Having faith is hard....but rewarding

One of the big things that we believe in being a member in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Saints is that we are able to receive revelations for ourselves and those we have stewardship's over; such as our family and that if we have faith the Lord will lead us along the way down the path that will make us eternally happy. Knowing this has always been a comfort to me; however I feel that it has also been a struggle to learn to align my will with the Lords.

Having faith sometimes means being led into the dark where we can't see where we are going, but only the one guiding us knows. This is the part that is most hard for me and the one lesson I seem to constantly keep getting humbled about by the Lord. My plans in life hardly seem to be the plan the Lord has for me and is not the direction I should really go in life. In the moment of my decision I can see a clear path of where I'm headed, but after praying to receive guidance from the Lord I know that it is not the right one. In these times in my life (which have seemed to be many) I sadly must admit that it sometimes takes a lot of humbling on my part to change directions and have faith that the Lord is guiding me down a better path.

Looking back on some of these experiences at those moments where I walked away from what I had planned and tried to align my will with the Lords I can now clearly see the Lord was leading me down the path that has made me more happy then I could know. One is putting me in the right place and situation to meet Eric. I can tell you that it was definitely not my plan to get married at age 19 and in fact I had already except to go to BYU Hawaii the next fall which had always been something I wanted to do. As much as I loved Eric I will admit that it was a decision I prayed often about if continuing to date him and ultimately marry him was the right thing since it didn't really align with other things I had planned and we were so different is our personalities. I kept feeling peace from the Lord that it was definitely the right thing and turns out that the Lord knew me better then I knew myself because marrying Eric has been the BEST choice I ever made!

I have seen the Lord's hand in so many other experience like this since then and as hard as it is to walk away from things we want in the moment and think are right, I keep just holding to the fact that the Lord has a plan for me and is leading me along to what will make me a better person and to what will make me eternally happy which is His promise to all His children who have faith in Him and follow Him. It's not always an easy task, but it's definitely worth it if it means doing something hard and going through trials for but a moment to ultimately be truly happy with the ones we love.

Lastly, I want to thank all of those people who have been great examples in my life of having faith in and following the Lord's promptings. It has helped build my faith and has strengthened me greatly.

And for those of you who thought this was some cute update about our family and ended up reading this, many thanks. This was really just something I wanted to document and remind myself of after a difficult week.

"Verily, verily, I say unto you, ye are ^alittle children, and ye have not as yet understood how great blessings the Father hath in his own hands and prepared for you;

 And ye cannot ^abear all things now; nevertheless, be of good^bcheer, for I will ^clead you along. The kingdom is yours and the blessings thereof are yours, and the ^driches of ^eeternity are yours.

And he who receiveth all things with ^athankfulness shall be made glorious; and the things of this earth shall be added unto him, even an ^bhundred fold, yea, more." D&C 78: 17-19

Getting in the Christmas Spirit

Last weekend we went to Vernal for William's baptism. To be honest I think that was the first baptism I've been to since my little brother's which was almost 6 years ago! We were glad we got to be there to witness such a special event for William. Also while we were there we all went up the mountain to get Christmas trees. This year was much easier with just enough snow the pull Mia along in a sled, but still making it easy to get around. We all found our trees within 45 minutes, which I would call a record! 

(I didn't bring my camera on this trip so you get lovely pictures from Eric's phone)

Mia kept trying to get off the sled as we were pulling it so she could play in the snow so we  would keep pilling snow up on the sled for her to play with (basically eat, but she did get William good a few times with an unexpected snow ball :)

My sister always makes fun of our "Charlie Brown" christmas tree every year, but I honestly love nothing more then the experience of a family outing up the mountain to find "the one" tree; although imperfect, to take home and make beautiful with lights and ornaments. It has been a great family tradition for both of us growing up and one we hope to continue! Fortunately for us since coming home and putting the tree up, Mia has shown zero interest in it so that has been nice not having keep an eye on her with that.  

Another thing we are trying this year somewhat of a gift advent for Mia. I've seen on pinterest where they wrap 25 Christmas books that the kids get to unwrap one each day to count down to Christmas. I've also seen the same idea with little gifts each day. Both sounded rather pricey and taxing trying to come up with 25 things to unwrap each day so we decided to do the German tradition way and have a little gift for Mia to unwrap on the 4 Sunday's before Christmas. I figured this would also help Mia practice her unwrapping skills, which after seeing them last Sunday they could definitely use some work!

So after putting up the Christmas tree and watching the Christmas devotional last Sunday we let Mia unwrap the first gift. The was actually not a small gift and a little bit of a splurge (with a gift card though so it actually didn't cost me anything) but we got Mia the Fisher Price Nativity set. My mom had something like this when we were young and we loved playing with it so I wanted one for my kids. The set was $38 at amazon.

 So far it has been a huge hit with Mia! She loves pressing the angel on top that plays a Christmas song and playing with all the people. I love watching her starting to pretend play! It is one of the cutest things to watch

Here a some quick updates on Mia:

She LOVES stickers. They are all over our house, one the walls, the furniture, our clothes and in Mia's hair. I just have to giggle when I look in the mirror and see them all over the back of my shirt. She loves to color and will color at Eric's desk when he is gone for 30 minutes at a time.

The excitement of feeding herself has faded, but she has become very interested in trying to dress herself. I found her getting into a basket of laundry full of clothes trying to put our socks on her feet.

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