April 28, 2012: The Twin Falls Temple

I am loving angel Moroni

I am so blessed that I was able to go to the Twin Falls Idaho Temple yesterday! We have been planning to go through the temple with Brent’s friend from high school and his wife…so our friends Tim and Keeley. We have been looking forward to this weekend for about a month, but I didn’t realize we still needed to make a reservation until Thursday, and then, the session was all full. Talk about heart ache!! After many text messages during work and a few phone calls to the temple we were able to get into the schedules 8:00am session. Lesson learned…always call the temple as soon as you know you are going to be attending. We have to call ahead of time because the Boise temple is being renovated so everyone goes to Twin Falls on the weekends and it get filled up very quickly.

Such a beautiful spring morning!

We left Boise at 5:15am to drive to Twin Falls to get there nice and early to be prepared for the session with Brent’s cousin Chad and his wife Kate. They are awesome and it was nice to be able to drive together. Tim and Keeley received their endowments and then were sealed together right after. Being sealed is such a great thing because when you are married legally, it is only until Death do you part, but when you are sealed together by someone holding the priesthood power that married or sealing is eternal! Your perspective on life definitely changes when you know you are together eternally.  We were all dressed in our temple attire for the sealing because we had just completed an endowment session. That was a new experience for me to go to a sealing room all dressed in white. Man I am a succor for sealings. Unfortunately I don’t remember a lot of what was said in my sealing, so I try to pay extra attention to what is said in others. I love the three pieces of advise that their sealer gave them, and I am excited to apply it in my life.

Awesome Friends L-R Combe's, Johnston's, Wolfs, Tim's Step-Dad,
Pearman's, Jan Combe

1. Read and study The Family: A Proclamation to the World http://www.lds.org/family/proclamation?lang=eng  


2. Attend the temple often. Go to the temple where you were sealed. 


3. Have family prayer, twice a day. Pray and express gratitude for your spouse.

I loved hearing this counsel because not only does it help to point me in the right direction but it makes me feel good to know that I am already striving to do that in my marriage. Have we succeeded in all of those? No, but we are always trying and that is what I feel is most important. There are times we slip up but hey, we’ve got a long haul ahead of us! That’s why I think sealings are so amazing, because it helps us all remember that we really are in it for the long haul. I am so proud of Tim and Keeley, and I am so grateful that they let us join them on their special day!

My Mom and Dad

Not only was I glad to go to the temple yesterday for Tim and Keeley, I was glad to go to the temple for me. 12 years ago yesterday my Dad and brother Kevin were killed in a car accident. I was 13 when it happened and it is crazy for me to think that I have lived almost as long without them here as I did with them. Dad and Kevin are still such a part of my life, but there are definitely times I wish that they were more. I talk to Brent about my Dad and how excited I am for them to meet. It took me a while to realize that I kind of freaked Brent out by saying that haha- I was not saying that I couldn’t wait for Brent to die, but more that I couldn’t wait to see all my family together again!

Forgive my pictures of pictures...I had to work with what I had.  This is a picture
of me and my Dad one week before he died.  We were on a walk while in Provo
and we decided to stop and pick flowers for my sister who was pregnant and sick.

My older brother Kevin

There was no better place for me to be yesterday to remember them than at the Temple. The Temple is important to me because my parents were married and sealed in the Idaho Falls temple and each of their children are sealed to them for time and all eternity...not just death til you part. I remember at their funeral I had friends come up to me who were crying more than I was… and I did my fair share of crying. I couldn’t understand why they were so distraught and I eventually figured out it was because I knew I was sealed to my parents and siblings. I knew then that I would see my Dad and brother again, and I still know that just as much. Our Heavenly Father has a great plan for each and every one of us. Sometimes we do not know what that plan is, but He does. I am learning to trust in his plan, and I know that it is something that I will constantly be learning to do.

Happy Easter

It is Easter morning and I thought it would be appropriate to take a few minutes to update this blog. I was looking online for a picture that I wanted to include of Christ, but I could not find any that I loved of him and the resurrection. It was interesting to be looking around online and seeing all the different renditions of Christ. I am so grateful that have a smidgen of an idea of who he is and what he did for me. I realize that there is so much more that I can learn and that I try to learn everyday, but having the understanding that he is my Savior and that he atoned for my sins personally has done so much to help me. What a wonderful thing it is to know that Christ died for me, but most importantly that he lives again!

Our new apartment

We have finally moved and settled into our new apartment. I am really happy about that fact. We decided to move a few months ago because our contract was ending and Brent had officially had one too many cold showers!! It was a hard decision because we really like out cheap ghetto apartment that we were living in. We could totally afford more, but we chose to live in a simple and cheap apartment. I know that as soon as we go up in size and quality it would be hard to go back, so we stayed nice and cheap for as long as we could. Unfortunately the time to move came, and it was not pleasant to find a new place to live. I never knew how many scams there were on Craigslist for apartments. I would get myself so excited for a great place I found, but would only end up being disappointing. It was starting to become more that I wanted to deal with. If it wasn't a scam, we were one phone call too late....it had just been rented!!

I finally found an apartment that looked like it had all of our qualifications...2 bedroom, garage, and an upgrade from our current apartment. We were not asking for a lot, but it was sure hard to come by. Anyhow I found a place that I liked with an extended 2-car garage and we were the first people to look at it and we gave them the papers that day. We knew that we would be able to get it so we were finally able to move forward with out move.

I thought that looking for an apartment was bad, but apparently moving was just as bad. Brent does not like to move, so he was less than motivated to move, but he was a trooper and moved anyways. Thankfully our awesome bro in law Kasey helped Brent move all of the big furniture, and the Jacobson's helped us clean after everything was out of our old apartment. What a great blessing!!! I am so grateful that we had great family to help us move and clean!

We are super pleased with our new apartment. It has a 2 car garage so Brent will be able to start working on his car that he is restoring. That was a big factor for us deciding to move and I am so grateful we made that decision. It has been fun to have the garage because we have so many projects that we are always working on and it is nice to have the space.

Yesterday when we were driving home from Home Depot with a table saw that we just bought Brent and I were talking about how we are a little different than a lot of people we know because we are always busy working on lots of cool projects. I have learned that it is about the process of making something that is pretty incredible, and not just the outcome (maybe that's because I usually screw up the outcome, but have a good time doing it :) It's all about Finding Joy in the Journey!

I was reminded of Brent's comment this morning while I was outside on our deck grinding wheat for a batch of homemade wheat bread I was making. That sucker of a wheat grinder is loud!! Our poor neighbors are not going to love us between my loud wheat grinder from this morning, or the table saw yesterday. Oh well, what can you do right? We don't have kids that cry all night long for the neighbors to hear yet, instead we have lots of noisy power tools!!

I wish that I had some cool pictures to post, but unfortunately I don't. I have had a few different things that I wanted to write about in the past, but didn't because I didn't have pictures. In the end I decided to write this for me, and it is okay that I don't have pictures for now.