Thursday February 11

I spent most of the day in the kitchen again.

I finally put the last top coat on the island counter top!

Yay!!!!

I sanded and re stained the stool tops.

I painted the butlers pantry top again, and I will put on a top coat on tomorrow.

And with the extra white paint I painted a few other areas.

Drew made a couple doors for me that he brought over the other day.

They look so awesome and I am beyond excited about the prospects of maybe actually getting this kitchen done....maybe this year :)

But smiles here!

Anyway, I put a first coat of paint on one of the doors and it looks so good!

Yay!

Well, then I went and got Elsie and took her to PT.

After we got home and had dinner, the rest of the night was getting Valentines ready!

I ordered Port's from Oriental trading.

They are Army guy erasers......he was so excited about them.

Even more excited that there were some extras for himself :)

Elsie, I kinda went over board.....

I found a cute buffalo candy mold.

I am sure I will find a million other purposes for it, so that justified getting it :)

But then I made a little buffalo card that said "Wanna be in my herd? Happy Valentines Day".

She was super happy with it :)

The only problem is, the mold only makes 3 at a time....and I need 25 :)

So I have been filling them and ten putting them in the freezer, and then swapping it out once it hardens.

I only have a few more left to do :)

Elsie also needed to make a Valentines box.

She wanted a buffalo on her box, so I drew one for her, along with hearts and flowers, then she got it all colored.

Pretty cute :)

I am sure they will have lots of fun at their parties tomorrow!

*****

I got an early birthday present from Emmy today!

She got me another glass star and it has our family theme etched in it!

I LOVE it!!!!

*****

Another great family scripture night discussion.....

We talked about faith.

i shared with them an experience I had a few weeks ago.

I was out for a run.

I like to listen to my scriptures or conference talks when I run.

Well, this day I was really thinking and struggling with some things going on at home.

Mostly about the fighting and wanting things to get better and how to make it a better home environment.

I got the feeling i should say a prayer.

And I said to myself, ya, I'll pray when I get home.

Then I felt, no pray now.

So Then I was like, okay, I can pray while I run.

I do that sometimes when I am driving :)

Again the thought came to my mind to stop and kneel and pray.

So I did.

I said a fairly simple prayer, I think.

When I got back up and started running again, I started my conference talk back up.

A new one was just starting.

I couldn't believe my eyes when I looked down at my phone to see the title of the talk.

The talk was "Faith is the answer."

This was from a 1994 general YW conference talk.

Can you believe that?

I started to think about that, and what that meant.

I had an immediate answer to my prayer!

I wasn't having faith in my family.

Yes, we have some rough patches....

But the over all picture, I think we are raising some pretty fantastic kids.

I need to have faith that what we are teaching them will stick and that there won't always be fighting....or I at least know there will also be lots of not fighting :)

Things don't have to be perfect.

To have a good family does not mean that you never fight or have problems.

It means that you have each others backs even if we sometimes don't agree.

And sometimes we falter, but we are there to help each other up.

I have faith in our family :)

I am thankful for that simple, yet profound, experience I had while running.

I am thankful I got to share it with my family tonight too.

I think it is so important to share those things with our kids.....

I need to be better about it.

Anyway......it was a good evening :)