Heritage Makers

So in my previous post, I mentioned that my goal for this year from TOFW was to preserve my families memories. This is so so so so important to me... I was talking to a lady recently that said she just wishes her mom would have kept an album or even a journal of her as a kid so she could see how she used to be. I don't want my children growing up wishing the same things. And me regreting that I don't have anything to look back on. Sure we have our memories but you know as we get older, those get more hazy.

And if you know me, you also know I have a room FULL of every scrapbook item available from papers, to stamps, to cutters, to embellishments, etc... so you'd think I'd be on top of this right? Nope! I am about a good 6yrs behind!!!

BUT I found the answer to my problems.

Heritage Makers!!!!!!!

OH MY GOODNESS!!!!!

I love love love love love this company!

It's a total online digital scrapbooking company that you create your stuff and they print it and mail it to you. And it's not just scrapbooks. It's canvas prints and cards and invitations and playing cards and posters, etc-- all custom made by you!

So I joined Club HM. I pay $30/mo (there's other price plans also) and I have access to thousands of templates and I get 40 publishing pts each month (each point=$1). And those points add up so I can save them and use them for big stuff! Right now I am making pages for 2010 as well as a mini album from our trip to Nauvoo where I'm taking our pictures but instead of writing about what we did, I'm using church history for the places we went. I'm excited to get that done and the kids can have a book to read in church.

The greatest thing I'm finding it that the templates are all drag and drop. SO you find one you like, you replace your pictures with theirs, do a little writing about it if you want and you're done! SO EASY!!!

I'm even thinking about being a consultant for them. You all know how crazy cheap I am right? Well I am. CRAZY CHEAP! But do you also know how much I have spent in the last several years in scrapbook supplies? Don't do what I did if you want to start scrapping. This is the best deal I've seen! I haven't signed up yet because I don't know if there's an interest out there but if there is, let me know! That may help my decision making.

Anywho- I wanted to share a few pages I created.

Time Out For Women

If you EVER get a chance to go to one of these events, please please PLEASE don't pass it up! It was 2 days of complete upliftment! Every woman no matter who you are, what your situation is in life or whatever NEEDS to have some time where you can be lifted up and encouraged to see who you really are and your potential to be who you want to be! I loved it! The cool thing was my little sister Peggy flew in from Florida to go with me and that was a great experience! She brought her little baby Becca and we had a great weekend with them! Check out our weekend events here The theme was 'Choose to Become' All things are possible to him that believeth. Mark 9:23. We were encouraged to make a goal to work on this year that will help us see who we can become. My goal is to do more to preserve our family memories (aka get caught up with scrapbooking). Here's a few pics from the event:

Hilary Weeks was one of the big music performers. She is amazing.. so darn funny!!!

Peggy and I in front of the Cumberland River downtown during our lunch break

Julia S, me, Kristy B and Peggy with Rebecca

Me and my good friend Kristy when it was all over.

It was good times my friends... good times!

And with that I will leave you with the one thing I took from the conference that I will never EVER forget...

We will know our children as adults for eternity-- but only as children right now.

Girls Night Downtown

Back in Feb when my family came down for Reeses baptism, my mom, grandma, sister and I decided to go downtown for a girls night! They had never been there before so I figured what better way to experience Nashville then to actually go down on a weekend night! I personally LOVE it... the people, the music, the excitement, the drunks, etc.. love every party of Nashville! Even the homeless guys are super friendly! So after trying to get to park which included driving the wrong way down a one way street and then not being able to find the garage we were to park in, we finally made it and were on our way. It was pretty cold (according to the Az folks) but we were able to take a horse and carriage ride, eat some super yummy ice cream and wander around souvenier shops for a few hrs. The great thing about downtown is that it's really not very big. Easily walkable in a short time. And so much history! Even if you don't love country music, I think everyone would enjoy a little bit of Nashville! Love this pic.. they had no idea I was taking a picture of them by Hooters...

Another catchup.. a little OPRY!

Yup.. I'm still alive! Took like a month to decide to start blogging again- crazy month! But for Valentines Day, Jon bought us tickets to the Grand Ol Opry to see Rodney Adkins, Blake Shelton and Carrie Underwood. It was surreal!!! Just to be there was so awe inspiring! And heartbreaking to see what happened to it during the flood. It was pretty much destroyed. But it was restored to it's origional beauty after a lot of dedication and hard work. The greatest thing was the circle. This piece of floor was in the origional Opry which is the Ryman downtown where it all began. When they built the Opry House, they cut out the circle where all the stars stood to sing and put it in the middle stage at the Opry. They were able to remove the circle, restore it and put it back it it's rightful place. Anywho, I finally was able to fulfill a dream of mine by going to the Opry to see a real show. We went at Christmas to see the Rockettes but this was SO much different! I know Jon wasn't to thrilled about going but he knew how important it was to me so he endured and I'm sure even though he won't admit it, he had a good time too!

Carrie Underwood

Blake Shelton Little Jimmy Dickins Rodney Adkins **YUM**

Have a great day!

