Bridal Veil Falls

After church and naps, we went to Bridal Veil Falls and enjoyed some natural beauty.

 David, Levi, Brigham, and Ruger hiked up to a little over half way in the falls while Hyrum and I stayed and walked the easy trails.

 On the way back, David pointed out this to me.  I cried as he explained how someone could look at this tree and see pain and trials.  How this tree could say, "Why did you put this trial with me at the beginning of my life to suffer?"

But when you look at the bigger picture, its not what you notice at all.  There is beauty all around this tree/trees.  It's roots are deep and strong.  And once you get passed the rock there is beauty and more strength.

But its so hard to see that during certain times of one's life, right?  It sure is.

If only we could see the big picture all the time.

First Experiences

Today was the first time Hyrum got to do the ordinances of baptism for the dead and confirmations, by proxy, in a temple of our Lord.  Levi and Brigham stayed home and watched Ruger so that David and I could be there for Hyrum for his first time.  David baptized both Hryum and I for family names of mine.  It felt incredibly special.

I have been trying to prepare Hyrum for the temple by studying, with the whole family every night for almost a week, about temples and why we do what we do.  Last night, after this study, Hyrum asked if he would be wearing all white while inside.  I told him yes and he got very excited as he told me he was glad because it would remind him of when we were sealed to Ruger.

David and I have such a good boy in Hyrum.  And I'm so glad that we got to share this experience with him in the Payson, Utah temple this morning. 

Where Shall We Hide Those Eggs?

 When it's raining outside on an Easter Sunday and you have to hide the Easter eggs inside the house...

 ...you get creative!

Falling Into Place

 All of the school age kids are in public school now.  Yes, I am not homeschooling anymore.  This is a huge relief to me.  With Brigham, it wasn't hard at all.  We paid for an online school to make sure he was being taught by an accredited school.  Because of that, they taught him everything.  It was a rare occasion that he came to me with questions.  But Hyrum was a different story.

It was tough on me from the beginning.  I did everything.  When I first started doing it, Hryum and I would work on it from morning till noon and from then until 1:00 p.m. he would have lunch and read.  At first, Ruger wasn't in daycare so it was incredibly hard to keep Ruger entertained while I taught.  I would wait until David got home from work and then go back to the bedroom to study and look up more material for the following day of school.  Sometimes I would be back there until it was time to read scriptures and then put the kids to bed. Imagine that Monday through Friday.  As you can imagine, I was incredibly stressed out and it lead me down a road that I have already wrote about.   I would end up trying many different methods to ease the pressure but by the end of my homeschooling "career" I was positive I wasn't doing enough for my son.

And for that reason alone was enough to be jumping for joy when we decided to move back to Utah and put all the school age kids in school.  I am so grateful to know they are getting the education they need.  I am so grateful to know they are in a safe place.  And I am so grateful to know they are making the friends that they sadly couldn't make while they tried school in Oklahoma.  

Here is Hyrum with his friend, Ethan, at a rocket launch at their school.  They had to pack the uncooked egg, that is inside this "rocket" (made out of a 2 litter pop bottle), just perfectly in order for them to fly their rocket (by hooking it up to a rocket device).  They had to figure out by themselves how much water to put in and just how many pumps they would have to pump.  I am happy to report that they did it!  They shot their rocket into the air and made it in the designated landing zone AND their egg did not break!  They were one of the few that met all conditions.  

 Ethan and his family took Hyrum to UVU before a Wolverine game where there was an Easter Egg hunt.

Things like this make me feel like things are falling into place for our family.  

Making Our Way Back To The States

We were blessed with people showing up from our short stay in the church ward in Calgary, to help us move out of our "home."  I was truly grateful for that.  We then made our way through the border (which went without a hiccup, I'm glad to report!) and were back in the United States of America!

 We had to make a detour to Billings, Montana to pick up David's truck, drop off the rental, and drop off the trailer we were pulling.  In the craziness of it all, we got to see the Billings Montana temple.  I loved how the rocks in the background of the temple framed it.  Just a beautiful setting.

