Staying STRONG in the STORMS of Life

Fifteen years ago my family experienced a trial that no one wants to have. The trial we experienced  was losing a member of our family. My little brother Benjamin Scott Thompson was born on 31 of July 1995. He was the fifth child to be born and he brought so much joy and love to our family. He was the happiest, friendliest baby I have ever known, smiling to everyone and anyone. Ben was the peacemaker in the home. A year after his birth, he finished his mission in this mortal life and was called back home to serve with Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ on 13 of September 1996.

This trial was very difficult for my family. No one wants to lose a son or daughter, brother or sister. I know for me at least, it took me a while to accept what happened and "officially" move on with my life. Satan was working really hard on me and testing my testimony. Satan wanted me to blame the trial all on me in hopes it would discourage me to the point of losing my faith and myself. As tempted as I was, I did not give in to the adversary. I owe it all to the help and support of my family and friends. I knew that I could only get through this trial and accept what happened if I sought after the Lord for love, comfort, assurance, hope, and peace. I did this through daily scripture study and prayer. During a scripture study session, many years ago, I came across this scripture:

"AND NOW, O MY [DAUGHTER HILLARY], BEHOLD, THOU ART IN THY YOUTH, AND THEREFORE, I BESEECH OF THEE THAT THOU WILT HEAR MY WORDS AND LEARN OF ME; FOR I DO KNOW THAT WHOSOEVER SHALL PUT THEIR TRUST IN GOD SHALL BE SUPPORTED IN THEIR TRIALS, AND THEIR TROUBLES, AND THEIR AFFLICTIONS, AND SHALL BE LIFTED UP AT THE LAST DAY" (Alma 36:6).

I knew the Lord was with me and supporting me. I knew it was all going to be okay as long as I trusted in the Lord and in my testimony. This trial has become one of the biggest blessing in my life and I am forever very grateful for the lessons I learned from it.

I know the gospel of Jesus Christ is the true gospel on this earth today. He is real. He is ready with a strecthed out arm to help and lift our burdens if we would only reach out and take His hand with our complete trust and faith in Him. Unfortuantely, trials will not cease to exist, they will continue to happen and make us better indivduals of the gospel. Our trials will hopefully give us a STRONG desire to choose the right so we can be worthy to be called home to our Father in Heaven and His son Jesus Christ.

HAPPY 16TH BIRTHDAY BENJAMIN!! I LOVE YOU VERY MUCH!!!!

10 Months of Craziness

Ten months ago, Zoie was this sweet, quiet, sleep all day little girl. It was nice. I was able to leave her in a room by herself, go and get myself ready, clean up a bit, make something to eat, etc. Now it is a different story.





Zoie is still a sweet little girl. She can be quiet at times, but she for sure doesn't sleep all day (she does have some lengthy naps though). Thus making my life a little bit more crazy, trying to keep up with her, me and Ryan. But we sure do have tons of fun in the process.  Here are some things she has learned, liked, and discovered: 

• As you can see from the pictures, she is very mobile and loves to climb up onto all the furniture and go a crusin' around the house.
• She wants to be played with most of the time and loves to follow mom and dad wherever they go.
• She LOVES to get into things she isn't suppose to and has now understood what the word "no" means.
• She knows when she is doing something good and when we tell her good job and such. When that happens she gets all happy and excited.
• She loves to give kisses!! Especially to her mommy:)
• She gives "high-fives"and its cute.
• She is no longer army crawlin' and has become quite the crawler.
• She loves to eat cheerios, mac and cheese, peanut butter (when we let her), and fruits! She loves to feed herself by hand or with silverware.
• She can sometimes say "mom" and "da" knowlingly. But she does recognize who is who and it makes us feel good.
• She is cutting some teeth on her top gums.

She loves to play with daddy!

So there you go a few things of Zoie's newest discoveries, likes, adventures and so forth. She is developing her own personality each and every day and we get a kick out of watching her and her little quirks. :)

 

Staying STRONG in the STORMS of Life

It is no secret that life is not always going to be easy. Even as we are faithful and obedient, stormy times will come. But FEAR NOT! I am going to share some uplifting thoughts, stories, feelings, and experiences with you so you know you're not alone. I hope that the things I share with you weekly will give you a little more motivation to keep on keepin' on.

My family and I are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. We have the privilege every six months to have General Conference where we get to hear from the Prophet, Apostles, and other General Authorities of the the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. It's a wonderful, spritiual, and uplifting weekend. This last General Conference in April, I remember President Dieter F. Uchtdorf saying we, meaning the members of the LDS church should share the gospel EVERYWHERE, blogs were included in that statement. Thus the reason and meaning for my post. Every Sunday I will share how the gospel has kept me and my family "Staying Strong in the  Storms of Life."