Riellys sleep study

Remember awhile ago I posted about dr appts coming up for Miss Rielly? The ENT dr suggested we get a sleep study done for her to see if she needs her tonsils out or not. What do I know.. so I said okay. Appt was scheduled and when the day came, away we went.
They do it at a hotel which is nice but man... what a miserable night! For me anyways. Rielly was hooked up to every wire possible and all those wires hooked up to a machine. Then she was expected to sleep. That's never been an issue for Rielly though so she went right to sleep. I couldn't though. The bed was awful, and all I kept thinking was that Rielly was going to fall off the bed (cuz she does that??) or get herself wrapped up in those wires or she won't be able to breath, etc. You know how things are in the middle of the night? 100X's worse!!!
She was fine though.
The guy said she did great.. not much snoring. She did have 3-4 occurances an hr (I guess apnea occurances?) so even though that's not much, he said they'll probably want to take the tonsils and anoids. But we won't know anything until we hear back from the ENT which they said could take a few weeks.

How sad huh...


And she's still smiling!!!


Who can sleep like this?? Rielly can!


And when all was said and done, she was all smiles at home!

Reeses Birthday Party

It seems hard to please kids when they hit a certain age. My kids have passed Nick show characters and princess obsessions so we've hit the time that in order to have a successful party, we need to be creative!
With that being said, I was not so creative with Reese's birthday party this yr. Okay maybe a little...
He had a movie night party. All the kids were sent a movie ticket inviting them to our "theater" (big screen).

At the party, the first thing we did was play a trivia game boys against girls where they had to answer movie questions and for each answer correct, the kids got a ticket. They loved having to work together and getting tickets. Then they were able to use the tickets to buy snacks for the movies. I gave them bags and they filled them with whatever snacks they could afford.
Reese chose The Neverending Story.

Most of the kids enjoyed it.. a few not so much but that's why I put the name of the movie and the rating on the ticket.
They also got popcorn cups full of popcorn. Imagine 13kids in my living room with 13 big cups of popcorn. Yeah it was CRAZY!!!

After the movie, we had nachos and hotdogs and after he opened his gifts,

they ate cake. Well kinda cake...:)


And lastly before time to go home... FREEZE DANCE!!!


And I sent them home full of sugar and happy!

My conversion story..a work in progress

This has truely been a long time coming.
I was born into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
I was raised in the ways of the church. Reading scriptures every morning, family prayers morning and night, didn't date til 16, attended 4yrs of seminary, rebelled, repented, married a RM in the temple and raising 2 beautiful children in the church.

So you can amazing my fear and confusion when I actually started to question what I believe.

How do I know this church is true?

All I could say is because my parents told me. And because my husband knows it is and he has to be right because he's an amazing guy and even went on a mission! Who am I to question! But I did...

At first it was internal. And it was eating me up inside. Then I started going to weekly therapy sessions called Saturday walks with Kristy. So it was then that I finally admitted one of my biggest issues.. Joseph Smith. It all just didn't add up to me. Without going into the details of my confusion, it then went back to The Book of Mormon. How could that be true when the guy who translated was an odd ball? I finally had the courage then to talk to Jon about it. And then to a few others who for the most part offered me insight. A few judged me which got discouraging for a bit but I didn't want to "disbelieve" so I did everything I could to not put up a wall. Including a fun trip to Nauvoo with our friends.
But honestly, it was pretty half-assed. I didn't want to put forth the effort it was going to take to truely gain a testimony of Joseph Smith and the restoration of the church. Why didn't I want to put forth that effort??? Because that means I would have to read and understand for the first time in my life, the book that Joe himself translated. The Book of Mormon. Yes my friends, I never read it! I never wanted to.

Fast forward though....... temple recommend expired and needed to be renewed. I wasn't sure if I should renew it because of my wonderings and concerns. In fact at one time, I told Jon that I didn't know if I believe the church even was true. What a shock for him to hear it and for me to say it! That's when I KNEW I had a problem. I didn't want to start doubting. Questioning is one thing... because we all have a right to question. But doubting my religion is another. That scared the be-cheesus out of me!

Then I realized... I wasn't getting the weekly Jesus love that I needed! I went from sacrament meeting (which a lot of times was stressful because of trying to keep 2 kiddos quiet) straight to 2 hrs of playing the piano for primary. So rarely did I leave church feeling uplifted. And my best friend knew this also...and knew just how bad I needed a little more praising the Lord. And well the Lord did too apparently and she felt inspired to call me to the RS as the compassionate service leader.
It was at that time that my heart changed too. I was having a rough night and totally out of character and out of the blue, I felt the need to pray. Like NOW. So I told Jon and he asked if I wanted him to say it. Again totally out of character, I said no I need to. And I prayed. And prayed and prayed and prayed. Basically pleading with Heavenly Father to let me start over.
Satan must not have liked that because shortly after, our bed frame broke!!!!
But anyways that felt to me like the start of my new journey. I had no clue where to begin or what to expect or even what I was searching for but I knew it's time to know who I am, where I came from and how can I get back through the church I've been attending my whole life!
I have been encouraged and challenged to read the Book of Mormon a lot lately and I always just kinda laughed it off with a "yeah sure okay" answer- knowing I wouldn't. But all the sudden, I wanted to. Not just wanted... I NEEDED! So I talked to Jon and he agreed to start reading them with me.
I'm pleased to say that we haven't missed a day since. I mean it's only been a few weeks but even if we are dead tired, we make it a point to read.
I also bought a BYU study guide for the BofM and D&C hopeing to be able to understand what the heck I'm reading!
And you know what happened when we started doing this? We also started argueing more. Almost immediantly! Strange huh? Nope- not so much. Again, I pissed satan off and he was going to get me down one way or another. But knowing this, we have been able to work through it. One way or another, we are going to grow closer to each other with this. We are going to find peace and comfort in our difficult times. We are going to get closer to our Savior. And if it's a fight satan wants, BRING IT!
So anyways, after my heart opened up to the possibility that I could actually start to become who I always wanted to be spiritually, my other senses opened. I started getting random feelings about people or things that I have come to realize are promptings of the Holy Ghost. Huh.. who knew! As Kristy said, my drain has been unclogged and now the spirit is able to flow freely.

