"I wonder, when he comes again, will herald angels sing?
Will earth be white with drifted snow, or will the world know spring?
I wonder if one star will shine Far brighter than the rest;
Will daylight stay the whole night through? Will songbirds leave their nests?
I'm sure he'll call his little ones Together 'round his knee,
Because he said in days gone by, 'Suffer them to come to me.'
I wonder, when he comes again, will I be ready there,
To look upon his loving face And join with him in prayer?
Each day I'll try to do his will And let my light so shine
That others seeing me may seek For greater light divine.
Then, when that blessed day is here, He'll love me and he'll say,
'You've served me well, my little child; Come unto my arms to stay.'"
I remember singing this song as I grew up and each year wondering whether I would still be considered one of His "little ones" and whether I would be invited to gather around Him with the other children. I do not know when one is or is not considered a little one anymore but I do know that someday I will get to meet him and thank him for all that he has done for me. And I know that someday I will have little ones who will be called to gather around him. And he will bless them and show his love to them. I am so grateful for the love that he shows me each and every day. I know that some days I recognize it more than others but I have a constant goal to recognize the hand of my Savior and my Heavenly Father in my everyday life.
I remember, as a child, being so excited to meet my Savior, my brother. Sometimes now I get scared. I need to prepare more, repent more, pray more, serve more, etc. In the end though, I know that I will be excited to meet my brother who atoned for my sins, suffered through all the pains that I have suffered {and so much more} and made it possible for me to repent, to change, to PROGRESS.
Afterthoughts:
I am so grateful for the gift of music in this life. It makes me excited again to meet my Savior, it teaches me to become like a little child, and it fills me with comfort and joy. So many Hymns and so many songs from the Children's Songbook have touched my heart over the years. I am grateful for the testimony builder that this song was for me today.
So Race's family makes these really cool kinds of scrapbooks. You find an old book with a cool title, you cut out some of the pages {leave any cool titles or pictures or things you like in} and then you staple the rest of the pages together and scrapbook on top of them. How cool is that?! I am sure that some of you other people out there in the blogging world have heard of this before but I had not and was so excited to receive one made by Race for my birthday! He had kept it a secret the entire time and had been working on it diligently for months. He even let me get away with being mad at him for "playing too many video games" all the time while he was secretly slaving away on this project. He did have the help of his sisters Teal and Anetta and his mom helped him find the book so thank you to all of you as well because I think otherwise Race might have gone a little crazy trying to figure out the whole scrapbooking world on his own. Anyway, I wanted to share my special book with all of my blogging friends. I just have to show my husband off! :]
Cover {Race found a book called "Sweetie Baby Cookie Honey" which I think I will use to make him one of these books one of these days...or years}:
Inside the Cover:
Title Page:
Pages 1&2:
Pages 3&4:
Pages 5&6:
Pages 7&8:
Pages 9&10:
Pages 11&12:
Pages 13&14:
The End:
Well, there it is! My beautiful book made by Race W Ashby, my wonderful, thoughtful husband! I love it and I can't wait to try to make one of my own!
I have a cute little notebook {Target Clearance} that I carry around with me all the time. In it I write my down my random thoughts throughout the day. I started doing this a while back because I was not finding the time to write in my journal. It has quickly become something I love to do. I am not a good writer nor am I in any way eloquent with my words. But, writing has quickly become a release for me. Sometimes I just write random thoughts, sometimes I write letters to my family or my friends or my husband, and often I just write lists of random things. {Race pointed out to me that I LOVE to write lists for anything and everything} Anyway, today I wanted to share some of my thoughts from my 'journal/notebook' with my blogging friends. I have noticed that it is much easier for me to write things on paper than to try and figure out what to type up on my computer. I think that sometimes I type faster than I think and then end up going back and changing things over and over and over again. Or I read it over later and realize that what I wrote made no sense at all. Anyway, off topic again. Here is something from my mind. :]
PREFACE: Some of you have heard of or read some from the blog divorcedand20.blogspot.com. I was thinking about this blog when I started writing these thoughts the other day. I do not know the whole back story to this girl's life and I love her blog and how open she is about her thoughts and feelings. This post is not to try and say that I am better than her or Race is better than her ex. My thoughts are, more than anything, thoughts of gratitude for what Race and I have. So, here goes.
March 30, 2011
I stumbled upon a blog called Divorced & 21. It's about an LDS girl who got married (sealed in the temple) and then was divorced within just a few months. The blog is not actually about the divorce but more about her and learning to move on and live again after the divorce. {She is amazingly optimistic and I love to read her blog and hear about how she has coped and changed because of the trials that she has faced} It's made me think a lot about what is making mine and Race's marriage work...because it is not always easy. These are some of the things that we do but also things that I think we could do even better sometimes. {I am not saying these are the things that MAKE a marriage work for everyone or that these things were not happening in this blogger's marriage but they are things that I notice work for Race and I}.
1. We ALWAYS say "I love you."
2. We ALWAYS kiss "good morning" and "good night"
3. We know that neither of us can always "win" ALL the fights, discussions, or debates.
4. We "bend" for each other.
5. We serve each other.
6. We do not go to bed mad at each other, we stay up and talk it out (aka We communicate)
7. We have a good intimate life (kisses, cuddles, hugs....etc.)
8. Finally and possibly most important (or what causes everything above) is that we are both TRULY, FULLY COMMITTED to each other.
I am so grateful for my marriage and for Race. We definitely have hard times but I trust him 100% and know that he will never give up on me and I will never give up on him. I am grateful for every time Race kisses me or tells me he loves me. I am so grateful for everytime he tickles my back or legs. I love when he does the dishes for me or the laundry or straightens up the house. I love knowing that he would never talk bad about me to anyone. I need to always remember to be grateful for the small things he does. I need to always look at the good rather than focus on the bad. There are so many things to learn about how to make a marriage work and they are different for every marriage. I am learning more and more what works for Race and I and I will continue to use all of the things that I learn to make our marriage better and better.
