Good Morning Ft. Walton Beach!!

Good Morning Ft. Walton Beach!

Good Morning Scott!

Good Morning creepy guy on our balcony!!

 Haha! That's how we woke up this first morning in Ft. Walton Beach, Florida on our 20th annivarsary! We were waken by loud noises of scaffolding dangling from the top of our condo building. And while it's only a 6 story building and there's only 12 units, our balcony and our unit was chosen first to have the repairs done!  What the??? It was the strangest thing. Workers and noise, didn't make for a very peaceful morning. But as you can see from the first picture of the beach, Anytime you can look at that from your bedroom window, with or without scaffolding in the way, it's peaceful! We're happy to be here celebraing 20 years. We feel blessed to be able to do it and to be able to enjoy this trip together.

You'll see in pictures that I post, that Scott is a really good photographer! I'm not, but he is patient with me.

Scott took the picture of the seagulls. I took the one of Scott. 

 

 Because we can't take our own photo together, we had to do it seperately. bummer. We liked the pier and wanted to take pictures with it. Notice blue skys and green water. If you don't know, this area is called the Emerald Coast. This is because the water is oddly that emerald color. It is soooo beautiful! And with the white sand it is really breath taking. While we walked I had several moments that I just had to pause and be in awe. So different from Californ, fine white sand instead of brown coarse sand. Clear green water instead of blue water you really can't see through at all. The Gulf Coast is Amazing! So Beautiful!

 When we got to the pier it cost $2 to walk to the end. So we just stayed at the beginning and took a few pictures. We liked this rusty fence. It didn't turn out to be quite as cool of a backdrop as we thought. And then we found a nice local fisherman who we had take a picture of both of us. We are going to have to do that more so we have pictures together!

After the walk to the pier, shopping was on the menu. That makes me happy, so happy infact that we forgot to take pictures of the fun shopping sites. :)

Florida

In less than two weeks Scott and I are going back to Florida! I'm getting really excited! I'm sure everything will be so different and we won't recognize a thing!
Tonight I was going through one of my mission boxes just to see what is in there and I found a million letters from friends and family who had written while I was out. It was really fun to go through them and remember old friends, missionary friends and companions and lots of people who loved me!! What an ego boost! I don't even know where a lot of those people are. I wish I did. I came in and immediately looked up a bunch of them on facebook, but didn't find anyone. :(  I wish a couple of them would find me. Any, it made me happy.
Scott and I looked up a couple of places like The Zoo Gallery and Billi Willi Surf Shop that we remember from the mission. The Zoo Gallery is still there and we are excited to go and buy t-shirts from there. I had a couple of their t-shirts from the mission and I probably still have them in a box somewhere!! I'm excited to just go to Ft. Walton Beach and drive and walk around! So exciting!!
I love people tonight... :)

Overcoming.

Overcoming myself may be my greatest challenge in life thus far. Overcoming physical desires, overcoming spiritual inadequacy, overcoming emotional weakness. And the list could go on.
I'm working hard to break this truth, the truth that says I can't rely on myself or overcome my own weakness. With exercize, with eating, with personal reliability, with spiritual matters, with relationships, with family relationships, and on and on and on. There's a lot of work to do.

New Year, New Try.

I'm excited about the new year. I don't know why, nothing imparticular has happened to make me this way. (oops, I take that back. maybe the fact that I'm 95 lbs. less than I was is a start...)  I don't know if I'll make a change in my home or my spending or myself, but I have hopes that I do. Here's to 1012! My goals are: to continue to make healthy choices and changes in my body. To be a good steward of our money. (There's a lot of work to do there!) To be a better mother to my children in the form of time spent with them and time spent on making our home more homey. Those are the main ones. That will keep me busy enough.

Kendahl is leaving to go back to BYU today. She had a rough go of it last semester. She has a mountain to climb in order to get herself back on track. I hope and pray she can do it. Scott have her a beautiful blessing this morning and it was perfect! I hope that God, her own efforts and medication get her to where she needs to be! Prayer is my only tool. I can't do anything else for her. Well, I guess there's always love and listening. I can do those too.

There are tough things all around. Our business is one of them. It's hard to be a good steward of a business, employees, money. Really hard. I pray for help and knowledge there too.

I don't really know why I'm writing on this blog. It's nothing exciting to read. Probably no one reads it anyway. Kendahl gave me a book for Christmas called, "No one cares what you had for lunch..." It's ideas for blogging. I'm gonna get it out and see if it helps my lame writing skills. ;) If anyone does read this, I'm sure they'll appreciate it!! :) Maybe I'll become a better writer in the process.

