Increasing Spirituality

Andrew and I have been taking temple prep classes for the past month and we finished them yesterday evening. It was such a great blessing to listen to what we will soon be doing. We had our first interview with our new Bishop (poor guy, had to deal with us first :]) for the first part of our recommend interviews. We passed!! Ha ha, I'm so excited! We have his signature, now we just need to get an appointment with the stake president. He is such a neat man, I remember having my interview with him when I was sealed to my parents in 2007. I am SO excited to be sealed to my husband and future children. We are one step closer to our goal and I cannot wait!
My friend who is on a mission in Boston, Massachusetts wrote an inspiring e-mail I thought I would share. He is a great man and is doing great serving the Lord.
"I learned that every single person is of great worth. All people are important. We should treat others like they are God's favorite kid, even though we might not understand with our mortal minds how that is possible, each of us is of huge importance to God. I beleive that daily scripture study and prayer, principles we teach every single day, are critically important because of their effects on us. It allows us to feel the Spirit stronger and learn to recognize it's soft, powerful promptings, and allows us to foster our personal relationship with our Father. When we do that, our true identity and purpose come into clearer focus and we begin to allow ourselves to be enabled and empowered by the truth. True strength and power comes into our lives. Our problems and worries begin to lose their power as we learn that in reality, they have no power that we don't give them. Happiness is not dependent on situation or circumstance, but what we choose to think, feel, and focus our will upon. Our self-esteem and value rise as we see that and recognize that God loves each of us. Learning to love God, and others is the most important pursuit a person can have in life. If you ask me, Love and Forgiveness are inseprerably connected. We must learn to forgive others, and we can do that by learning to love God, as just described. This process will heal us, as it leads to obedience and peace of mind and spirit. True healing, that can only come by the Atonement, and happens when following in obedience to the Gospel of Jesus Christ."

Any Book suggestions? Plus giveaway link

The Mom Blog, site is linked to my blog, is giving away a book! "The Five Love Languages Book" it sounds very interesting and I hope to read it! http://www.the-mom-blog.com/2010/05/giveaway-five-love-languages-book.html

Any one have any other good books I should read? Now that school's out, I would love to read more. Please give me ideas!!

Update

Wow, life passes so quickly! It's crazy, I can't beleive that it is already the tenth of May!! Andrew and I have been doing very well these past few months. We both just finished up our second year of schooling and are looking forward to the craziness of this summer. Another winterguard season has come and gone now. It's crazy how quickly time goes! This season was a lot of fun, and extremely different that last season was! This season we had seven people, yay! Ha ha, wish we had more, but we're slowly getting there. We a variety of styles and years done guard. There was a fourteen year old girl, who had never spun before. A guy that was aging out this year, so he had been spinning for quite a while. We had a girl who was in high school, her junior year I believe. We had a girl who was attending WSU. Then we had three girls, including myself, that had spun at Davis for a few years. We had a lot of fun this season. Our song was titled "They" by Gem. It's a pretty cool song, I enjoyed spinning to it.

We both plan to return to Lagoon, yet again. We both enjoy working there, plus...if one of us quit, we would never see the other . :) Andrew will start doing school days in a bit which will give him a lot of hours, yay! He is also going to be working at McDonald's this summer, mainly just for job security. In the fall, he will return to Weber State as a full-time student taking evening classes, hopefully it will work out better for him. I am going to be finishing up my job at Clearfield High School, then I am thinking of transfering to become a functional skills teacher's assistant. This will help me get to know my future career, as well as it will make my 7 hour credit class be better since I will already be where I need to be. I do not want to leave, I love my job here at CHS, but I am thinking it will be best for me... I plan to work at Lagoon this coming up summer as well as take a full-time summer semester. (Yeah, I'm crazy! But oh well...) Assuming things continue to go well, I will be graduating in one year!! YAY!!! I'm so excited, but super nervous. This means that I will be a teacher at some school starting the year 2011-2012.

