Prayers Needed

Last weekend, my Aunt Mary-Margaret went to the hospital after coughing up blood only to find out that her left lung had collapsed. After additional testing they determined that a benign tumor is blocking blood flow to the left lung and is having effects not only on her lung, but also her heart. They are waiting on additional test results to see if there are any other abnormal growths in her chest cavity. The results will be coming in on Thursday.

As a result of the collapsed lung, the top lobe of the left lung has to be removed. They will not know if the lower portion needs to be removed until the surgery is performed. If the lower portion can be spared, then it can actually grow and fill the entire cavity, thus allowing her to maintain her normal lifestyle. If the entire lung does have to be removed then her activity level will be reduced dramatically. They are doing additional testing on her right lung on Thursday to see how strong it is and to see if it would be able to provide enough oxygen for the body on its own.

Her surgery date will be determined on Friday after the results are examined and discussed. It will probably be sometime early next week. She and her husband have 7 children to care for, and would appreciate all of your prayers and fasting in their behalf. Please, whatever your faith, please include their family in your prayers. Pray for the doctors that they will perform the surgery well. Pray for Mary-Margaret, that she will be able to recover quickly, and pray that she will be able to keep at least part of her left lung. I know that God hears and answers our prayers, and I have faith that a miracle can occur for my family if it be God's will. Thank you so much for all your faith and prayers in advance.

Good Times

So, can I just say...I LOVE the weekends! This weekend was great! We just hung out on Friday at home, and on Saturday morning, Kenneth did some yard work, while I cleaned inside. Then, that afternoon we got together with out dinner group for lunch. I always love our dinner groups and look forward to them! It is so fun to get together with friends and to get updated on things going on in our lives, and to see how much the babies have grown since the month before! Love it! Afterwards Kenneth and I went rockclimbing...he did 1 climb - an 11d, and I attempted a 10d or something...Kenneth completed his, and I only made it half way up mine, but we were both SOO sore afterwards!

Saturday evening I attended the General Relief Society Broadcast. It was amazing! I learned a lot of things, and it really gave me an extra desire to try to be better. Here are so highlights from the different talks:

Sister Julie B Beck

We need to understand the mission of Relief Society, which is to organize, teach and inspire Heavenly Father's daughters to prepare them for the blessings of eternal life. She then gave 3 things we need to focus on:

1. Increase in faith and personal righteousness
2. Strength our families and home
3. Serve the Lord and his children

Sister Silvia H Allred

Sister Allred spoke about the importance of temple and how we need to return often to continue to learn, and to prepare to go if we have not been able to yet.

Sister Barbara Thompson

Sister Thompson spoke about how we need to be devoted to Relief Society, and how if we are, then we will be able to do extraordinary things.

President Uchtdorf

President Uchtdorf spoke about how women often undervalue their abilities, and how we need to focus on our accomplishments rather than how we should have been better. He said that we need be happy, have peace and joy in spite of burdens we are asked to bear. He said that in order to achieve God's happiness we can work on the following 2 things:

1. Creating something beautiful - doesn't mean being able to paint, sing, or play the piano. Rather, we need to create things of beauty, something that was not there before - a home that is organized and where love can be felt, a garden, creating laughter, generating smiles, etc. He also told us to not let critics paralyze you EVEN IF IT COMES FROM WITHIN. I know I have major issues with that, and is something I am trying to work on.

2. Being compassionate - he stated the following quotes which I LOVED:

"Work will cure your grief - serve others!" - President Hinckley
"Those who bring the light of sunshine to others cannot keep it from themselves."
"Often small acts of service are enough to uplift and stregthen another." - President Monson

He also noted that the Savior did not care to have others notice him, and did not compete with others - another thing I need to work on...

Anyway, those are some of my thoughts. I am so happy that I went and that I was able to feel the Spirit as God's chosen people spoke, and I cannot wait for General Conference this upcoming weekend!

Lastly, Sunday we had church (excellent!) and that evening our friends Danny & Heather came over for dinner, chatting, and games. It was so much fun! Good times!

So...I guess I'm a PM now...at least for a few days

So, I showed up at work yesterday, and found out that I would be covering for a project manager while he was out of the office...now, please be advised that I am NOT a project manager! So, I was kind of thrown in to cover through Friday. My-oh-my! My boss, DeeJay said that this would give me the chance to see if I would like to become a PM...and if not, I have permission to slap him up-side the head! Hilarious! Thank goodness it wasn't bad yesterday, and today seems to be going well...though I am SO busy! The time certainly does fly as a PM!