That's all there is from my little journal entry post. I know that these are not even close to all of the things that make our marriage work, they are just the things that I was thinking about that day. I know that Race and I are still learning so much about each other and that we will ALWAYS be learning about each other. Marriage is not the easiest thing {at least for me} but it is most definitely worth it! I love Race and I really love being married to him!
P.S. Whenever I look at our wedding pictures I think of two pieces of advice I want to tell all engaged ladies:
1. LOVE your dress! Do not settle for something that you do not love.
2. LOVE your photographer.
These are two things that I notice every time I look at my photos {BESIDES the fact that Race and I are absolutely adorable} and I am so grateful that I did not get any of the other dresses that I looked at, partly because they were way expensive and partly because I really was not impressed with any of them. I wore my mom's dress just refurbished and it cost a grand total of about $70...I think. Every time I look at it I just love it more. The small details and the gorgeous lace...swoon! Anyway, now to the photography, I love the style of my photographer and I love how every single picture turned out. I love having these beautiful pictures hanging in my house and looking through them time and time again on my computer. I am sure that everyone would say something a little bit different but that's my little piece of advice if anyone is wondering.
This will be the first of many Phone Photo Episodes. I have TONS of pictures on my phone that I haven't bothered to upload anywhere. So I will post some pictures from my phone, some old and some new, up each week.
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a. My high score on Doodle Jump! I took a picture of it and sent it to Race to gloat. :)
b. My job. This was a good night. All the babies wanted to sit with me and have me read to them. They were being so dang cute. Whenever I quit this job I am going to have to ween myself from these adorable girls.
c. Nora, one of the triplets being cute and giving the dog kisses. She loooves dogs. Dog was actually one of her first words.
d. My tons of wristbands and hand stamps from spending a week in Phoenix with the family I nanny for. We went to Jump Street, Castles 'n' Coasters, Makutu's Island, Laser tagging, and so much more! It was lots of fun and absolutely exhausting!!
e. This is a picture of Race as a little boy that he sent me when he was at home. Wasn't he so dang cute?!
f. This is Race at Red Lobster for his birthday dinner from me. He loved the food. :) I am most definitely NOT the seafood fan.
g. This is my sisters and I brushing our teeth and being goofy a couple of days ago.
h. And this is a picture of my nails. I love nailpolish! :)
After I blogged about my headband crafts on Saturday I actually got my sewing machine out again and decided to try another crafty project. I got the idea from my sister-in-law who got it from the blog Dear Lizzy (I will post a link later...I am blogging from my phone right now). I took two turtleneck shirts that I never wear and cut off the turtleneck, cut it into strips and then sewed ruffles onto the shirts. On one of them I did some flowers also. Take a peak!
These shirts actually don't fit me anymore so I took them to my sisters. It was fun to try something new and actually have it turn out cute!! Hopefully I can get some pictures of my sisters wearing them sometime soon. :)
Falcon Smith Olmstead and Waylen Neal Olmstead are here!! Nikki went into the hospital Sunday morning and had her sweet twin boys at 7:13&7:14. I arrived in Chandler around 10 am and headed over to the hospital to see them. They were five weeks early so they were all hooked up to monitors but they are healthy and absolutely adorable!! I can't wait to see them again! Here are some pictures.
This is Falcon Smith
And this is Waylen Neal
And here are some more pictures. (I got to hold Falcon but not Waylen yet)
Here is another picture of Waylen at one day old:
And here is a picture of Helena and I goofing off while we wait our turn to see the babies.
Congratulations Neal and Nikki!!! I love your adorable little boys already!!
Race wants to spend all day EVERY Saturday playing video games. I obviously do not want to play video games or just watch him play video games so I decided that Saturdays are going to be "teach myself how to be crafty days". Today was the first time I tested this out. And...I feel so crafty already! I brought home a sewing machine from my mom's house last weekend and I promised her that I would use it. So today I went to JoAnn's and bought some of the necessities to get sewing. Also, all week I have been searching online for easy, fun sewing ideas. I found this tutorial for a t-shirt headband. I then went through my clothing drawers and found a ton of old t-shirts that I don't wear anymore [good spring cleaning technique, eh?]. I got started and ended up making seven of these cute headbands. I started out not too great, especially on making the flowers but by the end I think they were turning out pretty cute! Here are some pictures:
These are all of the headbands that I made. There are seven total :]
This is the first one that I made. The t-shirt was not made out of quite the right type of fabric but I still like it!
{Also, notice my pretty nails! I just got all into paiting my nails recently. My sister-in-law had this color nailpolish and I really liked it so I went out and got some of my own. It's called Mint Sorbet by Sally Hansen. Now my nails are a more teal color called Rise and Shine by Sinful Colors...I can't decide which I like more and I bought a few other colors to try out. I used to be an all red nailpolish girl and only on my toes but the times are changing. Haha. Anyway, enough of that rambling.}
This is the purple one I made after the maroon ones. The fabric was much much bettter.
And finally the teal colored one. I think this one is my favorite :]
I am still figuring out how to make the flowers without all the hot glue showing. I did a lot better towards the end though. :] If anyone has any other ideas for crafts to do I would love that! I do not have too much sewing skills but I am up to try anything. Also, if anyone in Flagstaff knows how to sew and wants to teach me I wouldn't mind that either!
Well, hopefully you will now at least be getting one update a week on whatever craft I decide to work on. But I will try and update more regularly on other stuff that's going on in the lives of Race and I also. Tomorrow will be our first Sunday teaching the six-year-olds...wish us luck!