Christmas Choir

I was part of our Stake Christmas Choir tonight and really enjoyed myself. We put on a program with beautiful songs. It was fun. We have been practicing for a couple of months now. Last week I actually told myself that I wouldn't do it again because of the time it took every Sunday evening to practice, but today as I reflect I'm glad I did it and I'd do it again! It has been wonderful singing Christmas songs. It helps me get in the spirit of the season and I love them.

Other Christmas thoughts...
I don't really have many... Well, I thought I'd be so ahead this year. I got a good start, got lots of gifts, started wrapping early, but the time has crept up and there's only a week left till Christmas. It seems like there is still so much to do! I'll be busy doing it and before you know it Christmas will be here.  I won't be done even when it is. I never am.  But I just do my best.

Merry Christmas to anyone who reads this. :)

Focus on the Significant

This is a beautiful quote from Elder Uchtdorf. I saw it tonight and thought how I need to spend some time pondering it. This is a problem for me in my life. I pass over the significant to focus on the non-important things and it really does not help me to be happy in my life. I day dream and live in the stories in my head most of the time. Sounds silly, but it is true for me.

December Saturdays and Volleyball

Saturdays are a precious commodity around our house. And the more there is to get done, the more Saturday's are like gold. Today was no different. With Christmas coming and the holidays it seems like there are a million things to get done. But we spent the first half of this day at Clara Baillie's volleyball tournament. Our Clara Baillie made the middle school volleyball team this year and I have really enjoyed going to watch her team. I haven't watched her play too much due to the lack of play time she gets, but I have been there to support her none the less. She really has a passion for the game and she wants to learn more and play more.
 She did play half of one game, and we were so excited about it! Her team ended up 3rd out of 6 teams. Not too bad considering they didn't practice much all season, and they have a very non-caring coach. I mean a super duper non-caring coach! Our Saturday wasn't all spent watching volleyball. We did end up accomplishing quite a bit too. We got Christmas lights up and we picked up carpet from the Tuckers. I did grocery shopping and we all pitched in on the laundry. Not too bad I'd say. I'm tired, but in a good way.

excuses, blessings and things.

Oh my goodness, it's been forever since I've put my fingers to the key board in order to write on the blog! Pintrest has been the death of the blog for me. I sit at night and while Scott it chatting away, or while the TV is playing one of my shows, I sit and browse Pinterest. I like it and it makes me happy to find new and interesting things. But it sure has cut into my blogging time.

Time has continued to go by and I can hardly believe it's NOVEMBER! I'm enjoying the cooler weather, walking in the mornings with a friend, working a little and chasing kids around doing the things that they do, (like band and volleyball.) One of the benefits of Pinterest is that I have tried a few new recipes and began a few projects that I'm particularly excited about. These two months, November and December usually go by with such speed that I can hardly even enjoy them. But I seem to be more relaxed than in years past and I think I may even have a little holiday spirit about me.

Our Thanksgiving will be spent here at home. Last year must have done me in, because back then I made note in my calendar that I would NOT go out of town for Thanksgiving! And I'm staying true to that! (Although I thought for a minute that we may have to go up to Utah if Kendahl couldn't make it down here.) We plan on having Thanksgiving right here in our home and inviting family over if they wish to spend it with us. I hope for a nice calm holiday!

On facebook lots of people are sharing daily the things they are thankful for. I don't know why, but I didn't get into doing that. So I'll just take a moment to share some things that come to mind. Tonight I am thankful for music and singing. I was called to be the choir director in our ward, and quite frankly, I was not too excited about it. I like to sing, but I have never directed a choir and I didn't trust my ability to take that on and also to have to be in attendance at church through the holidays. (Mostly because I like to travel to Mesa and I want the abililty to go if I feel the need to go.) I was also afraid that no one would come to choir and I was not looking forward to bugging everyone to death to PLEASE come. I hate selling stuff, and I don't want to have to sell choir to a ward full of talented people that apparently don't see the need. So with those apprehensions I went forward anyway. Today was a really good experience. Standing in front of the choir who stands to sing is intimidating. Pretending that I know enough to bring them in at the right times and that I know how seemed intimidating also. But it is also powerful.  Tonight I got to go sing at a practice with the Stake choir. It was wonderful. The music is beautiful and inspiring. I love to sing. I was saying a little prayer during it that I could keep my voice. It is seeming to get more fragile as I get older and it kinda makes me sad. I hope it sticks around for a few more years because I sure enjoy using it!

That's it for now. I'll try to be more thankful through the upcoming weeks and to share those thoughts too!