Friday

This week has been full of ups and downs. I have such mixed emotions in my heart right now. I'm so glad that it's Friday and that tomorrow we will be able to watch General Conference. Some things that we have been up to lately include: 

1- Getting our yard landscaped! I have a full post about this, but our steeply slanted backyard now has a retaining rock wall, and both the front and backyard have a sprinkler system and new topsoil. We can't wait to get some sod in so we will actually have a yard. It's looking so good. 

2- Lydia has started walking! I can't believe it... 10 1/2 months. She started getting really good at pushing her little walker around the house. (She is even able to walk backwards if she gets stuck along a wall.) And now she can take 4-6 steps at a time to get somewhere she wants to go. Pretty soon she is going to be walking all over the place. 

3-David and I are both in book clubs (mine is with some ladies from our previous ward and his is a book club at work), and this month the book for each of them was the same. It is Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand. I read it first and now David is almost done with it. It's about a boy named Louie who is an Olympic athlete until he is essentially drafted into WWII. His plane crashes over the Pacific Ocean, and the book is about his incredible survival on a tiny raft and the even bigger trials that follow. It's pretty intense. It makes me so grateful for the men and women who fought for our country then, and for those who do so now. We are so blessed to live in this country, and also to have the hope and light of Christ in our lives (which is another huge thing that I took out of the book). 

4-Tonight we are going to be going to David's mission reunion! We've never been - but we are excited to be able to see his Mission President and visit with some of his old companions. In other missionary news, we sent a package to my little brother, Elder Matthew Walker, to him in New Jersey. My family did a little package blitz and we all took a turn sending him a package. Ours wasn't anything super special, but I found some darling prints online about missionary work, I traced Lydia's little hands for a personalized card, send some chocolate, and wrote a little letter. We love Matthew and are so proud of the work he is doing.  

5- Last night when David got home from work, he asked if I would help him put together a little mini-resume/bio for his job. My portion of "helping" him was to take a nice photo and edit it so he could include it. So he put on his suit coat and we snapped a couple of pictures, then while he typed up the information for his bio I cropped and edited the photo. I'm so pleased with the way it turned out. It made me remember that 1- I have a VERY handsome husband, and 2- I love our new camera!

Several unfortunate things have also happened this week, but instead of burdening this post with them - I decided that they deserve their own separate posts. I'm grateful that amid so much heartache and sadness, there are still so many wonderful little things abundant in our lives. Little things like our beautiful baby girl walking, missionary packages, good books, new rock walls/sprinklers, nice cameras, and David's good job are more than enough to bring my cup to overflowing. We are so blessed especially to have the Gospel of Jesus Christ in our lives. 

Also, as a ridiculous addition to this post - I just found this picture as I was clearing off my desktop. Several weeks ago I was trying to fix our broken pizza cutter. It is plastic and so I decided that all it needed as a little bit of superglue. Long story short- I ended up gluing the darn thing to my hand. I was panicked because I really couldn't get it off - but I had the presence of mind to take a picture to send to David. It took me about a half hour with hot water and fingernail polish remover before I could get it off, and it took a good thick layer of skin with it. I still have a bit of superglue on my fingernail from the incident. I decided to include the picture as documentation of the ridiculousness that my life is filled with sometimes. 

Happy Friday!