3 YEARS!!!

Wow!  Charles and I have been married for 3 years.  And what a rollercoaster it has been.  I'm going to be honest - it's not all puppies and rainbows everyday (although a puppy is a huge part of our everyday lives!).  In fact, it's a lot work!  We didn't date for very long before we decided to become engaged, and then our engagement went pretty fast.  I dated other boys a lot longer than I did Charles, and I guess I didn't really know him as well as I thought I did.  Don't worry, he's not a serial killer... although he does keep a knife on his bedside table.  Hmmm.... JK!  It's just been a huge learning experience for me, for us.  I think I have trained him well on shutting cabinet doors, not using a thousand paper towels for every little spill, and other things such as these.  And I'm getting better at keeping our table free of junk mail.  But more importantly, we understand each other a lot better.  We know how to argue better and more effectively.  We know how to make the best of the limited time we have together.  We know what each other really wants from a relationship.  I have a feeling our fourth year of marriage is going to be the best one yet.  :)

I got sooo lucky and someone actually wanted to work my Saturday day shift for me on July 7th, so we took advantage of my extra day off and we went to Vegas!!!  We had a blast!  We went all out since this is our vacation for the year.

We have always wanted to try this.  Peppermint, orange, mountain wild berry blend of oxygen!

We went to an AMAZING magic show.  I remember watching him on TV with my grandma. 
I have been obsessed with magic ever since (Harry Potter).

Anniversary Dinner at Serendipity.  I was so excited because my chicken nuggets were supposed to come with celery and carrots, and all we had eaten so far was grease and fat.  But apparently I had to order them buffalo style.  :( 
The Oreo Frozen Hot Chocolate really cheered me up!

The view from our hotel room in the New York New York. 
I didn't want to go to bed, it was so captivating to watch out our window.

We went swimming and then hot-tubbing in 110 degree heat. 
I decided Las Vegas pools aren't really made for swimming... the deepest point was 4 feet!

We went to the Shark Reef Aquarium at Mandalay Bay. 
This tunnel was pretty cool as sharks were swimming all around us, and we had a stingray that befriended us.

I love this guy!!! 

I gave him a Memory Photo book I spent months making on Mixbook.com.  It had everything from our first picture together to our Waterfall Canyon hike we did 6 weeks ago. 
 He gave me a cute picture frame and put in 3 of his favorite pictures of us together.


I love you, Charles!!!






  

    

      

Faith #1

The first principle of the gospel is faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Learn about faith from the scriptures and living prophets. Read Hebrews 11; Alma 32:17–43; Ether 12:6–22; and Joseph Smith—History 1:11–20. Read two general conference talks on faith. Exercise your own faith by establishing a habit of prayer in your life. Begin by regularly saying your morning and evening prayers. After three weeks of following this pattern, discuss with a parent or leader what you have learned about faith and how daily personal prayer has strengthened your faith. In your journal express your feelings about faith and prayer.

Of course we all know what faith is, but wow, this experience really strengthened my testimony of this principle and reminded me of some things I had forgotten.  We need to constantly be working on building our faith so that when trials come (because they definitely will!), your faith is strong enough to sustain you.  What do we need to have faith in?  The Atonement, life after death, repentance, that Heavenly Father knows what is best for us.  It's easy to talk about these things, but to practice them is a different story. 

My experiment of diligently and genuinely saying morning and evening prayers for three weeks went very well.  My normal "please bless my family with the things they need" became a lot more of pleading with Heavenly Father to please bless them individually with what they are struggling with right now.  And I saw a huge difference!  Probably the most awesome miracle that happened was on Day One, a Sunday.  I had a special fast through Facebook for one of my best friends, Jackie.  She was very sick and having crazy imbalances within her body because of her disease process and was in the ICU on that previous Friday.  I prayed all day for her and fasted for two meals, along with about 20 other friends.  She was able to be discharged that very night after being in the ICU just two days before!  Faith really does bring about miracles.  I also noticed so much more change in my family members, pertaining to things I was praying about.  Not only did this strengthen my faith, but also my relationship with Heavenly Father to be talking with Him twice per day everyday.         

One of the talks I read was "Faith - The Choice Is Yours" by Richard C. Edgley given in April 2010 General Conference.  He said he hasn't ever actually seen a real mountain move because of someone's faith.  But he has seen mountains of despair, doubt, fear, sin and pain removed when one's faith was strong enough.  Pretty cool analogy.