Can you fireproof your.....

I just wanted to share with you an amazing movie that Matt and I watched that is called, "Fireproof." It came out on DVD on January 27th so perhaps you have seen it already, but for those who haven't it was an amazing movie to see and think about it.

It is a Christian movie that is all about marriage that shares a couples journey. And there is a book that goes along with it too. If you want to learn more about it go to their web page and learn more!
http://www.fireproofmymarriage.com

Happenings of this week!

Today I was at Colton's school all day for a Leadership conference that the parents put on and it was super. There are some amazing students at his school that are so respectful, and kind. His school needs a lot of help so it is always fun to go and help there. I am grateful that we found such an amazing school for Colton even if it is almost and hour there and back.

Tonight Colton is on a Klondike and it amazes me that my boys have wanted to go to a camp where they sleep in tents and do activities in the winter time. Brrr-it makes me cold just thinking about it. I am glad that they know how to enjoy the cold weather, but I am certainly glad that they don't ask for moms to come and instead request the dads.

This week Matt and I worked at the Draper temple open house. What an amazing day it was. Matt left at 6:30 in the morning and was done at 7:00 PM. I got the kids off to school and then went directly there and got home at 7:30 PM. Thankfully, Spencer was home and picked up Kara and had dinner waiting when we got home as well as peanut butter cookies. Then Colton went and cleaned the temple that night and he thoroughly enjoyed that. I am so grateful that we had this opportunity. I highly doubt that I will ever have the opportunity to work in a temple open house again. I think the thing I liked about it the most was how happy everyone was that came through to see the temple. The little children were so respectful and in awe of this beautiful house of God.

During one of my shifts I was the tour guide on the buses and that was so fun and then during my other shifts I was directing people in to one of the sealing rooms and helping with the presentation. Matt was outside almost the whole day and it was FREEZING. It was snowing off and on throughout the day. So he was quite frozen when he came home. The over whelming feeling in the temple is one of peace and reverence that I work to keep in my home.

This week I also went snow shoeing with LeAnn and Julie. It was so much fun to spend time with them and enjoy the beautiful area. I highly recommend it for everyone.

Change in abortion laws

A friend of mine wrote this and I wanted to share it on my blog too.

One of the first things Obama did after taking office was to reverse an abortion funding policy (http://tinyurl.com/ashnbv)

He has promised to pass FOCA (Freedom Of Choice Act) where partial abortions would permitted, girls under 18 would no longer need parental permission to get an abortion, our tax money would go towards supporting this practice, and other things.

If you want to send a petition about this please do so by going to http://www.fightfoca.com/ and sign a petition to not pass this. Write your congressman and let them know you do not want FOCA to pass.

Here are some facts on abortion (http://tinyurl.com/5wley). Please note on this site the reason why women choose to have abortions.

Elder Russel M. Nelson spoke about abortion on an article titled "Abortion: An Assault on the Defenseless" on the October 2008 Ensign (http://tinyurl.com/cd5lkt) and on February's ensign there is an amazing article on "The Gift of Adoption" on page 37 (magazine is not available online yet).
Elder Oaks also had an article on the Ensign in January 2001 titled "Weightier Matters" where he talks about abortion and the law (http://tinyurl.com/5vrnfo)

Here's the LDS church's public stand on the issue: http://tinyurl.com/yqk455

This is an issue dear to my heart. Abortion has become a contraceptive method due to inconvenience or lack of money. Help me fight this battle.

Thank you!

One long sleepless night

The weirdest thing happened last night. I couldn't sleep at all. I was tossing and turning and then I was just barely asleep when I kept hearing my husband's low battery warning beep on his cell phone. So I got up and turned off the phone and thought I would just go right back to sleep. WRONG! My body had other plans as I couldn't get back to sleep EVER. So now I am so tired, but I don't want to go to sleep now or I don't know if I will ever be able to wake up or perhaps I will have trouble going to sleep tonight. My what big worries I have? So now I feel like a zombie seeing the world through a very different perspective and it might just be a very darn good perspective. For example I should be vacuuming today, (I haven't since Friday) but right now it just doesn't seem that important. Or I should have called or done a myriad of other things, but right now it seems like no big deal. It will all happily wait until tomorrow! Period, end of story, except for our ball room dance class, now I will definitely be there regardless of my zombie state.

But since I am so tired I probably am not making very much sense (I know that is a for sure yes) so perhaps I should stop before I am ahead. Since I last wrote we have been doing a lot of fun things. The highlights was going to the Draper Open House tour. What a beautiful temple and sweet spirit that we felt there. The whole process was so organized and well done. I am so grateful that we will be in this new temple district and I feel such gratitude to be able to live so close to so many temples. After we came home from the open house my friend LeAnn and I went to the Jordan River temple (it was supposed to be a ladies temple night, but ended up just being the two of us) to do a session and it was so crowded. We waited for almost thirty minutes to get in our session. So having this temple will relieve some of the huge crowds in the Jordan temple. I am so grateful for temples and the important truths we learn there so that we will be able to return to our Heavenly Father someday. We are such a blessed people.

