Home Again

Hey, all....yes, it really is Mandy! I am finally posting after a few weeks of silence. We had a great trip to Utah and Idaho. However, it went by way too fast and now we are hurriedly organizing our house and avoiding the holiday rush so we can enjoy what time we have together as a family.

In Utah, we spent most of our time with Matt's family in Brigham City and a little time in Idaho with his dad and brother and then our favorite college friends the Allen family. (If you want to see some really cute pics of our girls, be sure to check out the Allen Family blog!). Lacey and I went fabric shopping and to one of my favorite places- Costco! We visited and ate lots of yummy food and then I oogled over her food storage. You wouldn't believe how awesome it is! Way to go, Lac!

We were able to spend a day up at Matt's family cabin in Island Park and that was very cozy and relaxing. Grace continually climbed the stairs and was told "No" due to the gas fireplace. She left there with another word in her vocabulary...you guessed it- "NO!" She's too cute when she does it! (I'll get sick of it one day I'm sure, but for now I find in adorable).

We played a lot of dominoes with Matt's mom. She loves to play games, even more than we do if that's even possible! We often were up until midnight playing Mexican Train. Even though we were exhausted....we had way too much fun to complain.

We went on a date night to see Quantum of Solace, which we both very much enjoyed. That's only the second date night we've been on in the last 6 months. Yikes!

We also got to go to Maddox and have a nice quiet dinner with his family. Then we went to Salty and spent a bit of time with my family. We had a great family home evening with my Dad's family and spent the next day with my grandparents learning about their trip to Mexico and my grandma also sat down and taught me how to Index names for family history. Very cool!

My mom's family came next and we had a FULL T-day dinner and were able to spend some time scrapbooking, visiting and most of all watch Grace climb the stairs and show all of her "tricks" to the family who haven't seen her since she was crawling. Again, so stinkin' cute I could bite her.

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving...I know we did. Matt cooked all but one side dish for us! What a chef. He's the greatest....and he's all mine!

This has already been a pretty long post and we did a whole lot more while we were away, but I think I'll stop there. I will try to post more regularly.

Great Sunday

Today was a really great Sunday. I usually enjoy Sundays, but today we all had a very uplifting day. We had touching and inspired lessons in Relief Society and Elders Quorum. Jana, my good friend and Relief Society Pres. gave a lesson about gratitude and how the right attitude and focus on our blessings can change our lives. I truly felt the spirit during the lesson. Thank you, Jana.

Matt's lesson was about the simpleness of the way to live with our Father in Heaven again. We had a good talk about what we learned and then we had a guest to dinner. There was a younger gentleman in our ward visiting whom we invited over and we were able to discuss how gospel principles have given our lives purpose and direction in the latter days, especially since we are all Active Duty Army. I really appreciated the time we were able to visit with this brother, Spencer Taylor from Ft. Huachuca (I probably spelled that wrong!).

He shared with us some great experiences he has had and what helped him survive his time away during deployments. I think Matt and I both benefited from having an LDS perspective on deployment. He introduced us to a great web site with free downloadable LDS music called liahona.net. I encourage all of my readers to check it out. It is truly a gift from God to have this uplifting and wholesome music at our fingertips.

We are very blessed.