Andrew and I are looking forward to the month of June. We will be receiving our endowments on June 16th in the Manti temple. We will then be sealed for time and eternity in the Salt Lake temple on June 23rd, our first anniversary. I am so excited! I am very proud of who we have become together! Andrew received the Melchizedek priesthood just over one week ago, on May 2nd. His Dad was able to ordain him, and his brothers stood in on it, minus Robert who is in the military. It was a very special day for him. I can't even begin to express how proud I am of Andrew.

We both have received our first callings in the church. Andrew is the Teacher's quorum advisor, as well as a scout leader for the boys. He is very nervous about his calling, but we both feel that the Lord chose him to be a leader for these boys and that Andrew will be blessed for accepting it, even if our lives turn super crazy. I am a member of the Relief Socity Committee. We get together once a month and plan for the upcoming activites. So far, I am enjoying it!

We are both going to be going to the Jazz game tonight. Hopefully the Jazz can pull of a win tonight against the Lakers. We went to a game a few weeks ago with my family when the Jazz were playing Denver. They won that game. When tickets went on sale for this game, I got on ebay and bid. I did not think I would win, and actually completely forgot about it. I got on one night to check my e-mail and surprise...I had won the tickets. Hopefully we will be able to enjoy ourselves and make it a date night since we rarely get to have them.

Valentines Day

This Valentines Day was by far the best one I've ever had. In the morning, my parents made potatoes, bacon, sausage, and eggs for breakfast. Andrew and I made cute pink and purple pancakes. We made them, then used cookie cutters to make the pancakes even more valentiney! It was a lot of fun, and man oh man, did they taste yummy!

Andrew and I are slightly short on money, so we both decided to just have a night at the house, along with my sister, Holly, and her boyfriend, Chad. Of course, Andrew had to violate the rule, and he bought me some beautiful roses Friday.

Holly and I chose to make a cheese fondue, using the fondue set I got for my wedding. We dipped it with French Bread, apples, summer sausage, and lil' smokies. Yum! It was so delicious!

For our main course, we fixed Chicken and Fettuccine with Raspberry Cream Sauce. Now, of course we weren't smart enough to take pictures at the time, so ours didn't look quite as good as it was supposed to. It was a different taste, but very yummy!

For dessert, we had another fondue, only this time we had chocolate! We sliced bananas, strawberries, left over raspberries, and pretzels. The first batch we made, Holly burned the chocolate. It must be a tradition in my house...when melting chocolate, it must burn the first time tried! The second time, the chocolate turned out perfect!

While we were cooking and eating, we watched the movie "Love Happens." This was a pretty cute show, and I would recommend it. Although, I didn't actually get to sit down and watch much of it because I was busy making dinner.

When we were finished eating, Andrew and I went on a Scooter ride! We love the Scooters, and can't wait until the day that we can afford to get our own!

Time Flies...

Christmas was a lot of fun! Although, I can't wait to move out and actually experience a Christmas morning with just my husband and I, we had fun. Andrew bought me a nice Excalibur sabre, flag bag, coat, and a robe. I was so excited! He spoiled me way too much :) I bought him a digital camera. It is a very pretty blue color and he loves it!

Our nephew, Hyrum, had to have heart surgery just before Christmas, so we spent a few days up at the hospital. Everything went well, and he is recovering great. Sad to say, he still has to have another surgery to fix the whole in his heart. We're all hoping and praying that he'll do great!

Andrew and I have both started another semester of school! I'm very grateful that we have the funding to keep us in school. Man oh man, I can't even imagine having to pay for it on our own. Thanks to scholarships and Pell grants, we're making it through. Andrew is doing his generals at Weber State University, still trying to figure out what he wants to do. As grateful I am to know what I want to do and pursuing it, I am quite envious of his billiards class. I am taking all Special Education classes this semester. I only have 12 credits, which is nice. They are all evening classes, so I go to school Mon-Thur 4:35-7:05. I do get Friday with no school...but I have to do winterguard practice, which is another story. I enjoy having all education classes. Most of my peers are in all of my classes, which is very nice.

I am still doing winterguard. This year LPE changed to Weber State Fusion. We are doing the song "They" by Gem. It's a pretty cool mix. There are eight people, I think, on our team. Four rifles, four flags. I really enjoy doing something I like to do.

