really, I was in the temple helping someone named Vilie Grace Slingerland receive her opportunity to be with her family forever and I just felt really grateful.  The plan of salvation is real and it is our blessing and opportunity to get everyone involved!  I've thought a lot about my grandpa today and I've tried to feel the emotion of the news.  I'm not sad, I'm not upset, I don't feel like I wished we had had more time.  I mostly felt grateful that Grandpa got his wish.  I felt grateful that he's free from pain and hurt.  Grandpa wouldn't want me to be sad for him.  He's home.  And we're an eternal family so he's waiting for the rest of us.  That just makes me really grateful.

November 7

Today I am grateful for the temple.  It's our Stake Temple week and our leaders encouraged us to go as often as possible.  I went last night and again tonight and it's such an amazing place to be.  As the election raged and opinions rage and facebook is loaded with comments on what is happening to America, it's nice to  sit quietly in a place where I know that God is in charge of this whole crazy mess and that in the end His will will be done.  It's nice to go and hear someone pray for the leaders of nations and have faith that that prayer will be answered.  It's nice to walk away from life and sit in a beautiful room and remember that God loves me and that this is the promised land to those who live righteously.  I am seriously so blessed!!

November 6

Today I am grateful for my crock pot.  I put breakfast in it last night and woke up to a delicious sausage hash brown egg casserole and now I'm attempting a crock pot lasagna.  It's so great to put food in and forget about it and come back to yumminess!!

November 5

Today I am grateful for my Mom.  It's her birthday today and we didn't do a whole lot of celebration this year, but I am super grateful for the influence she is in my life.  She is a fun grandma, loves to take pictures of flowers and nature in general and has taught me to love it as well.  We haven't always been on the same page. I was a pretty bratty kid, teenager, young adult, older adult... Anyway, my mom has stuck by me even when she didn't really like me and now we have a great relationship.  I count her among my best friends.  So Happy Birthday Mom.  I love you!!

November 4

Today  I am grateful for the Sabbath!!  I didn't have to get up early this morning.  I don't have to "Do" anything except get ready for church and go.  I work a 6 day work week.  It's so nice to wake up at my own leisure and then make the decision to do nothing for a few hours.  I read blogs, play on Pinterest, and don't feel guilty for not doing something "I'm supposed to be doing."  So today I'm grateful for the one day a week that no expects anything from me.

November 3

See it's only the 3rd and I've already missed a day, so I guess I'll write two things I'm grateful for today and we'll hope I can stay on this better.  Today I am grateful for autumn.  I walked outside today and it was crisp and clear and there was just a hint of the color left on the leaves.  It's hoodie weather and I love it.  I am also grateful for memories.  That one sounds funny so let me explain.  Yesterday I was going through some old stuff deciding if I needed to keep it or just get rid of it. As I was going through the boxes I was thinking about where the stuff came from and who gave it to me and as I looked through pictures, and wondered who those people from my mission were, I was really grateful that God gives us memories.  There's a whole lot of stuff I don't remember, but the things I can remember have given my life a lot of happiness, and so today I can smile at the memory.

November 1

I committed to this gratitude posting 4 days ago and now that it's time I'm doing it grudgingly... doesn't that sound grateful!!!
I've been pretty emotional all day long.  Blame hormones or my super late night at work doing month end last night, but little things are setting me off today.  Today I am grateful for friends.  I've been sitting on my couch wallowing in self pity and I've received like 50 text messages tonight.  Random requests, a chat, and one friend who just sends me random lines from Reba episodes.  It's made me feel rather loved on a melancholy day, so to those who I call friends... I am grateful.

Totally cheesy picture, but it works!!

Blog? I have a blog?

You know that point in your life when you go to your blog and look at the date of your last post and think, "No surely it hasn't been that long!!"  Time is FLYING!!  I can't believe we're all the way to the end of October.  Didn't I just start May??  I need to remember to update this thing more often.  One of the reasons I have for not updating, is that the computer is all the way in the other room and I can do most of my other online stuff from the tablet, so I forget to check back with my computer and thus my blog gets ignored.  Sorry little blog!!  I'll try to keep up on writing!!

This month has flown by.  October 4th I had the privileged opportunity to go to the temple when Aubrey received her endowment and then on October 23rd we went back together.  It is such a great thing that we are both temple worthy and that we have this thing we can share!!  I'm just so proud of her for making the necessary changes in her life and being able to receive the blessings of the temple.  Her countenance is bright and she reflects such a spirit!  Aubrey has been one of my favorite people for a lot of years, but she's different now... in a good way, obviously.  It's been such a treat to be on the journey with her, although sitting in the Celestial Room in the Salt Lake Temple last week, we both agreed that we were no where near finished with our journey.  We both have a lot to work on!!

On October 5th my parents moved from the house I essentially grew up in to move into one that is much smaller and a bit closer to me.  It only takes me 19 minutes to drive there instead of 25.  It's in Murray and it's small and perfect and I really like it.  I joke with them that I'm going to buy it from them when they're too old to keep up on the payments and then I'll have a house of my own.  It's super cute with just two bedrooms and a loft!!  I like it a lot.  In the meantime, I've spent a lot of time helping my mom pick out furniture and put things away and find storage places for all the stuff they didn't get rid of.  It's a lot smaller than the old house, so the cleaning out took some serious time, a dumpster, and a hundred trips to the DI.  I told them it was a good thing they were going through things now, so we didn't have to declutter as much when they die.

