I'm back and I have important things to share

Dear reader,

I am so sorry I haven't written in so long.  I feel like this is a letter to a long lost pen pal (fun side note, I used to have a real pen pal with whom I'd exchange letters from Lithuania when I was in 7th grade) but I am bummed that I haven't written because I know my older self will always wonder, what happened to Nelda for three months?  Well, let me fill in the blanks:  Morning sickness, continual sleepiness filled by random times when I wake up in the middle of the night starving, waves of emotion which I don't usually feel, the list goes on.  The good news?  I'm finally feeling better.  Not 100% but much better and definitely enough to start blogging again.  I apologize to my dear Elisabeth for having missed updates on a couple of her months.  She is now 18 months old and I owe a whole post to her.

Oh I have so many thoughts to share with you, my dear reader.  Where do I begin?  I think of sharing thoughts on this blog all the time.  Here's the biggest one:

I was listening to this great BYU devotional the other day promoting journal writing and I thought this blog.  He said that he would have forgotten so many wonderful things if he hadn't journaled all the time.  I couldn't agree more.  The best tip he gave though was one from President Eyring who has been journaling without skipping a for years.  He said the only thing he thinks of before he starts journaling is this question:  How have I seen the Lord's hand in my day today?  Then, he is able to focus on how the Lord has influenced him during the day rather than just show a laundry list of what he did.  To me, it's the perfect combo of talking about your day and sharing personal insights.  I am going to begin doing this.

Second big thought:

I've been re-reading this great book by Dr. Ritchie called "Return from Tomorrow."  Its a life-after-death book which I'm generally obsessed with anyway.  When he dies, Jesus is there to guide him and help him and here's what stands out to me.  Jesus shows him his whole life (only 20 years so not too much).  Ritchie realizes he hasn't done anything especially terrible but he hasn't done anything great or for others either.  Jesus says to him (here comes the bone chilling part):

What have you done for me?

Ritchie doesn't have a good answer.  Of course, this makes me look inward.  What have I done for Jesus?  What have I done for the Man who has done everything for me????  

When Ritchie comes back to life he comes to the realization that each of us must "die" a little each time we really give ourselves to Him.  This is the question that has been pressing hard on my mind for days now.  Let me tell you.  It can be very very hard to be Christlike in this world, to really love not only those who are easy to love but to love those who are harder to love.  But I won't be a pharisee.  I won't.  I am working on it so hard but I need the help of my Savior every day.  Sometimes, I think I focus too much on regrets from my past or on things I should have done better.  I beat myself up about those things but in prayer the other day I was given the realization that this regrets cloud my present behavior and that I should focus more on others and on doing things for the Savior now rather than on the past.  Make sense?  

One more takeaway from all of this.  We MUST take our covenants seriously.  We must!  Jesus shows Ritchie a time when he gives himself to Jesus (I'm guessing he is baptist) when he is 11 years old.  At the time, Ritchie is kind of just doing what all the other kids are doing and doesn't take it too seriously but he see later how seriously Jesus takes this commitment.  I think of myself and the covenants and commitments I have made.  Have I honored them sufficiently?  Have I taken them seriously enough?  Have I gone through the motions too much?  Ritchie talks about how our Savior's light is so near to us but most of us cannot see it because our eyes cannot behold the glory of what is right there.  Well, I could go on forever but I it's Monday morning.  I want to leave with a prayer to our Savior:

Dear Lord,

I come to Thee with a broken heart and contrite spirit

Please show me what I can do for Thee

Please help me fill my home with love and with the Spirit

Please help me to not judge others for judging for in this manner I am as guilty as those who judge

Thou art there to be praised

I bow to Thee and thank Thee for the angels that surround me every day because of Thee

It feels so good to know that the things I write and do and say and commit to for Thee,

are taken seriously by Thee

Please help me never to forget that the most important thing I can do for Thee is to serve Thee 

Please help me to remember this as the first thing when I wake up in the morning and the last thing before I go to bed

I praise Thee, Oh Lord, Glory to God on high!!

We're totes preggo!

...And we couldn't be happier.  I could hardly believe it when the test came in positive and yet at the same time I totally believed it.  The nice part was I wasn't stressed over it this month at all.  Earlier that day at the grocery store I had kind of just picked up a preggo test on my way out, ho-hum style.  Then I took the test and within 30 second it showed.  Crazy huh!  Just goes to show you that it's best not to focus on it too much.  Paul and I said a prayer of Thanksgiving right away and are still smiling from it.  I told my parents and Paul told his mom and all are happy.  I think baby #2 will be coming April 11 but I'll know more at my first doctor's appointment in September.  Anyhoo, there's the big news.  It's so fun to have and help create a family!!

Spiritual Sunday - The Merciful Obtain Mercy

This is just a quick one.  Relief Society was great!  We went over the President Uchtdorf talk The Merciful Obtain Mercy.  Beautiful!  It has humbled me.

Lizzie is 16 months old!

