BayBel's First Birthday and the Voice of a Prophet

As you may be able to tell from the title, this week's blog is going to be a little all over the map, but the last week brought two, very unrelated, significant events.  You are forewarned that I will likely talk about both with little to no transition between the two, so here we go...

Last Sunday we celebrated Ben and Becca's baby girl, Isabel's first birthday.  She has actually been one for a few weeks, but first the celebration was held off until my mom could attend and then postponed due to sickness.  Once the party did get off the ground, it was a good time had by all.  It will just be a few weeks now until we all get together again for Carrigan's birthday.

The other major highlight, since the last blog, took place just a few hours ago.  Our stake (a small geographical area of members of our church) had the chance to have a special conference where Jeffry R. Holland (one of the twelve apostles we sustain to lead and direct our church) came to speak to us.  This is a big deal when you consider that there are 15 million members of our church and he came to speak to 1,500 of us.  He talked about how the church is a force for good.  The church teachings, and the Book of Mormon in particular, do nothing but teach us to be better, more Christlike people.  I talked about this a while back when we had general conference and I have thought about it a great deal since.  It is interesting, to say the least, the opposition the church has faced when, when you look at the evidence, the teaching of the church and the Book and Mormon teach nothing but to be better people.  Attending today was a rare and special experience and I am so grateful I had a chance to be a part of it.  It seemed irreverent to take his picture during the meeting so here is his picture from off the church website.

And We're Back (Plus Easter 2015)

You may have noticed a two week absence in my blog posting.  In some ways I feel like a much younger version of myself then I would sit down with my journal after a frequent, long absence and begins with "Dear Journal, so much has happened since I last wrote.  I will do my best to catch you up." So today I will say, Dear Readers, so much has happened since I last wrote.  I will do my best to catch you up.  In all honesty, the last two weeks have been a bit of a blur. We had Easter, packed, went to the ER, packed some more, moved, and began unpacking.

I would be remiss if I neglected to talk about Easter, so while I may talk about some of the other items on the list above, I mainly want to recap our Easter.  I am not really sure why, but this year I really wanted to make the most of all the different Easter egg hunts around the community and in particular go to one that would have been an all day Saturday event.  It really was foolish considering that we had our walk through for our new house that morning and were moving a week later and it is probably better that it didn't end up working out.  Instead we went to the West Linn hunt that lasts a grand total of 2 minutes and one at a Christian Church in a neighboring town.  I must say that I really enjoyed the activities at the Christian Church.  It was the perfect balance for the kids of fun and celebrating the true meaning of Easter.  Both of my kids really like the performance by Cha-Cha, the Christian Clown and getting colored balloons to shake to celebrate Jesus.

Of course we also had a visit to our house from the Easter Bunny.

It just so happened that Easter weekend also corresponded with our semi-annual church conference when many of our church leaders speak and deliver message about Jesus, faith, hope, service, and just being better, more Christlike people.  We watched as much as we could and even my kids felt the Spirit of the meeting and crowded around the computer to hear.

It was a great weekend filled with family, fun, faith, and love.

I really should just leave the blog there, since the feelings of the week that came after were very different, but in an effort to really get caught up, here is the rest of the story.  I think I mentioned before that the reason we were moving is that my parent's house had sold.  That following Tuesday my mom came to town and what came next was a lot of blood, sweat, and tears as we finished packing and cleaning and saying goodbye to their house.

By Friday night the packing was almost done.  It was 6pm and we were throwing together some dinner before Brendon and Ben were supposed to arrive at 6:30 to take my parents' remaining things to storage before our move the next morning.  The kids were playing in the empty shower when I heard Carrigan scream.  She came running out holding her hand and I assumed she had pinched her finger in the shower door.  Soon I started to see blood, lots of blood.  Eventually I figured out it was coming from her finger and I as soon as I saw the cut I knew we needed to go to the emergency room.  Jeremy, Ben, and Brendon still ended up moving my parents' things, but CC and I missed it.  Instead I held her as they sedated her and stitched up her poor finger.

After all the drama leading up to it, the move was fairly uneventful, we had some rain (heavy at times) but was also had a tremendous outpouring of service as about a dozen people from church came to help us load and unload all our belongings.  Now, just over a week later, we are nearly settled.  We have decorating to do, but most of the boxes are unpacked.  I asked Jeremy last night how long he thought it would take before this felt like "home".  He said it was probably a defense mechanism because we have moved so much that we try to not get attached to where we are, but that he is sure we would get there at some point.  I hope he is right.