 It took a few days to get to our destination but we were able to stop and enjoy an old memory at Big Judds in Ashton, Idaho.  The first time I went there was when I was first at Ricks College and then later when David and I were first married and going to the newly named, BYU Idaho.

It's a fun place known for its huge burgers!  It was a fun experience for the boys and wonderful memories for me.

Our move went pretty much uneventful and I'm so grateful.  Something that I was very worried about, with all of this moving was people not showing up to help us load stuff up and unload.  We have had 6 major "moves" in 3 weeks.  But we had people show up at every one of them!  I prayed a lot about that.  I knew I couldn't help with most of it and that it was going to be on all on the backs of David, Levi, and Brigham if no one showed up.  We packed up our stuff in Oklahoma and loaded it in a trailer, unloaded in Canada, loaded it back up almost a week later, unloaded it in Utah, packed up a moving trailer in Roy, Utah (where our all our home stuff was in a storage unit while we were in Oklahoma), and unload it one last time in Vineyard.  And people showed up everytime!  

This is a picture of my favorite "move" of them all.  Most of the people that showed up were from our old ward/church that we left when we moved to Oklahoma.  We moved over a year ago and we weren't even moving back into their ward/church and yet they still showed up because they love us.  They reminded me of how angels are in the flesh and they surround us in our times of need.

I can't express how much I worried that no one would show up.  It showed me that the Lord was aware of our needs and He provided.  I'm so very grateful.  And honestly, I needed to see that in our lives after all we have been through.

Don't Look At The Hole!

 Just thought this was funny.  David was taking a selfie of us when someone jumped in the picture!

Banff National Park

Before we left, David and I felt like we should enjoy something in Canada.  Though we didn't get to see the beauty of it in the summer, it had its own beauty of winter.

 Here we are on top of Lake Louise in Banff National Park.

I've always loved winter because of the beauty of snow.

There wasn't a whole lot that we could see given the small amount of time that we had but we were able to make it to the Cave and Basin of the park.

Falling Apart Or Falling Into Place?

Our first day at church was great.  We had already met a few members when we first arrived because they had helped us move our stuff into our rental home.  But as we met the rest of the members, it just felt nice.  Everyone was so friendly and  you could tell by their attitudes towards us, as well as some things that were mentioned, that they were looking forward to us being there.

( Ouside of the church building)

(Our Ruger "bunny" next to the  "church" bunnies)

They especially were excited to have some more youth in the ward.  It made us feel all the more worse when we found out that the  job was cancelled.

Yep, the Church had decided that the project was too expensive.  When David told me, I was smiling as I asked him if he was joking.  I was smiling because it would just add to the bad luck or whatever you wanted to call all that had happened so far, but I was also smiling because I wanted it to be true!

Canada was expensive.  I worried about Levi learning how to drive in a foreign country.  I worried about the boys in a foreign school.  Our house was way to small for our family of six. And there was more that I just don't want to write about.

So honestly, I was more relieved than mad at the fact that we had just moved to a foreign country for nothing!

Even though we needed to tell the boys, we didn't trust the situation.  I mean , look at all that had happened to us in just a weeks time.  So we decided to wait 24 hours just to make sure.  

So the following day, we sat the boys down to tell them.  Levi was the only one who was ok to stay or leave.  Everyone else was more than happy to leave.  I feel bad that they won't have a better experience with Canada and I want them to understand that "Canada" is not what we experienced, but I'm also glad that they want to go back.

But just like everything else that has happened, it changed within minutes.  Not 5 minutes had passed after telling them and David gets a phone call that the project is back on but on a smaller scale.  I have to admit that if they would have told us that we HAD to stay that I would have been mad!  But after David told them that we had already told our kids that we were going back and the company was ok with that, well, I was just happy because dang it, we are going back to Utah!

Since then it has been a rush of things like repacking, finding a place to live in Utah, getting help with stuff and so much more.  I have cried, I have stressed, I have questioned the reasoning of things but I can say that as always, David has calmed me in all of this.  That is one thing that I can say that I'm grateful for in all of this.  Once again, I am reminded that I could not do any of this without him.  Without his calming abilities I could be falling apart.  But instead, I pray things are just falling into place.