Have you ever seen a cuter lil girl?  She loves socks and shoes and is trying mine on here.  Cute little impish grin huh?  So yes, baby girl is 16 months!  She weighs about 25 pounds and is trying so hard to talk.  Let's see what else is new with her:

• She says Mama to me sometimes and also Agua for water and Boo!  when she wants to scare me.  Soo cute.
• She's a shrieker, especially at church on the library.
• She actually gave me a hug the other day.  I was so touched.  She just leaned in for a quick snuggle.  I'm so used to her being on the move and being wiggly that I couldn't believe it.  Made my day!
• She loves pool time and we spend a lot of time at our baby pool.
• Her eyes are hazely-green and her hair turns lighter in the sun.  So different from mine.
• She loves happy time with me and her daddy when we're all just hanging out or going bike riding together.
• She doesn't cry anymore when we leave for nursery at church. 
• She loves to hold baby dolls.  

That's about it, I think.  Here are some pictures of her at Heber Fair Days, which included a carnival and parade.  I think she quite enjoyed it.  Our friends Arianna and Kendrick came to visit for a day too.

  

Spiritual Sunday

I've decided to do a reflective post on my blog every Sunday with thoughts I'd like to capture before I forget them. I'm going to call it Spiritual Sunday. Here are some thoughts for the week:

• I never realized until lately the power that is found when one praises the Lord in prayer.  And by that I mean literally I say "I praise Thy name and Thee."  Wow, try it sometime.  The power and reverence that is found in that sentence is quite overwhelming.  It's a hard feeling to explain.  It puts me in my place in a way and the best way that I can describe it is it makes me feel like I have said this sentence for billions of years and it feels right, soooo right to praise the Lord and say it out loud.  I picture all of us in the pre-existence saying those words.
• I've been listening to the Mormon Channel a lot lately.  I LOVE it!  They have the best interviews and you gain so many nuggets of wisdom from it.  Here's one thing I loved.  A missionary was being interviewed who said she was not even active until she was 18.  She said what changed her mind is that her young woman leader told her "Yes, you can probably be happy with the path you are following but it will not be the life you always dreamed of having."  Powerful statement, no?  Something I must remember and it's true.  This path is the true path and only path.  The life I am living now is a life I have only ever dreamed of having and I praise the Lord for that.
• We've begun the 30 day Book of Mormon Challenge again.  This time, we are reading it together and I really like that we need to carve out an hour of out time to read together.  Not a better way we could spend our time.  Well, I think that's all for now but I really look forward to these spiritual Sundays.

What we've been up to in July

It's been a fun but busy month.  The first real week we were finally settled (read:  almost all boxes unpacked)  Paul and I decided to invite everyone and his brother (literally, lol) to partake of the joy we find in Heber.  It was a wonderful week but I am officially done entertaining people for July.  It's like I packed all my hospitality into one exhilarating week.

It all began on Sunday.  We my cousins Jemmy and Jeidy and their husbands Brennan and Carlos and all of Jemmy's kids over for a delicious BBQ after church.  YUM!  Carlos is starting a restaurant so he made us so much tasty food.  Lizzie had a lot of fun with Jeidy and Carlos' sons.

I got to become better friends with Jemmy's new husband Brennan as well.  He is really funny and nice. Then, the next day we had my cousin Jocelyn and her kids and Andy and his family and Aunt Iza and Uncle Stacey over for a bbq dinner.  Yum.  The next afternoon, Paul's whole family came over and we had a sleepover.  We watched a movie on the projector downstairs and people upstairs played cards and we had more bbq.  It was just good times all around.  The next morning it was July 4.  We had scones for breakfast and then Martha put together a carnival for the kids all around our home.  They really liked it.  Look how cute they all look here with their July 4 outfits!  Lizzie cried so hard every time I put her on Grandma McAllister's lap.  Poor thing is starting to figure out she is independent of me (they say it happens at 15 months) and she cries at a lot of stuff lately.  I think she wishes she had the words to express herself more.

Lizzie loved the pool the most but then she tried to get into the old bumbo she used to use when she was a baby.  It was so funny watching her squeezing into it.  Haha.

The following day was our day of rest and then the next day, Paul's mom came and spent Friday and Saturday with us.  We took her to see a production of Fiddler on the Roof in Midway in the open theatre which was on a field with the gorgeous view of Mt Timp.  Simply a stunning evening and a great little production too!  I think this will become a tradition.  The next morning, we took her to eat at Cafe Galleria in Midway, my new favorite Midway restaurant.  It's a pizza place that plays Dean Martin music.  My mother and I discovered it and fell in love with it. It even has an ice cream shop in the back, one of those old-timey ones.  After breakfast, we explored Midway and then Kamas and went into the Uinta National Forest which is beautiful.  We went all the way to Mirror lake and have decided to go camping there next week.  Excited!!

After our tour of the area, we went home and rested for a little and then Paul's mom went home and then we went to Provo for little Hayden's birthday party.  That was awesome.  We walked in to the smell of Hawaiian BBQ going on and a ton of little kids running around in swim suits.  It was great for Lizzie.  A ton of different little pools and one of those big kid jumpy slidey things too.  We ate like crazy and I was sad when I was full and couldn't eat more because it was so darn tasty.  I don't usually say that about food but I was seriously sad that I was full.  How funny, huh?  But at the same time, I was happy, of course.  Lizzie liked it and got to play with her Johnson cousins.  

So, we came home that night and just crashed.  What a week!  Good times and memorable times though.  Here's to a wonderful summer at our new home.

Living in Heber

I'm sitting here watching Mt. Timp and here's my view:

What do you say??  Breathtaking isn't it? I still can't believe I live here.  I have to pinch myself.  I feel very blessed.