Sunday Scripture

Well I decided to today that I would attempt a new addition to my posts! Sunday Scripture, I thought it would be a great way for me to remember some of the scriptures that help me. Last night we were fortunate to have the missionaries for dinner. They were your average missionaries by all appearances but the spirit that remained in the house when they left was unlike anytime I remember in the past. They shared a scripture with us before they left from Mosiah (One of my favorite books), it was

Mosiah 24:14

"And I will also ease the burdens which are put upon your shoulders, that even you cannot feel them upon your backs, even while you are in bondage: and this will I do that ye may stand as witnesses for me hereafter, and that ye may know of a surety that I, the Lord God do visit my people in their afflictions."

This particular scripture is in the context of Alma and his people as they are in bondage to the Lamanites. Now the interesting thing is that before they were in bondage to the Lamanites they were doing quite well, they were prospering and building a nice city and being pretty good people. They had wished that Alma would be there King but Alma knew that was not what the Lord wanted so he led them as a High Priest teaching them of the gospel. Well the Lord decided to chasten them and "trieth their patience and their faith" and allowed the Lamanites to surround their city and when Alma and his people realized they were surrounded by this mighty army they prayed to Heavenly Father that their lives would be spared and the Lord did allow their lives to be spared but they were still taken into bondage by the Lamanites but rather than them being bitter and upset for being taken bondage they showed their gratitude to the Lord for sparing their lives by praying. Now while the Lord allowed them to be put into bondage he did ease their burdens and gave them strength to endure them.


I love this because it shows what a loving Heavenly Father we have, He knows enough to test us and try us but while at the same time making them lightened because He loves us. He allows us to make the choice that when we are in rough times to either pray to him for help and guidance or will we choose to lean on our "own understanding".

For me right now and I believe many others these times are very trying, and I know that while I am being tested the Lord has made these burdens lighter through family, friends, visiting teachers, the scriptures and a sweet reminder from an Elder who is on the Lords errand and was led by the spirit to read that scripture to us.

I hope to include more scripture with my blogging, so perhaps we can learn them better together or maybe you can share scripture and stories from your life that would help me.

Happy Sunday

THANKS & GIVING!!

Well as it is officially Thanksgiving I decided that a post giving thanks would be appropriate!! This year seems to be going much faster than anticipated and it also seems that the older I get I find myself saying that EVERY YEAR! I have much to be appreciative for and no where near the words to express it but I will try.

I am blessed and grateful for my Husband and his job, grateful that he has a job in these slow times and blessed that he works so hard for our family. He is good to me and loves me and lifts me up when holding the world up seems too heavy.

Alexis, she is such a great girl. Her heart is pure gold and would defend her entire family to the death if needed! I love watching how doing what's right comes very instinctively for her, I am grateful for that and hope that it will stay with her always!

Grace, aww my Grace, yes that little girl has me totally amazed by her! I am grateful for her humor and her sweet singing. She brings added spice to our family and I am so proud to be her Mom.

James, my little man, he melts my heart with that smile of his. I am grateful for his patience and quiet presence, he brings a great deal of peace to our family. He waited a long time to come to our family and the Lords timing, as always, was impeccable!!


I am grateful for the county we live in, regardless of who might be elected to office (still working through that). We do have so many freedoms and even more men and women who are willing to fight for them.

I am grateful for the gospel and all that it allows me to understand and to know that the things I don't understand can be lived in faith.

I am grateful for all my extended family, Mom, Dad, Janna, Alyssa, Jack, Emily, Chet, Dave, Amy, Carli, Carson, Ethan, (my side) & Bonnie, Mark, Danny, Rachel, Sara, Anna, Will and baby Will (Jimmy's side). Of course there are a million other family members that I feel grateful for as well but that list is really long.

Last but not least I feel so grateful for this blogging world, for those that allow me to know you better and for those that think I am worth their time to read about me and get to know me. I hope you all have a wonderful Turkey Day, LOVE TO YOU!!

James 10 Months!!

My little man is 10 months and I can't hardly believe it! Pretty soon his first birthday will be here and the next thing I know it he will be leaving on his mission!! These are just some of the milestones that he is reaching!

He has seven teeth and uses them VERY WELL!!

He pulls himself up to just about everything and has started to climb them!

He loves to wave and clap!

James LOVES music, he will sing to the radio or at church or to any music that speaks to him.

He has begun to help get himself dressed by putting his arms through the arm holes in his shirts.

He mimics all sorts of noises like sneezes and coughing.

James likes to fake cough just to be silly

He is happy most of the time with lots of smiles!

He loves his Daddy to put him to sleep at night.

He seems to be getting closer and closer to walking but finds crawling much faster at this point!

His favorite foods are bananas, apples, green beans, pirates booty, Ritz crackers, rice, or anything that we are eating!

Climbing the stairs or getting into the dog food is on the top of his to do list.

