Count Your Many Blessings!

Today I had the opportunity to go to our Stake Releif Society Women's Conferance. Magrath Stake does this every year and I love it. This was my 2nd time going. It started at 9am this morning and I am so glad that I went.

I came away from it feeling so uplifted and filled with the Spirit. I decided to write down some things while they are fresh in my memory. We got to choose to go to 3 workshops out of 10. It's so hard to just choose 3. They all sounded like they'd be so good to go too. But we could only go to 3. So we decided on the classes and away we went. The first class was on getting through our trials. What I got out of that class was to:

COUNT YOUR MANY BLESSINGS! They pointed out that it's sometimes easy to get lost in our trials and feel sorry for ourselves. But that's the perfect time to sit down and count our blessings. I decided to make a list of just some of my blessings in my life:
1. Richard - I feel very blessed with the wonderful husband I have and he is a great father to our kids.

Richard just got DJ out of the bath and they are laying down watching hockey together!

2. My kids - All 4 of our kids are a HUGE blessing in my life. I learn so much from them every day, they have such sweet spirits and it's so refreshing to hear their perspective on things.

Cadence, Brianna and Abbi cuddling in my bed watching cartoons!

DJ ready for church! Don't you just love his hat!

3. Our Families - Both of our familes have been a big part of our lives. I feel like we are where were at today because of our families. They are always there to love and support us.
A picture of my family just before David left on his mission last year.

4. The Gospel - Again I feel like we wouldn't be here without the gospel. Every day is a learning experience and the gospel keeps me grounded and focused on what is important in life.

5. Our Home - Especially in this last month, I feel so blessed to have a home to keep us warm. We've been working hard on this house and I feel blessed to have it.

6. Spencer Plumbing and Heating - What a blessing this has been in our life this past year. We took a leap of faith last year and I feel so blessed that things have worked out. Richard has worked so hard to provide for us and I am thankful for that.

7. The Temple - What a blessing to live so close to the temple. We've been trying hard to go more often and need to keep working on that.

8. Small towns - I just feel like it was a blessing for our family to move to a small town. It's taken a bit to settle in, but now that we have I wouldn't want to be anywhere else.

9. Friends - We have some great friends. In the past year we've met a couple here and have gotten to know them better. We've done a lot of things together as couples and it's been a lot of fun.

10. Canada - What a great blessing to live in the country we do. It's beautiful and we have all our freedoms. I love my country!

Well those are some of my BIG blessings and I could go on and on with more. But I feel very blessed with everything we have in our life. In the past 6 months there have been some very sad things happen to some families in this community. It breaks my heart to see it happen. It also is neat to see how the community pulls together to help those families in their time of need. I'm so thankful for the trials that I have and have been through. I know that is what strengthens us, even though it's hard to see that when you are in the middle of it. As you can see this class really made me think! It was a wonderful class.

The last class we went to was the Power of Music. It was an amazing class. It was totally different than what I thought it was going to be. She talked about music is subjective. One song can mean something very special to one person and be just a song to another. She picked out 8 songs that had a special meaning to her and shared them with us. Before each song she told us a bit of the story that leads up to why that song was special to her in that time of her life. Then we listened to the song and then she shared a scripture that went along with it. She encouraged us to think of a song that was special to us and write it down or email to her to share. Then she is going to put them all together and email them all back to us. During the class a song came to me that is very special to me. So here is my story for this song:

After I had my girls I was very busy taking care of them. Most of the time I had someone helping me feed them when they were young. But once in a while I was by myself. One of these times I got the girls all on my bed. I think they were around 6 months old. I got them all propped up with their bottles and layed there in front of them to help. I had turned on the tv to Opera and was watching her interview Sarah McLachlan over her new song "Ordinary Miracle". At the time I remember feeling very overwhelmed and little down with myself. I wasn't really paying attention to the tv until Sarah started singing the song. It was just what I needed to hear. I remember listening to it and tearing up. Here I was feeling sorry for myself when I had 3 "miracles" laying right there on my bed. I loved that song. I even put together a little slide show for my girls 1st year and that's one of the songs I put on. It still brings tears to my eyes when I sit down and watch it. My girls love watching their "baby movie". They recognize that song whenever it comes on the radio and tell me, "Hey mom that's our baby song." It has special meaning to me and my family and whenever I hear that song it always takes me back to when my girls were babies.

Here's an example of how they were sometimes fed. They were a lot younger then 6 months here. I was always there with them and usually took turns holding one while feeding. It was very hard feeding them by myself at this age and so this is what I did. That way when one was ready to burp I could just pick them up and burp them and then on to the next baby!

Here they are at about 5-6 months old. This was how I usually set them up to eat their bottle. I'd just stick a blanket on their tummys and put the bottle in! Again, that's not how we always fed them. When Richard was home he, of course, helped me. I also had both my mom's! But sometimes I did end up feeding them by myself and I survived!

I just felt like writing down some of my feelings before I forgot. It was a perfect way to start a Saturday.