For example- my patriarchial blessing. I have kept it in my barely opened scripture case for 10yrs. It has been through many moves and boxes and somehow my scriptures got seperated from the case. So when I went searching for them, I found the scriptures but not the case. I really wanted to find my blessing but I had no clue if the case even survived the flood! So I went in my room just wandering and all the sudden I had this crazy thought to look into a bucket in my room that I keep the backpacks. Like this thought wasn't mine because I KNEW it wasn't in there. I put that stuff in the bucket myself and I would have remembered. But heck- it's worth a shot. And the more I bug, the sillier it seemed because I know the case isn't there. Or so I thought. There it was.. at the very bottom of this bucket was my lonely flowery not my style anymore scripture case. And in that, my wonderful laminated safe blessing.

And I've had similar instances involving people lately too that instead of ignoring the feelings to do something, I actually acted on them and I'm so glad I did! I just wonder how many people I could've comforted or helped or whatever but I was just too clogged to notice. Sad huh?

Another instance was when I was on one of my walks, I felt instead of music, maybe I outta listen to conference talks. Say huh??? Only Kristy Barkley would do something like that! Apparently now, Shannon Harris does too!
I turned on the RS session of the Oct 2010 conference. The presidency members had wonderful talks. Very uplifting. But the one that kicked me in the pants and will stay with me forever is the one by Thomas S. Monson.
I encourage everyone regardless of your faith or situation to read this!
http://lds.org/churchmagazines/LI_2010_11_41___09291_000_047.pdf?download=true
Without rewriting the whole thing, the things that really touched me were:
None of us is perfect. I know of no
one who would profess to be so. And
yet for some reason, despite our own
imperfections, we have a tendency to
point out those of others. We make
judgments concerning their actions
or inactions.
There is really no way we can
know the heart, the intentions, or the
circumstances of someone who might
say or do something we find reason
to criticize. Thus the commandment:
“Judge not.”

I have in
mind the charity that manifests itself
when we are tolerant of others and
lenient toward their actions, the kind
of charity that forgives, the kind of
charity that is patient.
I have in mind the charity that
impels us to be sympathetic, compassionate,
and merciful, not only in
times of sickness and affliction and
distress but also in times of weakness
or error on the part of others.
There is a serious need for the
charity that gives attention to those
who are unnoticed, hope to those who
are discouraged, aid to those who are
afflicted. True charity is love in action.
The need for charity is everywhere.
Needed is the charity which refuses
to find satisfaction in hearing or in
repeating the reports of misfortunes
that come to others, unless by so
doing, the unfortunate one may be
benefited. The American educator and
politician Horace Mann once said, “To
pity distress is but human; to relieve it
is godlike.” 11
Charity is having patience with
someone who has let us down. It
is resisting the impulse to become
offended easily. It is accepting weaknesses
and shortcomings. It is accepting
people as they truly are. It is
looking beyond physical appearances
to attributes that will not dim through
time. It is resisting the impulse to categorize
others.

I am so guilty of judging outward appearances and ideas as well as a victim of being judged for mine. But listening to this has completely changed my perception. And because of that, I have been able to make friends with people I wouldn't have otherwise.

Isn't God great?

I can tell you-- I am stronger spiritually than I have ever been..which is kind of sad since it's only been a few weeks! But I have so many other emotions and issues going on right now internally that I truely feel I can handle if I keep my heart open and don't give up.
It's just the beginning. I know I'll be tempted and tried.. I always have been. But this new taste of learning is so swwet that I don't think I want to loose it! And how blessed am I to have someone by my side who wants to go through this with me?? And such great friends who haven't given up on me.

So there you have it... FINALLY I will know without a doubt what I have said I already did all these years! FINALLY I will be able to say I've read the Book of Mormon. FINALLY I will be an example!

And I'm proud to say, I got my temple recommend renewed!
Bring me on some Jesus!

PS- how's this for random.. last week I scratched my nose and ripped my nose ring out. I was too out of it to mess with it and all that day I didn't even think about replacing it. So the next day I tried to put one in and the hole is gone. Totally closed! That shouldn't have happened after having a ring in it for months. Go figure! So I'm nose ring free.