Weekend Fun!

So, this past weekend was SUCH a fun one! On Friday we went to a concert at the Conference Center where the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra played. It was great! They did a lot of classic American songs. It was a ton of fun!

On Saturday, I went to the church to put on an activity for our Primary kids (4-11 year olds). We practice our Primary Program and then made "I Am A Child of God" picture frames and then ate popsicles. Afterwards, I went to a baptism for one of our Primary kids, Jake. It has been a long time since I've been to a baptism. It was so sweet! He is such a cute kid! I'm so glad that I was able to go. Afterwards, I went to the temple while Kenneth did some homework, and then later that night we went to a Real soccer game! It was so fun to watch them play! We didn't win though...1-0. Too bad.

Sunday was the day of the Primary Program...I was SO nervous that kids wouldn't show up (we have a REALLY small ward) but much to my suprise, and in answer to prayers, almost ALL of our kids showed up!! It went really well! The kids did great at their speaking parts, you could hear them sing (which you definitely couldn't when we practiced the day before) and the Spirit was definitely present! I am so happy that things went well!!

Anyway, that was pretty much our weekend!

Beautiful Jewelry!

Hi Everyone! My friend Mariah has started making her own beautiful custom jewelry and I wanted to let everyone know about it! All of it is handmade and it is GORGEOUS! Here is a picture of one of my favorites:

If you would like to see more of her BEAUTIFUL creations, click on the two links I have for "Mariah's Creations" under my favorite websites list. Enjoy!!

Wedding Pictures

These are for you Ashley! Here are some photos from Kenneth's cousin's wedding we went to last weekend. It was gorgeous! Aubrey...I hope you don't mind that I stole your pictures for my blog! :)

The Bardsley Family (Kenneth's aunt, uncle and cousins)

The beautiful bride!
The beautiful colors of the wedding

The awesome tent the reception took place in. I love the orbs!

Family Fun!!

So, Tuesday evening we were able to meet up with my Grandma Adams & Aunt Yvonne who came into town from California. We met up at my Aunt Mary-Margaret's house in Highland, UT. It was SOO fun! I've been bad, and haven't visited my cousins in awhile either, so it was great being able to catch up with everyone! I love my family!

My Grandma...she is the greatest! Every time I see her she has one of her pretty scarfs around her neck, and we were all remembering all of her great stories! She seriously has met all kinds of fascinating people! And she always has such great advice, like how you'll scare away boys if you have any debt, and how if you put your arm out of the window on a school bus, it might get cut off by a car passing by! So great! Love it! It was so great to see her!

My Aunt Yvonne is so cool! She and my Uncle Erik have done all kinds of fun, crazy things! They went skydiving a little bit ago, so I of COURSE had to tell her of our Hawaii skydiving adventure! She was so thrilled to have another crazy couple in the family! She told us we HAD to try scuba diving, so we've definitely added that to our list!

Lastly, Aunt Mary-Margaret...it is always so interesting visiting her! She is great! She has 7 kids though and they are certainly full of energy! I was really close with that family growing up. In fact, my sister and I lived with Aunt Mary-Margaret the summer my uncle died and helped take care of the 5 kids. She later remarried a wonderful guy named Dave, and they had 2 kids together. It was SO fun to catch up with the older cousins as Kenneth kept the little girls entertained by playing boggle, Chutes & Ladders, tag, jumped on the trampoline, played "horsie", etc. It was a great little mini reunion! Gotta love it!

Weekend Excitement

Hello everyone! Another weekend has passed...and I'm counting down to the next one! This last Friday we finally took my sister Alisha out rockclimbing! It was her first time and she did a great job! I'm going to have to post some pictures tomorrow! Afterwards she came over to our place where we all pigged out on kettle corn and watched "Red Eye." It was tons of fun!

On Saturday we were part of wedding madness all day long! Kenneth's cousin, Brett got married to his beautiful girl, Ashley. They were sealed in the Salt Lake City temple, and we were able to go to the sealing along with Kenneth's mom, dad, and lots of cousins, aunts and uncles! It was beautiful! We took part in some fun photos afterwards and caught up with some of Kenneth's other cousins. After the sealing, we headed to Draper for the luncheon which was muy good! Then, Kenneth and I picked up his brother, Steven and headed to American Fork Canyon for some quick rockclimbing. Not going to lie...I didn't have the most fun there. I can't stand the rock in that canyon because it is so sharp! Yes...I am a wuss and don't like my hands getting completely scraped up...only a little bit. Anyway, after the rockclimbing we headed to the reception for Brett & Ashley (also in Draper). The food was SOO good and they had crepes which were amazing! It was fun to see so much family and to be able to catch up!

