Cornerstones of a Happy Home

This week has been crazy.. Or it just felt more exhausting than usual. I've made so many goals I'm starting to feel a little overwhelmed with everything. I took the kids to my parent's house over the weekend so Andrew could study for an exam that he had for his new job. Haven was in an unfamiliar place, so instead of sleeping 6-8 hours she was waking up every 3. It was awesome! We stayed there from Friday to Tuesday evening. Andrew took the test on Tuesday and passed. But this week was more of a week to recuperate. Since we were gone, we had FHE on Thursday. It was based on a talk by Gordon B. Hinckley called "Cornerstones of a Happy Home." Honestly, this talk is so good I think the best way to get something from it is just to read it. Which is what we did. I had Andrew read the talk during one of his lunch breaks and we just talked about it for FHE. I had some grand plans to build our dream home out of legos as our activity for FHE, but like I said, I have been exhausted this week. So we just talked about what we thought we could improve on individually and as a couple. Please, please read this talk. I loved it. Tomorrow's FHE is going to be based on a talk by Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin called "Cultivating Divine Attributes." I've already read this talk and I really like it, but I'm having a hard time applying it specifically towards marriage. If any of you have any tips or ideas, please let me know :) I'm REALLY enjoying planning these FHE's and posting them. It really gives me something to look forward to. It's a goal that I know is worthwhile and helps me grow closer to my Heavenly Father.

Family Home Evening

Last night we had our first family home evening of the year. It was based off the talk by President Harold B. Lee called "The Constitution for a Perfect Life." Basically it talks about the beatitudes. 

Blessed are they that mourn.
Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness.
Blessed are the pure in heart.
Blessed are the meek.
Blessed are the merciful.
Blessed are the peacemakers.
Blessed are they which are persecuted.

Blessed are the poor in spirit.

While I was reading this talk and then preparing my lesson, I tried to think of how I can apply each trait to daily life. Where can I work on it? It became humbling to think about all the improvement that I have room for. I thought of each trait as difficult to master. Which made me think of a poem that President Monson read in the October 2013 conference. 

Good timber does not grow with ease,

The stronger wind, the stronger trees.

The further sky, the greater length.

The more the storm, the more the strength.

By sun and cold, by rain and snow,

In trees and men good timbers grow.⁸

I wanted to incorporate this poem into the lesson for FHE. So I created a poster board with a tree on it and glued each trait on it as a leaf, and referred to them as things that are difficult to do or be, but they make us stronger and give us great rewards. Andrew and I talked about other things that have been difficult in our lives but we are now grateful for because of the blessings and how they helped us grow. Some things we brought up was Andrew graduating college, having kids and paying tithing. All of those things require a lot of sacrifice but in the end give us so much happiness. 

We also watched a video by Jeffrey R. Holland called "Christ is the Way". He talks about the beatitudes. 

After talking things that have already passed, we talked about things we want to work on now that we know will be difficult but will provide more rewards in the end. Things like working out, budgeting our money and keeping a cleaner house. We then wrote everything that we talked about on the back of leaves and glued them onto the tree. I'm going to keep the poster board up for the week to remind us of our goals. ...I know I've become really 

cheesy. Or maybe I always have been. 

Next weeks lesson is going to be based on a talk given by President Gordon B. Hinckley called "Cornerstones of a Happy Home". I read the talk last night to have it in the back of my mind all week. I really loved this talk and what it teaches. If any of you read it, let me know what you think and if you have any ideas on how to present it. 

2014

Hello World! 

It has been a long time! A lot has happened in the two years I have been away from the blogging world. We have had 2 babies. Hudson and Haven. We have moved to Chino Hills, California. Andrew has graduated college and has started training to become a nursing home administrator. We are excited about all the blessings in our lives and I am excited to start sharing my life more fully again. 

We have set many goals for 2014 and I figured what better way to be held accountable for them than to post them on this blog? Some of those goals include losing weight, having regular Family Home Evenings, documenting our children's lives more, and just strengthening our family in general. So this blog is going to be my outlet for all of those. I'll be posting my lesson plan for FHE every week, if anybody wants to follow along and plan lessons with me. Since the kids can't participate quite yet it's still going to be geared towards strengthening mainly our marriage. I'll be posting tons of pictures of the kids and the funny things they do, and sometimes the not so funny... like throwing cars in church. It has become an every week ritual. I'm afraid my ward may secretly hate us. I'll even try to post motivation for any one else trying to lose weight. Our family is doing "The Biggest Loser" for 6 months. I'm very excited and hope that we can all be successful and pleased with the outcome. 

Tomorrow is Monday, which means FHE. I've planned a rough lesson manual for the year based on the scripture from 1 Corinthians:

Love is patient, love is kind.