James enjoys the bath, he will use the wash cloth to get a drink by dunking it under the water and then sucking on it to get the water out.

OUTRAGE!!

I am totally OUTRAGED by something I found out today! Let me give the back story first, my sister Janna recently took her son out of public school and has been teaching him from home, their story and reasons are here, well while things for Ethan have been much improved being at home, this week they found out that the Teacher whom had been teaching Ethan was fired, (she was one of the reasons they took Ethan out in the first place) she was fired for HITTING a child in her class, a KINDERGARTNER! While that in it self is outrageous the most horrific thing to me is that after the school fired her, a little known law in Arizona actually makes it legal for a teacher to hit a student, so the school was forced to rehire the teacher and she was actually put back into the same classroom!!!! This just makes me so upset I could spit!! If there are any of you that are now living in the state of Arizona I would hope that there were be a way to write letters to your state leaders asking for change in this law!

As I have discovered in my quest to get Grace in a program we as parents have to be looking out for our children and their education, we can't expect someone else to be the watchdog! WE must be involved in their classrooms and with the school as a whole! For me that has come in the form of serving on the PTA board at Lexi's school so that she can attend a better school and it allows me to know many of the teachers at her school and familiar with the administration. I will do an entire separate blog to talk about our work to get Grace into Pre-School, I guess this to me is a reminder that I can not be complacent and that I must continue to be very involved because it is important.

I am grateful that my sister and brother-in-law followed the promptings to have Ethan taken out of her class and yet sad for those that are still in it!

Happy Birthday Honey

Well you turned the big 30 finally today so now I get to have payback for all the old man jokes you have given me over the past 6 months. You might want to get your glasses to read this..JK. Anyways I am so happy to have you in my life. Although I am not always the nicest person or the most fun to be around I am glad you let me stay by your side. I love you more than anything in this world and would do anything for you and hope you know that. Your happiness is the most important to me. I know I was a slacker and probably should've planned ahead for your party a little more but I did try. But anyways I hope I made up for it with your birthday dinner at the melting pot. I had a lot of fun and we really do need to go out more without our children ;) I hope we have many more wonderful years together and hope you stay by my side. I love you honey bunny HAPPY BIRTHDAY.

Love Jimmy

DISCOMBOBULATED!

Totally and utterly a mess! That has been my brain for the last several weeks, maybe months or even years perhaps but for the purpose of this post we will go with a shorter length of time. I have been meaning to blog and wanting to blog and yet my thinker seems to be on vacation or something and was unkind enough to leave my body in the real world.

Here I am with some time to write instead of sew and all I can think about is how I should be sewing since all the children are asleep and Jimmy and I went for a nice long walk. I must say that my new obsession with sewing fills a need to be creative and create, it allows me to relax and think of nothing but the fabric in front of me and listen to the lull of the machine. The aprons for the winners are coming along quite nicely and I am excited for you girls to get them. I am also sewing up some Christmas gifts and a few other projects are in the works as well.

We have done so much and I have yet to scratch the surface of the last few months so I will attempt to list just a few of the happenings with us as a family.

1. We are staying with my parents for now, our move to Colorado seems to be on an extended hold as things have changed with Jimmy's job here and potential job and school there.

2. Jimmy has had successful Daddy/Daughter dates with each of the girls over the last couple weeks.

3. We had a week long visit with my nephew Ethan, it was great to see the cousins get to play and be silly.

4. Grace and James have both had colds and were so sweet to pass it along to Mommy so as I type I have a tissue plugged up my nose to keep it from running.

5. I am so very close to the BIG 30 and thinking I really need to color my hair to cover some of the grays, it has been way too long.

6. Lexi has switched classrooms at school going from Mrs. Wright's class to Ms. Hite's class due to some very disruptive classmates and an undesirable track.

7. Jimmy sat on a Jury for the last week and the best part is knowing that he is safe for a few years.

8. I finally changed the name on my social security card after nearly 6 years of marriage, and let me tell you there are some very interesting people at the social security office, so many friends to choose from!

9. Started a fabric exchange club with two very awesome fellow sew obsessed friends and hoping there is maybe a few others that want to join us!?

10. Mostly I have been trying to revel in the small, yet important steps my children are making

Lexi is becoming more independent by the minute, we chopped her hair off and it's like it aged her a few years.

Grace is on a great sleep routine, going to bed every night at 8 pm sometimes earlier and we are working on getting her into a pre-school offered through the district

James is advancing everyday, he is a sweet and happy boy and he makes my days so fun and full.

AND THE WINNERS ARE.............

The winner of the Quilt is Jamie from Kansas City!!!! Yay I hope you will love it!


Now I ended up picking a few extras to win an Apron cause I was so excited!

The Winners of Aprons are

Jodi from Nebraska

Tanya from Texas

Jessi from Vegas

&

Heather from Virginia!!

The Winners were chosen by random drawing and don't worry for those that didn't win, I had so much fun doing this one that I am planning another one before Christmas so keep a look out!! Thanks for all those that entered it was fun to pull some of you out of the wood works!

