A New Beginning

So Stephanie has inspired me to start blogging again, but in a more personal manner.  I am going to use this for my personal blog, and try to update the family blog once a week.  We'll see how long that lasts.   But I have realized that I am going through life without really cherishing it.  We seem to go from one crisis to the next, and that makes life seem stressful.  So I am going to try to look for the positive things and try to record them there.  This, though, will be more of my personal struggles, triumphs, and musings.
This year has seemed really difficult so far.  Each month has brought its own struggle: January involved a car crash (totally my fault) and the resulting repair bill (which was larger than it should have been since we never switched our insurance off liability), February brought a concussion and a broken right arm, and March brought sickness for everyone in the family (except Paul), which was physically, emotionally, and spiritually exhausting.  It didn't help matters that spring had a really hard time arriving.  Having so many cloudy days was definitely hard on me.  Here we are in the beginning of April, hoping for a better month.  General Conference was a great way to start off the month!  I always love Conference, and this year was no exception.  I went with several questions in my heart, and they were all answered!  How I love having a living prophet and other leaders who speak the words of the Lord and speak peace to my heart!  I will try to do a General Conference Book Club on this blog, so if anyone wants to read it, you can participate and share your thoughts.  I felt such feelings of love and acceptance from the Lord, in spite of all my struggles and weaknesses.  It was just what I needed.
So now I am off to finish cleaning the house and get dinner going before Chad gets home.  I call this chaos hour - so many different things going on, trying to accomplish too much at once.  Some days I remember to work on fixing dinner earlier, so it is basically ready by the time the kids get home from school.  Then it just needs to be reheated, but that doesn't happen very often.  One of these days I will get my act together.  Hopefully it will be before all of my children leave the nest!