beautiful quotes

Probably my favorite part of Elder Holland's April 2016 LDS General Conference talk (which I've listened to a few times including yesterday) was:

If we give our heart to God, if we love the Lord Jesus Christ, if we do the best we can to live the gospel, then tomorrow—and every other day—is ultimately going to be magnificent, even if we don’t always recognize it as such. Why? Because our Heavenly Father wants it to be! He wants to bless us. A rewarding, abundant, and eternal life is the very object of His merciful plan for His children! It is a plan predicated on the truth “that all things work together for good to them that love God.”

Then this morning before 1:00 church, I listened for the third time to Sister Neill F. Marriott's talk from the General Women's Session that was part of the same conference. Actually, I had searched on the Gospel Library app for the word "baby" and found the talk.

Let me interrupt myself.  

About those New Year's Resolutions . . . I am trying to improve with them. #5 and #7 are already done. But the one about getting up by 7 a.m. has been hard. Why? Because I'm pregnant! I could have just over two weeks left (that's when my guess date is). I love pregnancy and I feel like once she's born -- a fourth girl! -- I might miss having her inside moving around. We're all really excited to meet her, though!

January 2, a few days before my expected period (but I knew that I was pregnant)

So that's why I want to keep hearing or reading positive thoughts and stories about pregnancy, birth, and newborns.

Here's what Sister Marriott said:

Mothers literally make room in their bodies to nurture an unborn baby—and hopefully a place in their hearts as they raise them—but nurturing is not limited to bearing children. Eve was called a “mother” before she had children. I believe that “to mother” means “to give life.” Think of the many ways you give life. It could mean giving emotional life to the hopeless or spiritual life to the doubter. With the help of the Holy Ghost, we can create an emotionally healing place for the discriminated against, the rejected, and the stranger. In these tender yet powerful ways, we build the kingdom of God.

for the tooth fairy

First Girl lost two teeth at the beginning of April! Both on the top. Second Girl had two loose ones too.

Together they created things and placed them on the floor of their room for the tooth fairy to enjoy. Like when people leave a treat out for Santa Claus (who we don't talk much about in our family). It was so fun when I discovered what they had done. The cookies are bits of Larabar, and they made a little wardrobe with clothes that the tooth fairy could try on. I love their creativity!

They like to keep their teeth, but luckily the tooth fairy left First Girl some coins anyway. It was $1.75 in a sandwich bag with a tiny note.

She spent $1.08 of it on a Frozen harmonica (50% off).

first blog post of 2016

Happy New Year! It's finally the year that I was going to marry my friend who I did marry almost twelve years ago. He had asked in high school, "Hey, if you're not married by 2016, will you marry me?"

It has been snowing ALL DAY here and hasn't stopped. It's so beautiful. We had a great Christmas season and enjoyed the December snow too.

I have been outside for a total of about two minutes. We stayed home from church because of First Girl feeling sick. (She is mostly better by now but starting Friday night she didn't feel like eating.) They've watched some Veggie Tales, and we had the TV off for a while, I played some Primary songs on the piano and sang along, we read a kind of long book together, and we saw some Mormon Channel videos on YouTube. Two out of three kids had baths; the other will need one also. The four-year-old hurt the six-year-old's feelings so I helped with that. I think we should probably call grandparents, after dinner. Oh, but a lot of clean clothing still isn't put away. I can do both at the same time.

I wasn't sure how to begin this blog post. Maybe I feel like I did then. I wasn't sure what this blog would turn out to be.

I think I want to have few if any public photos of our kids now.

What do I do with what's here already? I began blogging in 2007. I could slowly use the best posts to make digital scrapbooks that I would print, and delete them from Blogger. I don't want to change it to private.


Basically, I need to figure things out, how I can best spend my time. The ones I need to communicate and share with most are my family and close relatives. I have an email draft to finish that is a simple letter and photos for our parents and siblings to see. I have other places where I share photos now, but not publicly. And if I wanted to back up with Flickr again like I did a long time ago (I think mainly in 2009), that sounds like work and I would need a new login or account. I started a private Instagram account in October, and I use Facebook.

These are the measurable goals (resolutions) I came up with for 2016:

1. Turn off the lights to sleep by 11:00 p.m., and closer to 10:30 might be best. This is hard for me. 
2. Wake up by 7:00 and do first things first. But 5:30 is too early.
3. Start and end the day with personal prayer.
4. Read / feast / ponder from the Book of Mormon daily -- the verses on @bofm365. I feel peace every time. I'm glad that my husband is going to do it too!
5. Read more books this year than I did the last couple of years. (Only six in 2015.)
6. Work on postpartum doula certification for at least one hour a week.
7. Publish recipes on my whole foods plant-based blog.

That's probably enough to work on. :-) And that's how I will spend some of my time. I bought a little composition book to keep track of spiritual goals such as "✓ morning kneeling prayer".  I could get another little book for the other goals. 

Things are going well for our family. We'll be able to pay off most of our debt this year and we are so grateful. I / we will definitely spend time with new friends here too. I am looking forward to a vegan potluck next week.

I did not quite finish 360 BYU devotionals by the end of 2015 but I listened to 347! It was 360, not 365, because the idea came to me on January 5th and 360 is a nice round number. I am continuing until I have finished that goal. I listen while I get dressed, make meals, do chores, etc.