Mother's Day

I either hate or love Mother's Day depending on how "people" step up to the plate--sounds kind of snotty, doesn't it?--but it's true!  Thankfully, this Mother's Day was all kinds of wonderful.

After wearing heels all day
the day before, Hannah and I
opted to wear our Birks to
church #OnlyInMoab

We woke up in Moab at La Quinta (classic place where Glo and I have stayed).  I had checked out meetinghouses in the area, and unbelievably, there are SIX wards in Moab!  I mean, Moab isn't much more than just a street, so I would've been happy with just one, but six?  Terrific!  I chose the earliest meeting time that day, 9:00.

The ward was delightful!  And it was packed to the rims with friendly people.  But Relief Society was the best hour of the two (I know, hard to believe I'm writing that).  There was an excellent teacher who was speaking about Elder Renlund's talk from this past conference entitled "Abound With Blessings". I didn't enjoy the talk when Elder Renlund gave it, so I appreciated the chance to discuss it with others.


There were two main ideas that I took away (and that I want to record).  First, instead of feeling like victims to our trials, we need to take control of those trials. We can say, "Oh, woe is me" and curse God and ask why things are happening to us OR we can say "What can I learn from this? How can I grow from this? Why is Heavenly Father giving me this blessing?"

The teacher then started to go in a direction that I disputed.  She was reverting to the old "if, then" attitude of living our lives--IF we do this, THEN this will happen--but Hannah was quick to raise her hand and point out that we might not even see the THEN in this life.  And sure enough, Elder Renlund said, "Blessings from heaven are neither earned by frenetically accruing 'good dead coupons' nor by helplessly waiting to see if we went the blessing lottery. Restored truth reveals that blessings are never earned, but faith-inspired actions on our part, both initial and ongoing, are essential."

Second, the teacher had created a list of probably 60 scriptures up on the board that corresponded to possible blessings we might want in our lives.  She told us to pick a blessing that we could use at that exact moment (mine was peace, naturally) and look up the scripture that corresponded to it to see what we need to do to access that blessing (no joke, this teacher was committed to her lesson).  In line with what President Lund blessed me with a couple of months ago, there have been a couple of words in the scriptures that have stuck out to me through our latest trial, and there was one of the two again:  repent.  If I want peace in my life, I need to repent.  I loved this list, and women really took it to heart.  It didn't hurt that while we were looking up scriptures, she had some lovely background, church music playing.





I loved it the whole experience.  Even the woman who told us that she didn't like it when "our kind" descended on Moab and made it difficult to do her grocery shopping could be forgiven :-)

There was little seating in the RS room since every woman was attending the lesson that day, so I offered to sit on the piano bench with Hannie.  I couldn't resist taking this picture, thinking of Brother <3

Hannah gave me what I asked for for Mother's Day:  a BYU mom t-shirt.  I figured with 3/4 of my children graduating from BYU, I probably need to just bite the bullet and own it.  And why shouldn't I be proud of them? A BYU education is NOT easy, if only for the 140 hours of credits every student needs to graduate ;)

Afterwards, we headed to Quesadilla Mobilla for lunch.  I've been here before with Glo, and it's just a fun, trendy food truck which offers delicious hearty food. We all got chicken quesadillas with pop.  I mean, what more do I need for a Mother's Day lunch?

Then we were off to Arches.  A couple of months ago, I bought Hannah an annual National Parks pass so we just cruised past the $30 park entrance fee and headed in.  Arches feels like an old friend after all these years.  I almost don't need a map to find the trails I want to hike and the arches I want to see.  Unfortunately, I wasn't feeling very well still so I wasn't super gung-ho about going to every arch.  In fact, John was going to do a hike-through from one arch to the next, and I volunteered to just drive to the other side and meet him there.  Thank goodness I did too, because it didn't come out exactly where we thought it did so I ended up driving around looking for them, and when I found them, John was pretty weak.  Between the altitude and the heat, we were struggling.  Actually, we is just John and I; Hannah could have kept going for miles.

We created the great panoramic shot at Sand Dune arch.  Even John figured it out! ;-)

And we left after that.  No difficult hikes.  Only a short afternoon in the park.  But it was just what I wanted and needed.

We had leftover pizza, quesadillas, fruit and even Sweet Tooth Fairy cookies in the back seat of Jewel, and lucky me, I got to sit in the back seat all by myself, looking out the window and eating.  And when I had service, I got to read all the meaningful texts and FB posts from my sweet honey and my children.  And I got to talk to Glo.  What a sweet reminder of how blessed I am.

As we approached the area near our next stop (Capitol Reef National Park), I was amazed at the scenery...and very excited for our adventures planned for the next day.



That night, we all just wanted to kick back a little, and John found Maid In Manhattan on the TV (Game of Thrones had to wait for a non-Sabbath day).  Hannah let me curl her beautiful gold locks while we watched.



What a wonderful Mother's Day.

Probably one of my favorite pictures ever of the two of us.