On Sunday we attended Regional Conference where several leaders of the church spoke about how we need to strength our families. President Monson focused his talk on the following scripture:

D&C 88:119 - Organize yourself; prepare every needful thing; and establish a house; even a house of prayer, a house of fasting, a house of faith, a house of learning, a house of glory, a house of order, a house of God.

What a great scripture to reflect upon with our physical temples - our bodies. Even more, what a great theme to have for our families and for our homes. I loved hearing the words of the prophet and other leaders of the church, and look forward with even more anticipation for General Conference which is in just about 3 weeks!

It's FRIDAY!

It's Friday!!! It's Friday!! I wait for this day all week!

Today Stinks!

Have you ever had one of those days that you just wanted to END! Welcome to my current day! Work is insane! We are going to break our record for most calls taken in a day. We're almost of 700 calls, and that's with over an hour and a half left! The calls NEVER slow down enough to catch your breath, and I am getting SO annoyed with all the customers who call in wanting pricing for a "3-form resin panel" - HELLO! Do you think we only sale 1 product?? Try hundreds! And with the different combinations - up that to millons of possible products! Arg! And then when I tell them they need to get more information they say, "Oh, well I thought you would give that to me..." - okay then! I think you should buy our MOST expensive product so that I can get a raise! Excellent! Oh my goodness! Plus, my arm is cramping because it has been typing NON-STOP today! I have been trying to be more positive with my life, and especially work, but today just blew it for me...I'm so tired, and I'm so annoyed...I'll go back to my normal self tomorrow. Only 1 hour 36 minutes and 29 seconds to go...28...27....26.

I LOVE Weekends!

Hi! So, can I just say...I LOVE the weekends! I love being able to accomplish so much and most of all, I love the large, uninterrupted time I get to spend with Kenneth! On Friday we did a session in the temple, came home, put in a movie and fell asleep.

On Saturday we woke up and Kenneth started re-doing some of the pipes for our sprinkler system (we have really low water pressure) while I did some much needed cleaning indoors. Afterwards Kenneth was done adding the new pipes, we both worked to fill in the trenches with dirt. Once we had our fill of that, we headed up Little Cottonwood to do some rockclimbing! We went to a new area, Lisa Falls, which was all slab climbing...I didn't think I would like slab climbing at first, but I ended up loving it! It was so much fun (after the first climb which consisted of abnormal moves and wasps in the cracks)! After climbing for awhile we headed to a Bee's baseball game. It was tons of fun because they were playing against the Sacramento River Cats! My home team! So fun! The Bees were being KILLED by the 7th inning when we headed home. The score was 7-2. Go Sacramento!

Sunday came along and we forgot to set our alarm and woke up at 9:05! Insane! Church starts at 9 for us, so needless to say we were a bit late...whoops! Anyway, church was amazing! It was Fast and Testimony meeting (where people fast for 2 meals, and during the church meeting people can get up and bear their testimonies). I went up and spoke about how much the Atonement means to me. I'm so grateful for my Savior and I am so thankful that he is my perfect example...in EVERY aspect of my life! After the main meeting, I worked with the Primary children (ages 4-11) on our Primary program which is in 2 weeks!! The children will be singing songs they have been learning all year and they also have speaking parts. They are doing really well considering our Primary is super small! I'm proud of them!

After we got home from church, we made black beans (YUMMY!), meatballs, and bread. Sundays are always our baking days...I LOVE IT! I also took a nap (why? I'm not sure since I slept like 10 hours the night before!). That was about it! Lots of fun, lots of chatting with Kenneth and having fun doing whatever it is that we do! What did everyone else do?

Anybody? Anybody?

Hey! Is anyone here interested in buying a love sac?? (Or do you know anyone who would be ineterested?) We're wanting to get rid of ours because it doesn't really fit in our house. It is a 6 ft. blue love sac that is very new. We also have extra stuffing available. It is in VERY good shape, and we haven't owned it very long at all. Let me know if anyone is interested and we'll discuss cost. Thanks! (Picture to come shortly).