Now for those that won an apron send me an Email to marylinkelley@gmail.com to tell me the colors you would like in an apron and your shipping address so I can send them to you.

Jamie send me an email just giving me your address and I will get the quilt to you soon!! :)

Oh and I almost forgot, once you receive your prize take a picture with it and then post it on your blog!!

LAST CALL!

So I will be announcing the winner of the quilt TOMORROW so hurry and get in your comments before midnight tonight!! Ok so if you get it in before I wake up in the morning then it counts too! Good luck and I am so excited!

The Dork In Me!!

I think that deep down we are all part Dork, yes, mine is a little closer to the surface than most but I tend to save it for family and close friends. Now I have small displays of dork isms everyday, you know, like going upstairs to get something and then forgetting so I go back down stairs, remember and then head back up stairs, sometimes repeating the process multiple times before finally doing or getting whatever it was. Well a few weekends ago I had an entire day of them so let me tell you a little bit about it.

Most Saturday Mornings we try to clean as a family so that then we can spend the rest of the day doing something fun, well as Jimmy was vacuuming on the upstairs landing I was carrying things up and down the stairs and on a return trip up the stairs I was almost to the top when I was going a little too fast and I tripped, I tried to catch myself before falling, which didn't work and I ended up at Jimmy's heels in a face plant, he turned around to find me on the floor laughing. I stayed there for a moment and then found my way to my feet again making an attempt to regain some dignity.

Well then later Jimmy had taken Lexi for a Daddy/Daughter date (blog about it later) and it was just Grace and I cleaning out my car (James is sleeping) I decided the outside could also use a good washing. So after soaping it all up and beginning the rinsing process I picked up the hose (with a high pressure nozzle) and pulled back on the handle only to spray myself directly in the face, yes ladies and gentlemen it was backwards in my hand. I stood there somewhat shocked and completely soaked and began to laugh, Grace looks at me and says "Are you kiddin me?" then I look up to see my mother standing there staring at me as I dripped, asking me what had happened as she handed me a towel. I dried myself off and finished the car making sure to hold the hose in the correct position. The rest of the day was filled with lost keys, smashed fingers, you name it, it was a long day of being a Dork!

Getting older has made me much better about laughing in these moments, where in my younger days I would have been so embarrassed I would have cried or hid or both. I try to roll with the punches a bit more, no pun intended. This past General Conference Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin spoke about learning to laugh. He told a story about his daughter who was going on a blind date and when a man showed up to the house they figured it was her date even though he looked a little older than anticipated, well after introducing him to the family they got into the car and just sat there and then finally the daughter got out of the car, returned inside to inform her sister that he was there to pick her up to babysit! That story brought me to a belly laugh, he said that as a family they still laugh about it as they did when it happened and that made me realize that I need to laugh at myself more and not take things so seriously. So here's to all of us that are a in touch with our "DORK"!!

I Just can't Wait!

So I have to blog about some other things but don't worry there is still time to enter the Give Away if you haven't already! I just have so many other things that need to be blogged or they will be forgotten!! Going back a bit we had a GREAT Halloween, there was the usual Ward party and then on Halloween Day we hit the pumpkin patch per Kelley tradition! We were a bit late this year so we missed the pony rides and petting zoo but we still had fun. That night we had originally planned on attending a friends ward party but decided to trick or treat in the Orchards (a neighborhood close by) instead. Well I stayed in the car feeding James and Jimmy took the girls to a few houses then we came back to the house and made some yummy treats and then it was time for bed! It was a great night, I love just being together making memories! The best part for me were the girls costumes, I decided that I would make the costumes this year, in past years I just buy them but I was feeling ambitious and found some fun ideas online so what the heck! Lexi was a "Bad school picture" and Grace was "A fairy God-mother", James well he was the product of a Mom spending all the time on making older sister costumes that I never made it out to buy or make one for him, but he won't remember, right? So here are a few pictures from Halloween 2008!

James was lucky enough to have a pumpkin hat that his Grammy Bonnie made and sent to us! Thanks, he looks so cute in it!! Oh and the yummy treats were an idea I got from my friend Tiffany several months ago and they are a favorite around our house!

150!!!! GIVE AWAY!!

Well there have been many times I have wanted to blog but since I was not yet finished with the "GIVE AWAY" I was forced to wait. I will not make those of you on the edge of your seats wait any longer.......Drum Roll Please ......................




Along with my very first quilt ever made you will also receive a few surprises.

Ok so here are the rules, Leave a comment with your name and city you live in, and something funny about you! I will be announcing the winner next Friday. Oh and the other surprise there will also be two chosen for runner-up prizes I will make aprons for those two and they can choose the color scheme, that is why there are not pictures of those posted because they are not yet made! So good luck to everyone and thanks for making blogging so much fun!! Love to all of you!! (Oh and you can enter more than once if you choose!!)