My baby is cute

Can you deny it? :)

Three for Thursdays: Halloween edition

Prompt by Evelyn of "Hanging by a Silver Lining"


Three objects to my left:

• Cereal box which I attempted to make into a magazine holder. It's a little too small, and very unstable. What a dissatisfying attempt that was. Oh well.
• A silver and gold pom pom. It's one of the free things that were available when I ran a 5K in Idaho Falls awhile back. The kids like them, but it's for the University of Idaho. Need to get a BYU one. :)
• A stack of Dietrich's school work. It's not terribly deep, it just represents stuff that I need to sort through to decide what to keep, and what to throw out. Of course, when I say keep I mean scan into the computer and then toss. *sigh* I'm so glad for digital files.

Three songs I can’t get out of my head:
This is a strange one . . . who ever has three songs stuck in their head at once?

•  Right now Kate is singing "C is for Cookie". Pretty sure that one will be staying in my head today.
• Watched a clip of a little girl singing "Someone Like You" with Adele. I don't even necessarily like that song, but that will be featured in my head today as well.
• And now my baby's crying so I can't think of any other songs at all. :/

Three favorite Halloween movies (or songs):

• "Monster Mash"
• There's some spooky sounding organ piece that I don't know the name of and I don't know the composer (possibly Bach, though) . . . but I love it! It's a classic Halloween piece.
• "Ernest, Scared Stupid" is funny if you enjoy Ernest. I do. Although I won't show this one to my kids b/c I found it a little bit scary as a kid. In a few years, though. :D

Three things I’ve learned to just let go of:

• Perfection, now. I fully expect to be able to attain that at some point in eternity, but I'm at peace with the fact that I may not even get close to it in this life. In my previous misunderstanding of the Atonement, it was devastating to realize that because I didn't understand that I wasn't expected to become perfect on my own; I just knew that I had been commanded to be perfect so I thought I was done for!
• My pre-baby body. I'm not getting it back in this life. And that's okay. I just want to maintain health and fitness.
• I'm not the mother I imagined I'd be. I am still shooting for that ideal, but I'm not beating myself up for falling short.

Three reasons I could wear the Super Woman costume on Halloween:

•  I've run a 5K and am training for a 10K, and my baby is just under 4 months old.
• I'm crocheting two of my children's Halloween costumes.
• I'm a stay-at-home mom. I AM super woman. :) hahaha

 
Three pictures:


Dietrich as a skeleton last year - this costume got us through two Halloweens, and we bought it on clearance. :D

The sweetest looking witch ever. This pic is also from last year.

Halloween party my senior year - little did I know then that I'd get to keep this hottie forever! I am the luckiest. :)

My greatest blessing

This past Sunday I attended church in my sister's ward. The building she meets in happens to be the location where I was baptized and confirmed a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. As I sat in sacrament meeting I realized that this fall marks the 20th anniversary of my baptism. Truthfully, I don't remember much about that day. I was fortunate to have been baptized by my very own father, who has been a wonderful example of obedience and faithfulness to me my entire life. I remember that the water in the baptismal font was warm, and after the ordinance I felt really warm inside. My parents gave me my own set of engraved, leather-bound scriptures in a scripture case, and my maternal grandma gave me a book of poetry. I was baptized on a Saturday evening, and confirmed the next day in church.
That was just over twenty years ago. Many things have happened since then. I've made a lot of mistakes, done a lot of repenting, grown in my knowledge of the gospel. Since I was baptized at the tender age of eight I only understood the bare basics of the gospel of Jesus Christ, but that was enough. I had a testimony. I didn't have complete ownership of my testimony, but it wasn't very many years until I did. I was later blessed to be sealed to my best friend in the Logan temple, and entered the temple to receive my own necessary ordinances just days before. I am now raising my own children and teaching them the gospel of Jesus Christ, and hope that they will choose to be baptized and enter the temple just as I did.
The older I get the more I appreciate what I count to be my greatest blessing - my membership in this church. In this church can be found the fullness of the gospel of Jesus Christ, Priesthood power, and all the ordinances necessary for any and all of God's children to return to live with Him. Through the power of the Holy Ghost the Lord has taught me that He loves me, no matter what. I also know that He is personally interested in my progression, that He not only has a great overall plan for His mortal children, but also for me specifically. He sent His son, Jesus Christ to set an example for us to follow and to atone for our sins and suffer all things that we suffer so that He could comfort us in our times of sorrow. Because of His atonement, my greatest desires can be realized - those of having my family for eternity and to live with Him and our Heavenly Father, as well as have the opportunity to continue progressing to become like Him.
I would not know these things if the church that Jesus established during His earthly ministry had not been restored to the earth through the prophet, Joseph Smith. And if I didn't know these things, life would be so much harder for me. I'm married to a wonderful, supportive and faithful man; but every marriage has its downs and without the knowledge that families can be and are meant to be eternal my commitment to marriage would likely be weak, as would my husband's. What a terrible amount of uncertainty that would bring to my life! I have been blessed to give birth to three beautiful and sweet children; but raising children is a lot harder than I thought it would be and without the knowledge that it is my god-given role to be a mother I would probably delegate most of my role to other people while I sought self-fulfillment in some other way. And I would cheat myself of so much growth and joy!
I am the recipient of many, many blessings from my Heavenly Father but I've got to say that my membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints tops the list.