I'm still enjoying my job. The kids make me laugh, and it can be quite stressful. I can't wait to graduate and actually be 'in charge'.

Thanksgiving Break

Well, I'm a little delayed, but oh well! Our Thanksgiving Break was started a week early. We went to Denver, CO for a Denver Bronco game! We drove there Saturday morning, went to the game on Sunday, then drove home Monday morning. It was a quick vacation, but it sure was fun! We went with my boss, Doug, his wife, Julie, their baby, Carly, and our friend Salome who babysat. We stayed at my 2nd cousin's house. Oh wow, it was so nice! They had a huge house, Andrew and I got to sleep on a water bed. Salome got the other bedroom. Doug and Julie slept on an air matress in their fun basement! They had a huge, huge television, with every gaming system you could even think of! Then they also had a dart board (ha ha, if you want a laugh have Andrew, Salome, and Doug show you their 'mad' skills), fuse ball table, pool table, and a hockey table. If you couldn't tell...we spent almost our whole vacation in the basement!



We went to the city on Sunday for the game. We parked at the Aquarium and walked over to the Mile High Stadium. We had to walk all the way around the stadium to get our tickets that were on will call. Since we got them half-price, we went through security, then got our tickets. Well...they didn't have any tickets under the name Andrew Hardy. Which was weird because he's the one that booked them. The card that had been used four or so months previously had now been destroyed so he couldn't run the card. Luckily, we had the confirmation number. As our last resort to get the tickets, we used that number. For some crazy reason, they had the tickets on hold for a Andrew Gayler. How crazy is that! Well, luckily Andrew brought along his wife, me, to show my ID and prove that it was my maiden name. The guy had a confused look on his face, said "Whatever..." and handed us our cards. Our seats were near the very top of the stadium, but they were still good seats. We had a lot of fun at the game, except for the fact that they had a terrible game! The drunk people that surrounded us were entertaining enough to distract me for most of the game lol.



We went home that night and Janine, my 2nd cousin, had fixed us another wonderful homecooked meal. She spoiled us with all the wonderful dinners, breakfasts, and desserts! When we woke up the next morning to head out and they had pulled out all of their cereal for us to have breakfast.

I couldn't be more thankful than to have such a wonderful family that allowed us to stay in their home! Thanks Chappie and Janine!

Thanksgiving was spent at my house. I made yams! They surprisingly turned out to be very delicious! I was so proud. Aunt Cherri, Aunt Coleen and Uncle Richard came up to our house to have our big feast. We ate til we were stuffed then had some fun playing board games while the boys played football. Andrew and I left shortly after to have dessert at his parent's house. We had a lot of fun at the Hardy's house.

We are very thankful for many things that we often take granted of: food, clothes, housing, jobs, education, family, friends, vehicles, electricity, religion, and many more.

Another Week

Wow, time flies so quickly. This week has come and is leaving quickly. What do I have to show for it? Nothing too exciting has happened this week with Andrew or I. We've both just been working and going to school. Such a mundane life we have!

Last Friday our brother(in-law) got married. We didn't really think we would ever hear him say the words "I do." But...he did. He is happily married to Nikki. The wedding was very simple and pretty in the church. Their reception was held at a friend's house. I didn't go, but I heard it was pretty fun.

I had a meeting with my advisor at the University of Utah yesterday. She is an amazing woman! She asked me about my husband, my Dad, and how life is going. I have never had an advisor sincerely care as much as she does. I was expecting her to not remember the stuff we had talked about just before fall semester, but she did. Well, she sets up my schedules and tells me what classes to take when. Instead of only doing this semester's scheduling, she did my scheduling until I graduate! I was very surprised when I only have four more semesters after this one. This means I will graduate with my BS and licensure in Spring of 2011! I'm so excited!

I am quite bummed for tonight. My family and husband are going to the Davis High School football game tonight at the U. I was so excited to go with them. We were going to take the Front Runner, then Trax up to the stadium. Well...I was then rudely reminded by Andrew that I have winterguard practice that same night. This is the second week I have thought that the same Friday aren't on the same day! What a dummy! I am so sad I can't go with them, but I am very excited to visit with Corissa on my way up to practice.