A Fresh Start

Monday September 1, 2008

As I may have previously mentioned, I love fresh new weeks and months. I don't know why but I always feel so motivated by these "fresh starts." I woke up with a determination to stick to my planned routine for the day to and to make sure to instill a few habits that need to be daily happenings. It's nothing new and they're habits I've been working my whole lifeto conquer. I've made another commitment to be more diligent with kneeling in prayer every day and night and am DETERMINED to never miss a day of this again. Also I am not going to give up on my goal of reading at least 1 page but with a goal of 2 chapters a day in the Book of Mormon. I've also continued my schedule of reading a talk a day from the last General Conference (I've read more than half of them already and they really are so beneficial and uplifting) until I finish next week sometime. So I woke up with that strong motivation and even though I was so tired all day (4 hours of sleep is just not enough!) I was determined to have a great fresh start to these fresh new desires and goals. I've also felt so much lately about my great responsibility to instill these habits in my children's lives. So as part of their daily routine I will make sure to help them with their personal prayers day and night. And after a lot of thought about the best way to approach helping them develop daily scripture study habit, I've felt the best way would to be to read at least one page a day to them from the Book of Mormon Stories. Yesterday our morning routine went very well and it felt great to start the day and week and month off in a good way. I truly know that these daily habits will not weigh me down or just add more stressful responsibility but bless me and my family in abundance. The talk I read yesterday was Pres. Monson's talk called Looking Back and Moving Forward. It was his first talk as the newly sustained Prophet and wow was it powerful! In Elder Holland's talk I read today he talked about being grateful to witness the miracle of seeing the prophetic mantle rest upon Pres. Monson and as I read this talk I remembered feeling that same gratitude and having had the Spirit whisper and testify to me that he truly is the Lord's new chosen prophet for this time. It was such a great talk and really gave me a boost for the day and I'll try to keep it my heart always. The day was full with cleaning up a way too messy house and lots of laundry. I had to take a nap though or I was gonna crash and burn and I'm glad my kids gave me that chance. After Robert got home we sat down to a nice family dinner. Even though I really wanted to watch the first episode of the new season of Prison Break while we ate I insisted that we shut it off. I kept thinking in my head the phrase "all your kids want for dinner is you." It was for some reason a really nice dinner, nothing special, but just sweet and I'm glad the tv was turned off. After dinner the kids had a bath and as with all things, it's always funner when daddy's involved. All he did was put bubbles on their head but we were all cracking up- especially Baily. Good times. After that we had family scriptures and prayer- another habit I'm committed to making an every day occurence around here. They're such simple things but it's really amazing how much they make things so much more peaceful and the Spirit so much stronger in our home. Then while I was putting the boy to sleep Robert helped Baily with her first homework. She was so excited. After they were done I had Robert give Baily a Father's Blessing to bless her school year. I know it's only Pre-School but I still think it's a great tradition to start and establish and it's not like she couldn't use a blessing. It was such a sweet, tender moment. I felt so grateful at that moment to have a husband who worthily holds and uses the Priesthood on our behalf and also for a beautiful, healthy daughter who's so smart and learning and growing so very well. I truly am so blessed! After we got her to sleep Robert and I watched our recorded (we so need a DVR!) Prison Break and it was sooo good! This is gonna be an awesome season! It was a simple day but a very good day indeed!

366 Blessings:

#245- Robert giving Baily a Father's Blessing