I think that that phrase may be one of my favorites in the scriptures as well as my favorite to describe my life. Everything that Heavenly Father has created in me and in my life is so good.
Luke helped me to write a posting earlier this evening, but I lost it, so sorry Luke! We took a detour from writing to look at pictures of his family and mission. Two hours later, we found ourselves still flipping through the pictures on my computer. Over Christmas Break, I stole Dad's computer for a day and downloaded a bunch of old pictures from when we were growing up. Most of them involved our family, "The Kartchners" (aka. Zane and Suzy's family), other family members, Payson, the cabin, and/or Jeeps. It made me so happy to look through those pictures again. They helped me to remember how blessed our family is- I love that in our family, we are all so different, but we really are each others' best friends. I love that in our family, we know how to have a VERY good time :) I love that in our family, there is deep faith.
I loved spending two weeks at home at Christmastime and seeing the growth we are experiencing. Some of my favorite times at home were late night talks and drives with Dad, working with Mom for Meagan's baby shower and watching her serve for literally two weeks straight (not to count the weeks of preparation before), seeing Meagan's belly and Dustin's smile get bigger and bigger every day, and definitely reading the letter that Seth sent on Christmas Eve.
Today I had the opportunity to talk in church about repentance and forgiveness. I shared with them the joy I have felt in my life as I've watched Seth grow from the changes he is making in his life- praying for physical healing, learning from the humility of others, trusting God to help him with Spanish, wanting to learn and become more. It is a MIRACLE to see how much he is blessed!
Now... for more of an update on day to day living. Highlights of the past few weeks have included having Jeffrey come home from his mission and come up to Provo to go to BYU. He and I are on the same intramural innertube water polo team... if you couldn't guess from the name, it is an absolute RIOT! I have also enjoyed being back in school and discovering that I really love what I am learning- this semester I am in classes about speech science, audiology in children, language disorders, and articulation and phonological disorders. For fun, I am taking a class on temples and also singing in the non-auditioned university chorale.
At nighttime, I like to come home and go for a run (only some of the time do I really like it, honestly) and then to spend time with Luke. We've been "courting" as he calls it, for about a month and a half now, and we have developed a pretty miraculous friendship. We have a lot of fun doing "nerdy" things together- like looking at pictures and making homemade pizza and playing the piano and going to the Distribution Center and watching Legacy. What can you do? It brings me a lot of joy and a lot of opportunities to learn.
And so... it is good.