Meetings, meetings and more meetings!

Here is just the low down on what is happening this week: On Thursday I went to the dentist since I had a cracked tooth and needed a filling. The tooth was on the bottom and for some reason it hurt more than I planned. It made me think of my mom in law who has had so many issues with her teeth.

I went to Bodyworlds with my friend Diane which was the most fascinating event I have been to in a long time. The human body is so amazing and so well crafted. They showed some very life changing displays regarding smoking, drinking, stages of pregnancy (the baby looked like a complete baby at 8 weeks) etc. I was so fascinated with seeing what muscle looks like and all of the intricate functions of a body that I take for granted each day. After going it really made me want to eat healthy and exercise your body so you can extend your life to be of service to others. I am so grateful for my body and it is getting healthier and healthier thanks to a wonderful doctor who has helped me on my journey. In the last few months I am starting to feel almost like I felt before I had Kara (except for the fact that I am much older) which is truly an amazing blessing. On Friday evening Matt and I went out to see "Bride Wars" for our weekly date and also had fun talking and laughing together.

On Saturday we were able to go to a baptism for a wonderful young woman who is such a special spirit and has bought joy in our life because we know her. I love going to baptism! After that day I cleaned the freezer, and reorganized the pantry and our big cupboards with the help of my husband and children. Spencer actually had to end up painting the pantry because it was so bad.

On Sunday we had my siblings and their family over for our FHE on how much Jesus loves all of his children. The children are sweet and adorable and are such precious spirits of our Heavenly Father and of course their parents are too.

Monday was laundry and cleaning the house day and I also had a meeting that morning. Tuesday, I had another event and had another meeting which was a presidency meeting and then we had an Enrichment Girls night out that was a lot of fun.

Today I just got back from my PTA board meeting and I need to get on the ball regarding the "Take your Family to School Week" in February that I am in charge of during the week of February 8-13th. I am excited for that week; I am also doing the Dad's in the morning on that week too and some other fun activities.

I am really excited because tomorrow I am going to a FREE TOFW (Timeout for women) event at the Salt Palace in SLC. My friend Diane and I are meeting together and Sheri Dew and Wendy Nelson are both speaking and they are broadcasting it so it will be a wonderful day. And in a little bit I need to go to another meeting to plan the 6th grade dance and all of the food, decorations, pictures etc which will also be during the week of the "Take your Family to School Week". It will be a fun event and Kara has been starting to learn dances for it. And speaking of dancing Matt and I start our first Ballroom dancing class next week. We are both excited, but I think I might be just a little more excited then he is! :)

Hi! I'm excited PURPLE IS MY NEW FAVORITE COLOR. Also, look at my blog at http://theworldofundiscoveredtalent.blogspot.com

A car landed in our yard, broke our fence, took down the stop sign because the roads were so icy and slick!

This morning around 7:50, a truck landed in our yard due to the snow, and extremely slick roads. It was a very interesting morning, and so all you could do was laugh. He of course broke through our fence, took down the stop sign, and came fairly close to our trampoline, but luckily nothing serious to himself or his car which was quite amazing. If you were to pick a person to run through your fence (like anyone would do that) we picked the right person. It just so happens that he works for a private company fixing fences and yards. (For some reason uploading pictures isn't working right now or I would show you the pictures. So it made for a very interesting morning, but I was still able to go snow shoeing with my friend, Julie. We had a great time and the snow came to our knees in some places. It is so beautiful to go up the canyon and to enjoy the beauty. We also heard a lot of avalanche control work while there. It was definitely a work out for me at least since I have been a little lax in my exercise program during the holidays.

So far this week it has just been so busy, but I can't complain because I LOVE being busy and doing things for my family. Yesterday as I was picking up car pool my brother Mark called me up as he is a VIP tour guide in the new Draper Temple. He was being a tour guide on Tuesday (the temple isn't open for the open house yet only for VIP's for two weeks). Anyways yesterday he called me up and let me know that if I wanted to come today through the temple that I could. I was so happy to say the least. And as soon as I finished my responsibilities I made my trip there. It is a most gorgeous temple and so intricately decorated so beautifully. You can just feel the spirit so strong when you enter the temple and what a wonderful blessing to have another temple to be able to attend and to see all of the work that can be done.

On Sunday my friend LeAnn bore a eloquent testimony and she talked about the temple and her experience of going to a wedding where the sealer told them that attending the temple will bring so many wonderful blessings that we are denying ourselves when we don't frequently go. It was a great reminder for me to remember the most essential things and what is important.

