Goals and Gratefulness

January 19, 2014

Gratitude for the Week:

I am grateful for a husband who supports me. This week Kelly went to the temple with me. We enjoyed the peace that attending the temple brings. We stayed in a hotel, which is something we rarely do, and had a nice quiet trip. The next day, Kelly taxied me to all of my favorite stores and then drove us home.

I am glad I live in a time where the scriptures are readily available and the temple is close enough to drive to in a day.

I am grateful for good friends. I love my daily walks with Shannon and Celeste. Not only do we work at getting healthy physically, but we tend to build each other up spiritually as well. I am so blessed.

Goal List for the Week:

1. Read the scriptures every day

2. Find two new healthy recipes and make them

3. Make Prayer board names and put them up

4. Create a list of projects I need to finish

5. Take one meaningful picture a day

I think I will start with these and let you know how it went next week.

Gratitude

My goal for this year is to have an attitude of gratitude. These are the things I am most grateful for:

Kelly:

I am so grateful for my husband. He is one of the most thoughtful people I have ever met. On Monday, he called me from Hobby Lobby to tell me that all the Christmas stuff had gone down to 90% off. Then he proceeded to send me pictures and ask me what I wanted him to buy. Then on Thursday, I went to the gym to work out (they about killed me) and started to get really sick. I made it from Manson to just after the tunnel before I had to pull over and started puking! During this time, Kelly had gone back to Hobby Lobby to see what was left and was sending me more pictures. Then when he got home, I was in the bedroom dying; he made me some broth and lay in bed next to me just talking. I went to work on Friday, but should have stayed home. He had told me I shouldn’t go. Then he spent half of the afternoon, texting me pictures from Shopko because they had gone to 90% off. What is so amazing about Kelly is that he is ALWAYS thinking of others and what he can do for them. Whether it is because it will make them happy or life easier, he is always looking for ways to help. I am one lucky lady!

Andy and Yulia:

I am lucky to have these two in my life. Andy has always been a smart young man, and he has chosen a beautiful young lady who is just as smart as he is. Many people have commented on what a hard worker Andy is and that when he is given a task, he does it. He is currently working two jobs and going to college! I am so proud of the fine young man he has become. I love his serious and insightful spirit. This past Christmas found Yulia in extreme pain and not doing very well. Thanks to modern medicine, she was able to spend some time in the hospital and find out what was going on. She is a sweet girl who I am lucky to know!

Casey:

I am thankful for my own Tigger! He is my own bouncy, trouncy, flouncy boy. I am so thankful for his sweet spirit and faith in the gospel. I love that he has chosen to serve the Lord and that his testimony is growing. I love his energy and eagerness to try new things! I can’t wait to see what he does in life.

Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ:

I know my Father lives. I am the daughter of a King. I know that my brother and Savior Jesus Christ gave his life so that I may return to live with my Father again one day. I am truly blessed. I am grateful for the gospel and the fact that there is a living prophet to lead and guide me here on earth.

Craft Therapy

These past two weeks have been full of emotional turmoil. But I want to point out how lucky I am to have a husband who loves me inspite of my weight, my foolish fits, and my worrying. A few days before Valentine's day he surprised me with a beautiful bunch of roses. I can't remember the last time he gave me flowers, and these meant the world to me. Beautiful!!! I have been stressing out because Casey was taking his own sweet time getting into the Post Office to file for his passport. To be fair, he did move to a new apartment and has been quite sick. I'm still struggling with the ward change and now feel as if I don't fit in in either ward. Today, our Relief Society president asked me about visiting teaching and told me she was going to keep Entiat separated from the ward. For some reason this sent me into a fit of tears that had me packing up and leaving early. Silly I know but its hard enough moving to a new ward much less feeling like an unwanted appendage. What Heavenly Father is trying to teach me, I don't know but I wish I would figure it out so he would quit challenging me. :) I will survive. To help me cope, I have spent the past couple of weeks in craft therapy. Here is what I have done so far.

Just Do It!

For the past two months one of my VERY best friends has been telling me that I just need to get on and start blogging again. So many things have happened in our lives since November that it’s hard to know where to start. I’m going to start with January. The first week of January I was called to serve as the Young Women’s President in the Chelan ward. It was with extremely mixed feelings that I accepted this call. First, I knew how much Shannon loved serving with these girls and how much this call meant to her. Second, I felt less than adequate. I painted a castle wall with an arch that serves as a blackboard. My idea is that the girls are all daughters of a King, so they deserve a castle. DeAndra England, Kendra Hinckley, and Lindsea Volle served with me. These three women are incredible! I love them! On Monday the 29th of January, Casey’s mission call finally came in the mail. My poor boy had been waiting for five weeks. This wouldn’t have seemed long were it not for him being told that the average call was received in nine days! It turned out that there was a decimal misplaced on his medication. An easy fix, and they made his assignment. We then waited, and waited, and waited. I arranged with our post office to have them express mail it when it came into Entiat. We expected to receive it on Thursday, and it didn’t come. Friday – nope! Monday came and I called only to be told that, no it had not come yet. So, I let Casey know and headed home. When I stopped by the post office, I noticed that the gal was still working. (This is unusual because it was six o’clock at night.) I headed home and when I checked the mail—there it was! I rushed back to the post office and was able to mail it that night!