On October 11, (10-11-12) a friend of mine gave birth to a beautiful baby girl named Olivia and I am so happy for her and her family!!  She is so adorable and I can't wait to meet her in person (they live in Idaho Falls).  It's such a fun thing to welcome new little spirits into this world.  I'm so thrilled for her blessed parents.

I'm trying to continue on the Dave Ramsey plan of getting out of debt and I'm down to 23 months and counting of being debt free!!  It feels so great to have a pay off date.  It's still a long way off, but not as far off as it was before I found the Dave Ramsey plan.  I helped a friend at work get started on it too, and it felt really good to share it with her.

I've decided that I'm going to do the grateful posts for November.  I need an overhaul and I think being more grateful will help, so I'm going to really focus on blogging my gratitude everyday.  Hopefully now that I've written that I'll really do it.  I've thought about doing it as a photography blog, but I'm not committing to that yet!!  We'll see if I remember to pull the camera out enough!!  Well I guess that's enough random for one Sunday night.  Until November 1st!!!

She's Alive!!! With some great news!

I've been sick for 12 days.  That is my life!!  Today I can almost breathe and I only cough when I try to sing... if you know me, that's a lot.  I skipped church last week because I had to work all week and Sunday was my only "day off".  I had to find someone to substitute choir director and unfortunately I wasn't able to find anyone to sit in my Sunday School Class, so I forced my co-teacher to break the rules (Sorry Kari!).  It's been tough for me who rarely gets sick to succumb to the snot, sore throat, gut wrenching cough, and overall feeling nasty.  I have been living on Dayquil by day and Nyquil by night, tissues in every room in my house and in my office at work, and sore throat lozenges the first hour and cough drops the second.  It's been horrible.  Today I had to teach Sunday School and the choir was singing in Sacrament Meeting, so God blessed me enough to feel good enough to magnify my callings... except for the cough when I tried to sing.  Here's hoping He sees fit to let me feel good tomorrow, because I'm sick of being sick and it's really hard to do my job when I feel icky!
My house is suffering.  My kitchen had a week worth of soup dishes and glasses and some other things when I was pretending I didn't feel bad and I sort of cooked.  I finally got that cleaned a few minutes ago and I'm blogging instead of folding laundry.  I really should take advantage of this almost feeling normal and get everything done, but I have been noticing when I check other people's blogs, how far down I am on the list.  Isn't that sad?? I base my self worth on how many blogs are above mine on your friends list!!

 AND I have something so super exciting to report... My dear friend Aubrey and I have been on this perfectionish quest to make ourselves feel better about our lives.  It all started when I went to Stake Conference in May and Elder Shayne M. Bowen of the Seventy invited all of us to think of someone in our lives who needed rescuing.  Immediately Aubrey's name came to mind and I thought about our relationship.  We've known each other since sophomore year in high school... that's more than half my life.  We have been casual friends, going to dinner when it was convenient, hanging out, sharing problems, etc.  She was faithful and diligent when I was on my mission, and wrote me weekly, sent packages of treats, and generally helped support me as a missionary.  Why it had never occurred to me to relate to Aubrey on a spiritual level still makes me wonder, but because of some past stuff Aubrey has been struggling with her testimony for some time.  Without getting too personal, I felt in May that it was time to invite Aubrey to get her life in order and go through the temple. Now on the one hand, it may have been slightly selfish.  I want someone to go to the temple with me.  I want someone who can help me on my quest to perfection and someone who would support me as I supported her back.  I can't remember exactly how it came up, but since text messaging is the way we generally communicate, it was a text conversation that I brought it up in.  We talked about it and then we made a tentative plan.  We would choose things that we both needed to work on and start there.  We started with praying every night.  We then moved on to reading the Book of Mormon daily.  I made "I'm Trying to be Like Jesus" jars, that had things for us to do each week.  We draw one and we compare and talk about it.  One Sunday Aubrey faced a great fear and went to visit with her Bishop.  He gave her a recommend to do baptisms for the dead and said he'd talk to the Stake President about what she'd have to do to go receive her endowment.  One Sunday she faced another great fear and bore her testimony in church.  Week after week we supported each other.  We went to Deseret Book and bought Emily Freeman's new book Becoming His.  It's a guide to discipleship.  The road has been long and hard and we've both struggled; though luckily we usually struggle at different times, so the other one can be supportive and encourage.  Last week Aubrey met with her Bishop and Stake President and left the recipient of a temple recommend that will allow her to enter the House of the Lord and receive her endowment.  She texted me just the other day and told me to set aside October 4.  Later she sent me a message that said, "If you had asked me a year ago if I would be going through the temple now I would have said you were crazy."  I honestly have to say that what began as a challenge for me to help Aubrey has turned much more selfish than I ever imagined.  Everything that I have done to help her has been returned to me exponentially.  I can no longer call Aubrey a casual friend.  She is someone who has helped me so much become what I am today that I am honored that we were allowed to meet.  The person whose name came to mind one morning in May has through no fault of her own become my best friend because she truly is the person who knows so many of my weaknesses and loves me anyway.  I am grateful for her and for this amazing experience.  I'm so happy that she will soon have the eternal blessings of the temple.  Our next goal is to find perfection seeking twins, because then we'll be sisters!!!  Wish us luck!!

Technologically Advanced

So I won a tablet at a work party!  Can I just say how cool this is?  I feel super cool having joined the world of Apps.  I never wanted a smart phone but a free tablet... yes please!