Peace

Life is a super funny thing sometimes. 2011 has, so far, been the year of the craziness and this week is no exception. I have been SOOO busy. There is something going on every single day until next Tuesday.

The house building is going fantastically. If you saw the last post, you saw the pumper truck pouring our basement walls. That was seriously exciting. I don't think Adam was as impressed. He was okay with taking a couple of pictures and leaving but I told him I needed to stick around for at least a few minutes because this was never going to happen again in my life. It is so exciting to watch everything taking shape.

And, by the way, now that I see the basement walls I think the house is huge. It's strange how that works. I read about it in the books I read during my preparation time. They all said that once the footings were poured you would look at it and think "Gee, that's kind of small. Maybe we need to expand..." but once walls started going up, especially during framing, you think it's huge. Then once it gets sheetrocked, it just feels normal-ish. I'll keep you posted on how that changes for me, but for now, it's huge.

Anyway, the whole point of this (now that I've rambled a bit) is that in spite of the craziness in my life right now, I feel competely at peace. Weird, right? You'd think I would feel super stressed out about the house building, raising children, being a wife, serving at church, etc. going on in my life but I don't. Not at all. I actually had a chat with our bishop last night and he asked how I was doing. When I told him I was great, he was shocked - like his eyebrows went up and his eyes got big shocked. It's true though. I have had this amazing sense of peace since my surgery in January. And I have been working really hard at listening to what the Lord is trying to tell me. I can feel His hand guiding my life right now to the extent that it's almost tangible. It is a great place to be. It's like it says in Doctrine and Covenants 88:63 "Draw near unto me and I will draw near unto you; seek me diligently and you shall find me; ask, and ye shall receive; knock, and it shall be opened unto you." The harder we work to be close to the Lord, the closer He will be. And since He promises peace, I shouldn't be surprised that I have discovered such an abundance of it in my life.

A beautiful site

This is what happened in my world today. WOOOOO HOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You know it's spring time...

in rural Montana when you drive home at night and see this:

and you don't call the fire department.

In the beginning....

We are finally into the house building process. There are more pictures on Adam's camera but I'm not sure where it is so they will have to follow. The morning that our concrete guy was due to arrive with the backhoe to start digging, we kept Paige out of school so that we could go as a family and have our own private groundbreaking ceremony. Each of us turned over a shovel-full of dirt and we said a prayer together. I had decided that if it's good enough for a temple groundbreaking, it's good enough for us.

We had told Mark the Concrete Guy to give us a call when he got there with the backhoe but it turned out that he sent Johnny the Concrete Guy's Helper so we didn't get a phone call. We were waiting at my mom in law's house and Adam had gone up to the barn to doctor a calf. He called me to bring him some supplies and as I walked up to the barn I heard this tremendous racket. I looked up and saw the backhoe digging up our hill. I was so excited!

It took a couple of days to dig out the entire basement area. I showed up during day two while the guys were having their lunch break. When I asked how it was going, they said, "Not gonna lie. It's brutal. But that house ain't never gonna settle." Guess that's the benefit of building on a giant pile of rock.

I was lucky enough to show up on day three while the concrete truck was there so I got some action shots. Footings are probably not that exciting to anyone but us but it feels like such an accomplishment to have some proof there that this is actually happening!!

This is how it currently looks out there but probably only for the next day or two til they got the blocks put together for the basement walls.

It's so awesome to finally be on the path to my brand new house.

Recharge those spiritual batteries

Last weekend was General Conference. It was an awesome experience. I needed to take notes for a lesson that I will be teaching this coming Sunday so I fished out a brand new notebook just before the first session on Saturday morning. I had a flash of inspiration as I grabbed the notebook for me that the kids might enjoy a notebook for their own notes.

As I passed them out, I told them they could color pictures of the speaker, their tie, how they were feeling, etc. They took the box of crayons and all three layed on the floor to watch. Sarah scribbled - not unexpected. Porter drew President Monson's tie. Paige drew President Monson and then each speaker after him. She also drew a picture of the Conference Center and about 3/4 of the way through the session, she looked up at me and said, "Oh mom.... can we go to Salt Lake City someday???" It was so sweet. Their attention span had run out by the Saturday afternoon session so they didn't last long but I don't blame them. That is a long time to sit. The sweetest thing was that about 10 minutes before the 2nd session started Paige came to me and asked "Mom, can we watch General Conference again?" And then as the session started, Sarah climbed up on my lap and told me we were going to watch Heavenly Father.

On Sunday morning, Porter climbed into bed with Adam and I, as he often does. Adam looked at him and asked "What's your plan for the day, buddy?" Porter replied, "Listen to President Monson again." We watched the two Sunday sessions at Adam's mom's house. They each had to bring their General Conference notebooks to show grandma. I was shocked when Paige could go through hers and still tell us who each person was that she had colored.

I loved listening. It is such a feast for my soul. I learn so much. My favorite talks were from Elder Cook and Elder Robbins. I especially loved the point Elder Robbins made about making 'To Be' lists. It's really given me a lot of food for thought! We are so blessed to live in a time when we can see and hear the prophet of God speak!

Win a new Kitchenaid mixer and a year supply of flour!

Click on this link to enter! If you win, I win too so share the love!!

The funky chicken

Paige's dance class creates some awesome moments. Awesomely hilarious. Yesterday they got to do the chicken dance as part of their warm up. During the 'in-between the actions part', the teacher told the girls to act like chickens. (Paige is in the dark pink shirt, row closest to mirrors, two long braids down her back.)

Can you tell my child has been around real chickens?? :)

(P. S. Sorry about all the video posts lately!)