Love is not jealous, it does not brag, and it is not proud.

Love is not rude, is not selfish and does not become angry easily.

Love does not remember wrongs done against it.

Love is not happy with evil, but is happy with truth.

Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never fails.

I divided it up by each trait and assigned it a month. Except for January. January is four talks/teachings from the  Eternal Marriage Student Manual that are called the "Foundations for an Eternal Marriage." Tomorrow's lesson will be based on the talk called The Constitution for a Perfect Life by President Harold B. Lee. If anyone has any input or wants to "be on board" with us, feel free to let me know or share your ideas! 

I'm very excited for this year! I pray that we can all find success in the goals we have set for this year. Happy Sunday everyone!

37 Weeks!

I am officially 37 weeks pregnant. Which means Hudson is officially full term! It is amazing how much differently my body has been acting in the past week and a half. I can definitely tell my body is getting ready to give birth.

Last Sunday at church I started having my first painful Braxton Hicks contractions. I would feel a shooting pain down my back and my whole stomach would get rock hard. The thing that freaked me out about them was that they were 5 minutes apart! It really freaked me out. I went home after church and called the hospital. They said to take some tylenol and a hot shower and call back in an hour. Of course, by then, the contractions had stopped.

On Wednesday I had a doctor's appointment and my doctor said that the baby was in place, and his head was low so Hudson could come any day now within the next 3-4 weeks. The doctor doesn't think he'll be coming late. That was exciting news! So now I'm trying to keep my house as clean as possible. But of course, with a big belly it's hard to find the energy to keep it all up!

The down side with Hudson being low now is that he constantly keeps hitting my nerves, and I have a pain that shoots down my leg and makes me crumble. This also makes it hard to walk, clean the house, or let alone stand.

This past Saturday night, after Andrew's first baseball game I awoke at 2 am with a shooting pain in my stomach. It felt like fire on my insides! One of the worst pain I have ever felt. Once again, I called the hospital, and it sounds like they think I got food poisoning or the stomach flu. Thankfully, I could feel Hudson moving around the whole time so I wasn't too worried about him. Andrew was so nice to run to Wal-Mart at 3 in the morning to get me some Mylanta that really helped; but I did have to sleep sitting up the rest of the night. And now ever since then I've had occasional bouts of nausea. I'm trying to stay positive and just take this all as signs of Hudson's soon arrival :)

I cannot believe Andrew and I are going to be parents in less than a month! I've had a whole nine months to grasp that fact and it seems to get more and more difficult to wrap my head around. There is a real life baby squirming around inside me and soon I get to hold him. Still SO weird to think! Oh, but I can't wait to see him!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!!

We hope your Christmas was as wonderful as ours was!

Surprise Birthday Party

Andrew threw me a surprise birthday party for my 21st birthday! He did such a good job planning it and keeping it a secret from me. I had absolutely no idea! I also have some great friends here who helped him out! Andrew got Subway sandwich platters, had a friend make a birthday cake, brought in a ping-pong table and he even borrowed a karaoke machine. The party was so much fun! It was so cool to see all my friends together to celebrate my birthday.

When Andrew plans something he's completely thorough, which is really cool! He covers every single detail you could think of. To get me to go to where the party was, he told me a friend wanted to borrow his PS3 at the school. So on our way to dinner, we had to drop it off on campus. I was a little frustrated that we had to get out of the car and bring it to him, because it was freezing outside. When we walked into the room I thought we were interrupting something. I was totally shocked! Andrew even thought to ask me to dress up nice and do my hair. Thank goodness. He told me he wanted to take me to Olive Garden and asked me to do my hair pretty. I have such an amazing, thoughtful husband who is really good at showing me he loves me. :)

There's still nothing quite as awkward as standing in the middle of the crowd and having them sing "Happy Birthday" to you. I never know what to do. Standing there and smiling doesn't seem adequate enough.

Thank you everyone who helped Andrew put the party together. Thank you everyone who came and thank you for all the birthday cards! It really meant a lot to me to see everyone there!

Hello world...

Our baby boy would like to wave hello...

This is an image of his face upside down. You can see the outline of his nose and to black openings were his eyes are.
This is also an upside down image of his face. You can see the black circles where his eyes are. And the picture below is a profile image.

Andrew and I had our 20 week ultrasound today to officially determine the gender of our baby :) The doctor got a clear shot of his butt and found something in between. It was such a fun day! We got some clear views of his face, and he is going to be such a cute baby!! I cannot wait to hold him in my arms! It was so fun to feel him moving in my stomach and actually see it happen on the monitor. I loved seeing Andrew enjoying it, too. Although some images are very difficult to even tell what it is a picture of it's still so cool knowing that we are looking at our son! I just can't wait for him to get here now! We're planning on naming him Hudson David. :)