When the Family Gets Together...

The last 5 days have been great, but different than I expected. I had FUN! didn't get too stressed, and mostly felt like a competent hostess. (You know, like keeping everyone fed and entertained when you aren't quite sure what they expect.) I guess I worry a little about that, because in-laws are a little bit different than immediate family. :)

But to backtrack a little...

James's mom, sister, and 2 brothers arrived last Thursday night. The house was all ready for them by then. We celebrated Joseph's 2nd birthday with chocolate cupcakes. He is now the proud owner of 3x as many toys as he had before, but the new ones were all Duplos, one train set, and the other a zoo set. He got a few other little toys as well, like a mini basketball.

Both Friday and Saturday morning, I attended the CHOIS (Christian Homeschoolers of Idaho State) Conference with Melodie, my mother-in-law. Wow. It was not what I expected. Well, I don't really know what I expected...maybe for it to be a little boring and anti public school? Needless to say, it wasn't at all. It was actually very inspiring to me.

I've been wrongly prejudiced against mainstream Christians and their abilities to receive personal revelation. I am privileged to have the Gift of the Holy Ghost, a modern-day prophet, and 3 additional books of scripture to guide me in my everyday life. They don't. What's my excuse?

The conference emphasized the importance of the family and homeschooling with religion. Education IS religion. And homeschooling parents were jailed in the 90's for believing this?!

I really felt the Spirit throughout this conference, especially as the father of 10 testified of the importance of family. He said that it never gets easier, but it's worth every minute of the hard work. I couldn't agree more, even though I have nowhere near 10 children.

All the speakers impressed me with evidence of their faithfulness to the Gospel. I know that none of them are members of my church, but they still study their scriptures, pray and fast for answers, put their trust in the Lord when answers are tough, and have strong testimonies of the importance of families. None of these people go to churches that teach that the family is eternal, yet they live as though they know it's true. This makes me truly happy.

We had a wonderful time with the family here, with days chock-full of good things: shopping, movies, junk food, family dinners, swimming, hanging out. James and I were able to go on our first date out since my birthday 2 months ago. We saw the Avengers and really liked it. I love my husband. I sure miss going on dates when we had free babysitting!

I'm really grateful for our Sunday School class as well. We had a great lesson on Sunday, because the Spirit was there. That doesn't always happen, but if it does in a room full of 16-18 year old kids, it feels especially great. One of the things that I love most about the Spirit is that he's so persistent. He doesn't give up on us easily. I know that even when I wasn't paying a lot of attention to the Spirit years ago, I still felt it pretty strongly anyway. I hope that the kids in our class never come close to the mistakes I made at their age. Being their teacher has reminded me of what an important turning point that age is. I'm grateful for the opportunity to be a positive influence on the youth of the Church, even though it's a small calling.

Life is good. James is job hunting for the last 2 months that we live here. I'm going to miss it, but I'm thinking positive.

pool party, baby

He will tell you that he's Obi-wan Kenobi. NERD.

cupcake!

I love my little boys. :)