make your year a Christmas year

i got to give the talk on sunday that i was supposed to give in january! the bishopric told me to go ahead and keep the same topic that i had previously been assigned - keeping the spirit of Christmas with you all year round. my first reaction was to laugh thinking of giving a Christmas talk in february, but once i thought about it for a minute, it seemed like the perfect time to give it. i think the spirit of Christmas slips away pretty quickly once the holiday is over and it's back to the regular schedule of things and back to starting up a new year. so maybe it was the perfect time - a little bit into the year so that the spirit had faded already, but not too far so that people can remember how they felt about this time two months ago when Christmas was just upon us.

in preparation for my talk i thought back on a lesson we had in relief society before i received my calling to serve in the nursery. the lesson was about Christmas and the teacher opened up the class for input as to what it was that everyone loves about Christmas. essentially i made a list of things that are generally enjoyed about Christmas and talked about my experiences with it. i then talked about how that can be made an every day thing thus incorporating the spirit of Christmas into your everyday life. i never write out my talks word for word, but here is the outline i had - with a little bit added to make it better for the blog :)

Keep Christ alive all year – keep Christmas with you

What do people love about Christmas?

-          Being with family

o   Growing up – caroling, trip to see temple lights, Christmas Eve party, Christmas morning

o   We know that the family is central to our Father’s plan; it’s important to spend time and develop relationships now with people we strive to be with for eternity; FHE,family prayer, family scripture study, family dinner every night, just spending time together

-          Being with friends

o  Growing up - family Christmas party and inviting friends, friends at Christmas Eve party

o   Heavenly Father puts great people into our lives to help us all the time; similarly we can be used to bless others’ lives as well; spending time with friends helps us build relationships whether it be friends from church, work, or the community. Life gets busy, but it's important to make time for friends

-          Time of giving

o   Growing up - Family tradition of focusing on the giving of gifts on Christmas morning

o   Giving helps us focus on the needs of others rather than ourselves - it breeds selflessness, we need to give of our time, talents, and love, we need to take time to give service to others

-          Time of receiving

o   Growing up - Fun to get gifts from people you know love you, family tradition of being big on surprises - fun to see what the people in the family think you’d enjoy

o   Think of all the blessings you receive every day – show gratitude for those blessings. When you look at things in the right perspective you realize how many gifts you’re being given every single day from a Father who loves you

-          Music

o   Growing up - The Spirit of Christmas music – Christmas music being played at home months before the holiday, caroling as I mentioned, singing hymns Christmas a.m., Christmas program at church

o   Christmas songs bring joy and share a beautiful message. Listen to music all year that brings the same feelings of happiness and light

-          Feeling of love

o   Growing up - Christmas affords a chance to focus more on others – concerts we used to do for widows on Christmas day. Love is what you feel when you take a minute on Christmas morning and just sit back and see the smiles and feel the happiness. That incredible Christmas feeling that everyone enjoys so much is love

o   Help people know each day that they are loved. The feeling will be returned. Be still and feel God’s love even in your hectic daily schedules

-          Seeing people happy

o   Growing up - focusing so much on others at Christmas in an effort to spread happiness. Whether it’s you that made them happy or someone else, it feels nice to see others smiling and feeling happy about something in their life

o   People seem to have a lot more reasons to be happy around the holidays – give people reasons to be happy every day

-          Focus on Christ

o   Growing up - not putting baby Jesus into the nativity on Christmas morning and pausing to do that and sing hymns before opening presents. Christmas is all about Jesus Christ – without Him we wouldn’t have anything to celebrate.

o   Make sure you’re making the weekly Sacrament about Christ, strive to be more like him each day, learn of Him and follow His example. make each day about Christ

wish you could've been there to hear my talk instead of just read the outline! maybe next time!! :)

if it's important to me then it's important to Him

i was just thinking today how awesome it is that Heavenly Father cares about everything that is going on in our lives, and how strong the power of faith can be. i remember teaching people on my mission that they could pray about anything at all that they wanted to. "if it's important to you, then it's important to Heavenly Father because He loves you and you are important to Him" i would teach. i knew this before, but i love how certain experiences in life help me to re-teach different principles to myself.

