Love day

Happy Love Day!

Valentines weekend was nothing shot of a chaotic mess. A fun mess, but chaotic and jam packed. 

I have to preface this a little, every year, our stake has stake conference on Valentines day (or Valentines weekend), which means the adult session took place the day before Valentines and conference was the day of. No big deal, but it requires a little altering and extra planning. I called my sister a couple weeks before and arranged for me to take her two kids for a slumber party on the Thursday before V-day and she'd take our little man the next night so we could all have a night completely devoted to our spouses. I knew Saturday would be crazy, Madi had a game in the morning that we would all be able to attend and I had work all day, followed by the adult session so having everything planned for the days before was perfect.

Very long story short...everything went crazy and our date was cancelled, we spent the weekend running all over town (including the hospital, the ball park, music class, and the QC festival) and spending time with loved ones. SO there will be no romantic story to tell, but there was no shortage of love. 

 We had such a busy weekend we didn't make any fun valentine themed meal plans, gifts or anything like I would normally enjoy doing but the night before, I snagged the last and smallest Valentines day balloon for Liam and its the best 2 dollars I've ever spent! When we gave it to him Sunday morning,  he was thrilled and played with it all day long, calling it his special 'love-day" paboon! We sang all of our favorite love songs while snuggling in bed and got up and ready for Stake conference.

Conference was beautiful and very inspired. The adult session was a lot about parenting and it was like magic hearing these talks that I felt so perfectly applied to the struggles I had been praying about, knowing that parents with teens, adult children and 5 or 6 kids more than me were receiving equally inspired and personal revelation.

A few nuggets I don't want to forget:

Marrion G Romney: As we read the scriptures to our children and make a point to do it every day, we will not loose a single one. (Mission Pres.)

The temple is our get-away, we don't need a vacation or a day away from kids, we need to find ourselves in the temple more often. (Sis.Scout)

Pride is the enemy of our children, make them accountable, raise them to repent, make sure they meet with thier Bishop regularly and know that they can talk to him. (Dad)

Put your family in situations and environments that will open their hearts. Only open hearts can be written upon. (Dad)

Betterment Challenges:
Truly STUDY the scriptures more.
Start reading scriptures at breakfast in addition to nightly scripture study
Get to the temple as a solution to stress/anxiety and record my feelings before and after to build my testimony of its healing power.
Be more accountable for my mistakes and shortcomings so I can be a better example of accountability for  Liam.
Bear my testimony to Chad more often