We arranged to have Casey on Skype and open it up during mutual since both Kelly and I had to be at the Church. This was honestly the most AMAZING experience! We had about forty church members at church, and Tina, Rachel, and Andy on Skype. Skype!

Of course Casey called about five minutes early and so everyone at church was waiting, but no one had shown up at his apartment yet. Everyone waiting on Casey!

When he finally attempted to open the envelope, he was shaking so bad he could hardly get it open much less read it. Me anxiously waiting for him to quit shaking and read!

I don’t think I can describe the pride and joy I felt when Casey read those words, “Dear Elder Sorensen: You are hereby called to serve as a missionary of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” His next words were met with a HUGE cheer from everyone in the room as well as on the computer. “You are assigned to labor in the England Birmingham Mission.” Needless to say that after the cheer, there were many tears on my part. There was quite a bit of giggling on Andy’s part as Casey’s reaction was priceless. Casey is so excited to serve and has been anxiously preparing. My Boy!

So, we had a really high on Wednesday, only to come crashing down on Sunday. Saturday night we received a phone call from the Stake Presidency requesting a meeting with Kelly on Sunday morning. I knew beyond any doubt that he was being released. I should have known when they asked me to join him that it would be more than that. Well not only did they release him, they released me too! But that was not to be the biggest bomb. They then proceeded to inform us that we would no longer be a part of the Chelan ward and that Entiat was now a part of the Rocky Reach ward. Oh and you might want to bear your testimony but don’t say anything, we will be announcing it at the end of sacrament. WHAT??? I haven’t stopped crying yet. I honestly do not know why my Heavenly Father feels that I need to face these challenges, but every time I get excited about serving, I am released. This time, I am being torn from my extended family. The Chelan ward has changed my life, and I don’t want to lose them! Oh my, now the tears are flowing again. I will have to call it good for now.

Fudge N Nuts!

Another week has come and gone. Monday I was so lucky! Andy came over and we went to dinner at Denny's with Kelly. It was so nice to see him looking so happy. He has been busy working and Yulia is busy with school.

On Friday, Kelly and I went with Cindi and her family to thier school's Halloween Party. Cindi let me do Trey's makeup and he had a zombie bride named Charlie to keep him company.

Saturday found me out in the gloomy weather taking senior pictures with two awesome boys! Shannon came down with Paul and Kelly and we went down to the Entiat museum to start with. We then went up river to Ardenvoir and took a few more. Talk about a fun experience! I hope they are happy. Here are my favorites:

Saturday night, I decided to make some sugar-cinnamon almonds for Dale England as a way of thanking him for all the Sunday school classes he has taught for me (and because he is going to be teaching for me while I am in Florida). Only 13 more days! I seriously cannot wait. I am so excited to spend one-on-one time with Kelly in my favorite vacation spot! I also made some pumpkin fudge. I think it tastes great and am going to make some for Christmas too.

Crafty Weekend

This week has been a busy one. I am so happy that I was able to walk EVERY day with my friends Shannon and Celeste! It makes each day better to end with a rejuvinating walk and talk. Aside from walking, my students have been busy writing and I ended up with 41 five paragraph essays to grade. Yikes! But I did it and was able to make comments on each students papers. On Saturday, we met up with members of our ward and many of Manson's football team to help one of Casey's friends clean up his dad's house. We had over twenty people show up and we tackled the project quickly. It was work, but it was fun to be a part of the service taking place. After that, Kelly and I came home, and while he went to help his dad, I did this:

and this!

Roller Coaster Ride!

After President Monson’s announcement changing the missionary age to 18, my life has been a bit topsy turvy. Casey of course called saying that he wanted to leave as soon as possible. The problem was trying to determine when to submit his papers and how that would affect his BYU status. After many conversations with Heavenly Father and his bishop, Casey has decided to wait and submit his papers as soon as he gets home in December. He is going to plan on going to winter semester and set his availability date for May 1st. On a different note, I spent this week doing parent-teacher conferences and realizing just how lucky I am. I have the opportunity to reach out to 42 students and hopefully empower them in their learning. I love that I get to focus on teaching Language Arts and Social Studies this year! I have a great companion teacher to work with too.