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1.  Don't sell your house.  I repeat, do everything possible to not sell your house.  It would be way too easy to move on with your life if you didn't have a million dollar ball and chain wrapped around your financial neck. 2.  Get estimates of how much it is to move the furniture from said million dollar home. 3.  Eat lots of ice cream after receiving those estimates, because nothing is going to make $20,000+ taste any better. 4.  Watch as your husband hatches yet another crazy plan to save a couple of pesos. 5.  Remember that you lectured your own husband on remaining calm and kind throughout the moving process.  Remember that you said there would be items which would require compromise . 6.  Make a mental note to never mention the word compromise in a sentence again. 7.  Agree. 8. Don't complain. 9.  Just agree. 10.  Drive with said husband to Home Depot to pick out our "moving truck".  Try to figure ...

I love it when Ethan calls me, because if I'm deep in the midst of studying the next seminary or Gospel Doctrine lesson, he provides a terrific sounding board for my thoughts.  Today, he only had 20 minutes to talk, but I didn't want to interrupt my seminary lesson with Glo, so I threw a few thoughts at him on speaker phone with Glo listening in. I love the scripture in Romans 1:16 where Paul unequivocally states that he is not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ.  When you put his statement into the context of the time, it's much more than just a mere statement of his testimony. Let's think about Rome how we all always think about Rome.  The gods of Zeus and Aphrodite and Hera were common place.  The city was ruled by mostly evil Caesars.  Slaves were forced to fight in an arena for the entertainment of the people.  And yet, somewhere in this midst of all that wickedness, there was a small band of Christian saints, attempting to live their lives acco...

Faith. I'm so tired of writing about faith. I realize that if I just had more faith, I wouldn't need to write about it so much. But alas, what I once thought was my key strength in the gospel is turning on me, and I'm finding that I'm severely lacking. Our house continues to be on the market.  This is an endless source of stress for John and me.  And yet, through it all, I know that it will all be okay. I've gone to the temple more times in my life in the past 12 months than ever before.  Every time, I ask God if we are making the wrong decision, and before I can hardly get the thought out of my head and on its way to Heavenly Father, I receive an overwhelming feeling of peace that everything is going to be okay. When I sincerely pray about our house selling, all of the thoughts and worries that have occupied my mind for however long before I kneel down completely disappear.  In fact, I can hardly remember what I'm praying for. We think about just ...

One of the nicest things about living in Michigan is the amount of people that we know here. And vice versa, the amount of people who know us (: I still get visiting people from the stake coming up to me at church and asking if I'm related to the Kennedy Clan from Ypsi, and they're always excited to tell me they were in Young Men's with Daddy or something. Visiting Beth, Chris, and nephews/nieces Riley, Reid, Maggie and Logan has always been something fun to do on Sundays. Recently it hasn't happened that often due to a really busy schedule and some random Sunday meetings for Sunday School Presidency and whatever. Riley a couple weeks back, when we went to their ward, specifically asked me to come over sometime. I couldn't say no just cause it was him, BUT the clincher? He asked me to bring my Pokemon cards (: It's funny because for a while when we came back to the U.S., I thought Pokemon had sung its last song. I still had all the cards I collected over the...

On our vacation this past week we had to take advantage of the beautiful places we were by running through them.  The first opportunity came when we were in Deutschland.  I used to always run the path along the River Kyll and the Deutchebahn to train for marathons.  It is about 20 miles down this beautiful path to Trier and so for my 10 and 20 mile runs I used to run down this path towards Trier and a few times the opposite direction towards Bitburg.  Mark and Allison and I went the Trier way later in the afternoon on Saturday and we had a great time.  Instead of Spargelzeit or mushroom time it must have been Holzzeit because all along the path from Auw and der Kyll to the next town there were chopped trees and brush.  It was muddy and getting dark but we had a great time running along and telling Allison about Deutschland and the river and the Train. The river was very high and the valley was beautiful.  We ran really fast, and did about 6.5 mile...

The first thing I noticed about Athens was that it is extremely mountainous. You look out over the city (and you can, because most of the time you are on a hill of some kind), and you can see how the city has been built up and over each of the hills and climbs onto the slopes of the mountains around it. At the same time, you can also feel that the ocean is close. With the way the weather is, and knowing that the port is just a short while away, it presents an interesting juxtaposition that I have never before experienced.   You also have to remember that people have lived in the area for something like 3000 years. It's not like the city has been planned out. And, the greater Athens area is home to 3.75 of the 11 million people living in Greece. So things feel rather cramped. There aren't highways, just streets with no markings down the middle of the road. There are also no skyscrapers or even new looking buildings, with the exception of one. It doesn't help that the countr...

Many of our trips are remembered in my mind by where we stayed, specifically our lodging.  I may not remember a lot of the details of any trip (thank goodness for this blog), but I will always remember our hotel, or bed and breakfast, or a home. I found the most delightful place in Killarney called The Priory.  As with most older buildings in Ireland, The Priory once served a religious purpose:  it was a nunnery.  Of course, it's all been modernized for our benefit, but I still wish those walls could talk. We were so happy when we first walked in.  I always wonder if pictures on websites are accurate, but this place superseded all of my expectations.  A modern kitchen, a washer and dryer, and three full bedrooms, all contained in rock walls with a working peat stove.  I'm sure we would have enjoyed the yard and gardens more if it hadn't been raining so much, but they were still lovely to pass by from the car park to the front door. Our home was...

Once again, we were very lucky with the weather.  It was always on the verge of raining in Ireland, and there would be dark, overcast skies with an occasional burst of rain, but we plan for the worst.  And we were pulling out the raincoats and the umbrellas for the last two days of our vacation.  I felt bad for John, because of all of us, he appreciates sunshine the most--it must be because he's a runner, and running in the rain isn't near as fun as running in sunshine.  I, however, appreciate the rain, because I don't think there would be an "Emerald Isle" if it weren't for all the rain, and goodness, the island was more emerald than I had ever seen. We grabbed our last bit of non-rain weather (can't say it was sunny) and walked into town to take a jaunting car ride.  We took one two years ago with Ethan and Rebecca, and it was great fun.  Our driver this time, a chap named Paul, wasn't near as entertaining as our driver before, but it was still so ...

Knowing that we would be in Ireland for five full days, I wanted to do some of our favorite activities, and find some new adventures for us.  My newest favorite travel website is Trip Advisor, and across the board, everyone said that I needed to sign up for an hour with Killarney Falconry.  I really couldn't believe that it would be much of anything, nor that anyone would actually trust any of us with their birds of prey.  However, I've found Trip Advisor to be very accurate, so I contacted the business a couple of weeks before we came. I really had no idea what to expect, and I must admit that for the price, and knowing the experience would only be an hour long, I was doubtful. Holy smokes, I had no need to fear. Believe it or not, we plugged actual latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates into our GPS to find our meeting place.  And thank goodness because every set of directions I have received from any Irish person includes no periods or the strangest capita...