Also on Sunday another former member visiting our ward who lives in Minnesota shared with us that in his current ward the boundaries cover 250K people. It amazed me and caused me to wonder what that would be like when we walk across the street to attend church. Sometimes I am in awe of my blessings that so often I take for granted.

Also, that Sunday I couldn't find my scriptures when church ended. While looking for them I felt such a sense of urgency to find them. After looking all over the church (the other ward was every where) I finally went home. And then called LeAnn and Von to see if they maybe saw them since they moved in my spot, but they didn’t see them. I started thinking about how much the scriptures mean to me and how their words have helped me so much in my life. I felt this immense gratitude for my scriptures, that I would never have felt if I hadn't misplaced them. After going home with a prayer in my heart a member of our ward called me and let me know that he had picked up my scriptures. I felt such tremendous relief and was so grateful that he had picked them up. I went to his home right away filled with tremendous gratitude. I felt such gratitude for all of my blessings and having the scriptures.

Here are some of Spencer's pictures from the truck being in the yard.
At one point there was the truck stuck and then the garbage truck got stuck on our curb too and couldn't get off.
An angle from our home of the truck in our yard!

What it looked like after the truck was taken out.
Picture snow shoeing up Big Cottonwood Canyon at the Spruce's. We had to have four men push us out of the parking lot since our car got caught in the snow! It made for a lot of fun.

Junior Blogger

The KARA Times

Junior Blogger
By Kara
In Sandy Utah an 11 year girl has just started blogging on her mothers page. Give a round of applause for Kara.


School News
Recently Kara has experienced some hard ships with new students. Kara is up set that she did not get new students in her class today; as there were four new students and two of them were [twins!!] Major!!!!

Kara's class has been featured in the Deseret News Sunday January 4th 2009 page A14 you can see the ad and the main picture is of a student in her class, but on the top left corner you can see a shoe that is KARA'S. The article is also featured on her teacher, Mrs Robinson's blog page. Kara feels that it is her destiny to become a foot model and this is just an ad that is starting her in the path to stardom. She is anxiously awaiting the calls of popular shoe companies.

Things going on this week!

Preston and Colton having a little fun!
Matt and Nathan making playing together and Nathan making face for the picture.

What a wonderful week we had with school still out. On Sunday we went to our ward and then I went to hear Matt speaking for his High Council assignment. He did a wonderful job speaking on Charity.

We had fun playing with our new stuff for Christmas, especially the American Idol Wii game from my deceased parents. That is a blast and has helped with many happy memories. We had so much fun and I highly recommend it if you like to sing.

We had my brother Matthew and family over for New Year's Eve and had so much fun enjoying their company. I tried to follow my dad's typical New Year's Eve style food. We always do this, but it was fun to have them over too since usually they are traveling, but didn't this year.

It was great to put our home in order after we took down the Christmas decorations. Each room looked so much bigger and cleaner with everything gone. And now I have been organizing our home and going through cupboards etc. I just dislike clutter so much and I don't do well in a messy home at all. After wards we took Preston home to his home at Eagle Mountain as he had spent the night here with Colton. He is such a fun young man to have around. While we were there we looked at homes. They have some beautiful homes there.

The children and I went to the Clark Planetarium on Friday and enjoyed all of the displays about the moon, earth, space, electricity etc. Kara had won free tickets to see one of the shows they had on from part of her Reflection award. We went and learned more about the Ultimate Universe. It was very educational and we found out that Colton knows so much about space, more than we even realized. He sure holds a lot of knowledge in that cute head of his.

Kara has been busy memorizing lines for her part in her school play and we have had fun working on her science fair project.

Friday night after the snow finally started melting from 12/11 we found 5 Christmas cards on the ground in front of the mail box. It was fun to read some wet Christmas cards that we thought just got lost in the mail. Luckily we found them when we did because hours later another storm came and brought more snow.

Last night Matt and I went out for our date night to see "Curious Case of Benjamin Button" Now that is a long movie, but there was some wonderful acting done. I don't know if I would recommend it till it comes out on video.

We have been talking about our New Year's goals and having fun as a family. We hope you are too.

Today Kara went to her last "Breakfast with your Primary Teacher," Primary activity. She will be turning 12 in more than a month and a half and then will be in Young Women. She loves primary and that is a good thing because she will be attending her Primary class as we Sunday School class until she is almost 13. And Kara is our last so we will no longer have any children in Primary. I just love Primary and the new theme this year, "Eternal Families". We just got back from a baptism of our friend Ashley. It was also neat to see a former missionary in our area, there. Matt gave a talk on the Holy Ghost and did a wonderful job. After wards, we went over to their home and had fun visiting.

School starts back on January 5th and our home will return somewhat to normal. Spencer doesn't start classes until the 12th so he still has a break. I have so much to do that I put off due to the holidays and I am sure that many are in the same situation.

We want to wish you each a very Happy New Year.