over the last few weeks i've had some trouble sleeping through the night. i've never really had a problem with this in my life, so it was particularly difficult to experience now. it seemed that i would fall asleep just fine, but i would wake up repeatedly throughout the night resulting in a less than restful night's sleep. there was one night that it got really bad and i was awake for a couple hours each time i awoke in the night despite feeling exhausted. i had started taking some medicines to help me sleep, but i don't particularly like doing that and don't want to get in the habit of taking that kind of stuff. i asked mike if he would give me a blessing before bed the next night and he did (i love having the priesthood in my home!!!). Heavenly Father told me He would help me to sleep through the night and get back into a regular sleep cycle. that night i slept great and have every night since :) similarly, mike was having a hard time sleeping last night and he woke me up and i said a prayer asking specifically that mike would be able to get to sleep. before i knew it he was sound asleep :) i know that not being able to fall/stay asleep isn't a huge deal in the big scheme of things, but Heavenly Father knew that it was important enough to us to ask for His help, and that meant it was important to Him. i think it's cool how sometimes all it takes is our asking. certainly there are times when more is required, but simply exercising our faith by asking can do alot. i sure love Heavenly Father :)

a warm towel

one of the last apartments i stayed in on my mission had the washer and dryer in the bathroom closet. at first i found this pretty annoying until i realized that if i put my towel in the dryer as i was getting in the shower, then it would be all nice and warm for me to grab right when i got out! it was pretty tough moving to the next area after that where a warm towel was not even a possibility since the laundry area was outside and around the corner from our apartment. a plain old room-temperature towel has never seemed the same...

...but! having moved in with mike's dad, the laundry room is the next room over in our basement from the bathroom. not close enough to do the warm towel thing on my own, but when it so happens that mike and i are home and up and around at the same time that the other is taking a shower, we often carry on the warm towel tradition :) it's a fun, nice thing to be able to do for each other. guess who just got a warm towel a few minutes ago?! i love having a loving husband who also loves warm towels!!! and who loves me enough to give me a warm towel :)

my first valentine!!

somehow through all my dating life, it always worked out that either i wasn't dating anyone over valentine's day, or we'd only just started dating or were in some kind of semi-dating stage (blah...the dating game is poopy - glad i won that game already!). so valentine's day was just kind of lame and awkward and we maybe went out for ice cream and that was it - i do love ice cream, don't get me wrong. just that valentine's day generally seems to warrant a bit more than that. whatever, my heart was not broken by never having had a real valentine. my heart is pretty happy now, though, that i have a forever valentine who i love like whoa!! and i have to say, it's kind of fun to have your first real valentine be your husband :)

for our first valentine's day together we decided to take advantage of my still being on the marriott payroll and use the discount to have a weekend getaway. it didn't matter that we were only staying twenty-five minutes from home, it felt like we could've been states away judging by how carefree and disconnected from work and school we felt :) it was soooo nice!!! anyway i thought it would be fun for our first blog entry to tell about our weekend!

we started out saturday afternoon by going to visit grandpa gary in the hospital. it's weird - he is maybe just over an hour away from us, but it seems so much further than that since it takes a good chunk of time to get there and back, plus it requires mike and i to be able to coordinate schedules for that chunk of time. anyway, i think the last time we visited him was on Christmas eve and he is looking much improved from then! he was sitting up with his hockey helmet on (hehe, super stylin) and napping when we walked in. we said hi and told him about our valentine's weekend plans and how we were going to the temple and everything. he opened his eyes and even seemed like he was trying to talk at one point. we sang "i love to see the temple" to him and teased him about whatever old tv show he was watching haha before leaving. we didn't get to stay long since we needed to head out to make it to the temple session on time, but it really felt nice to go and see him again :) plus even better that he's made some marked progress since last time! we love grandpa!!!

it was wonderful to go to the temple together as a part of our valentine's celebration!!!! we realized with a little bit of dismay that the last time we were at the temple together was on our wedding day!!! we would like to go more often than that! we'll have to work on it i suppose :) anyhow, it was wonderful to be in there together and extra glorious to be in the celestial room together and to just enjoy the feeling of peace and joy that the temple affords. i love that. that is definitely a feeling that is not easily replicated in today's world outside of the temple. i do think i felt that at my parent's house though :) me and mike have already talked about how we want our future home to have that feeling too. and we try to make our basement home right now have it! all we have on the walls are pictures of the Savior and our marriage certificate :) it's a start!

after the temple we went ahead and checked into the courtyard marriott in maple grove. 

 

we thought it was pretty neat because those blue lights in the picture actually change color every so often and it was green when we got there :) we also saw it when it was purple! we ate dinner at chili's off the 2 for $20 menu and watched several episodes of 24 when we got back afterwards. we greatly enjoyed the chocolate covered fruit and nut medley that mike picked up at costco for us during our 24 marathon!

one of the things i'm most excited about from our weekend is the AWESOME french bakery we found called Chez Arnaud! man, i wish we could've sampled every pastry in the place! but we settled on an apple tart (yum!), a piece of some fancy chocolate mousse cake (decadent!), and the "paris-minneapolis" which was our favorite - so tasty!!! it was basically a donut shaped pastry about the consistency of the bready part of a cream puff sliced in half like a bagel with this ultra delicious filling stuff. i'm not sure how to describe the flavor except for "wow" and "i would like more please". the owner of the bakery is an older gentleman from France who is way cool! he took our order and made everything sound so much fancier with his stellar french accent :) mike was particularly keen on the fact that they had fresh pressed apple juice made to order - we even got to watch the guy press the apples for the juice through the big bakery kitchen window! it was fun to see all the bakers at work too :) anyhow, we give this place 5 big, bright, glowing stars and say that anyone who wants to come visit us in MN, you should definitely check out this place and we'd be more than happy to escort you there :)

our culinary escapades over the weekend did not end there, for we enjoyed a tasty meal at P.F. Changs also!! it was mike's first time and only my second time ever and we thoroughly enjoyed it :) i got crispy honey chicken and mike got sesame chicken...let's just say there were no leftovers ;) we even got dessert, but to-go to let things settle a bit first. it was both of our first times taking down the great wall of chocolate, but we managed quite well with both of us working on it later on, even if the going was slowed down significantly by the last bite :)

also at P.F. Chang's we had a really great server who made the experience even more enjoyable for us :) i miss being able to do that for people. it was fun to be a part of making someone else's night out even more fun when i worked at the olive garden. it's not quite the same experience trying to make someone's bank visit more delightful haha :)

we went to the maple grove ward for Sacrament meeting on sunday and had to set up extra chairs in the overflow for us to have a seat! that ward was big!!! it was nice to hear the talks on temple worship though and how it enriches our lives especially since we had just gone the day before! it was nice when someone followed us out of the chapel after the meeting to find out if we were new in the ward - it felt good to know that even in such a big, busy ward (there were tons of kids!) we were still noticed :) we told him we were from big lake, just enjoying a weekend away at the maple grove marriott and thought we'd visit their ward instead of going back to ours. he said we're welcome to stay at the marriott and visit their ward anytime :)

did i mention how nice i was to be able to sleep in?? i feel like i haven't done that in quite awhile!! it was also pretty neat to have someone make our bed for us and bring us fresh towels and whatnot. this led to a great daydream by mike and i about what it'd be like to have a maid and how long we'd wait to do that so our kids could learn responsibility through chores and stuff hahaha. it's nice to dream about being in the position to even consider hiring someone to take care of that stuff someday :) and even nicer to have someone do it even if just for a day at the marriott!

we did eat breakfast today at this place called the original pancake house. the pancakes were tasty, but that's about all i enjoyed about this place other than the company :) the service wasn't great and my omelette was pretty weird-looking! it looked like they cooked it in a whoopie cushion and implanted a cheese tumor on the side of it. hahaha. that meaning it was about the size and shape of a large whoopie cushion and all the cheese was in a weird bulge off one side of it. not too impressive. so next time we'll know to just hit up the french bakery again :)

so now we're back to real life and regular schedules...sigh. since getting back we've found out that the transmission is handicapped on mike's car, so we are pretty much just going to put it on craigslist for a chunk of change and hope a mechanically inclined friend decides to go for it and fix it up. we are pretty much waiting on hearing about mike's byu application before deciding what to do about his car. so that's the big situation we're trying to work out right now. i'm glad that we found that out after our weekend though...it was so nice to not have anything to worry about. no homework for mike or trying to make a sale at the bank for jaime :) of course life can't always be like that, but it was nice to have a weekend when it was just for those couple days!! and it was even nicer to have a wonderful husband to be able to spend it with!!!!! it seemed like a mini-honeymoon :) i love my mike and i'm so glad he loves me too!!!

hahahahahahaha. we had alot of fun with those in case you couldn't tell :)