We love and enjoy our life very much but our life can get busy and burdensome sometimes. I know through faith and prayer we can get through the storms that comes our way and so can you. YOU'RE NOT ALONE. Hopefully the words I share with you can help you stay strong and overcome those storms, testify to you of the truthfulness of the gospel and to let you know how much love Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ have for you.

Christ calming the Sea. Picture by Deseret Books

Unfortunately, I cannot prompt ALL trails to cease. But again, FEAR NOT! The Lord has promised to give us the strength to bear our burdens with ease as we turn to Him and diligently strive to keep His commandments. He promises, "I WILL EASE THE BURDENS WHICH ARE PUT UPON YOUR SHOULDERS, THAT EVEN YOU CANNOT FEEL THEM UPON YOUR BACKS, EVEN WHILE YOU ARE IN BONDAGE; AND THIS I WILL DO THAT YE MAY STAND AS WITNESSES FOR ME HEREAFTER, AND THAT YE MAY KNOW OF A SURETY THAT I, THE LORD GOD, DO VISIT MY PEOPLE IN THEIR AFFLICTIONS" (Mosiah 24:14). He also promises the faithful that "THEY SHALL NOT BE BEATEN DOWN BY THE STORM AT THE LAST DAY; YEA NEITHER SHALL THEY BE HARROWED UP BY THE WHIRLWHINDS; BUT WHEN THE STORM COMETH THEY SHALL BE GATHERED TOGETHER IN THEIR PLACE, THAT THE STORM CANNOT PENETRATE TO THEM;YEA NEITHER SHALL THEY BE DRIVEN WITH FIERCE WINDS WHITHERSOEVER THE ENEMY LISTETH TO CARRY THEM" (Alma 26:6).

Be Not Afraid. Christ is there to help. Picture by Deseret Books

I know these things to be true and testify that Jesus is the Christ and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is the true church today. I ask you to please remember these things, YOU'RE NOT ALONE and always center your life on your Savior, Jesus Christ. As you do so, you will have success in staying strong in the storms of life!

Feeding Herself

We are teaching so many things to Zoie and its lots of fun. One the most recent things I have been teaching her is to feed herself with silverware. She has always loved to hold the spoon and fork, so I thought why not teach her how to use them. She has not mastered putting food on the spoon or fork yet (so I do that for her), but she has mastered the use of them, which is putting the food into her mouth. She loves to do that. I took this video of her this afternoon. We had Mac & Cheese and Green Beans for lunch. This was Zoie's first experience with Mac & Cheese and she absolutely loved it. Enjoy.

Earlier this week on Monday, Zoie and I had an early start to the morning. We ended up watching a couple movies together on the floor on my pillow. It was a great mother-daughter bonding moment. I love it when she cuddles with me for a while. Anyway, I left the room to go do something and I come back and find her like this.

She was so tired.

We are having so much fun together as a family and are excited for all the adventures to come. Well, there is that. I hope you guys are all having a wonderful wednesday and thanks for stopping by:)

The First of Many

Zoie loves to pull herself up onto things and walk around all over. It's so much fun. Except the other morning she decided to climb up onto our TV stand and play with the buttons and such. She was a good old time, until she lost balance as she was moving to the other end of the stad and fell down and hit her face. She hit her cheek on the bottom of the stand and now has a little bruise. Poor Girlie.

See that little mark on her cheek? Yep thats the bruise.

I felt so bad for but with a little lovin she recouped and was a champ and went right back to climbing up on the couch. She was good to go. I am sure this wont be the last time she'll have a bruise, especially since she'll be involved in sports. 

Can't See

The other day we put a movie in for Zoie, so we could make dinner. We put in Horton Hears A Who. She loved it. Apparently she couldn't see from where we sat her on the floor and this what we saw when we walked in.

That's better

Binky in mouth and everything. Silly Girlie

The Trouble Begins

Since Zoie has become very mobile, she has discovered what she can get herself into with a little scoot here and another there. This little bug scooted herself over to the DVDs and pulled the drawer thingy out and dumed them all out onto the floor and played with them. Oh the mess she made, but it did keep her entertained and happy. Sometimes us moms, do whatever we can to make them happy and stay in one spot for a while. Right?! I did that's for sure.

oops! Did I do that? :)

So many to choose from

The Italian Job? Ferris Bueler?

It's so hard to decide

That's the one! The Notebook. She's a Romantic Girlie!!! Love it!

Daddy! Really!

Ryan put Zoie in her toy basket, just for the fun of it. And Zoie seemed to have fun, but it was right before bedtime, she didn't fuss at all, but you could tell she just wanted to go to bed. She just sat in there and played with her toys. It was really cute.

The entire time she just kept taking her toys and putting them on the ground. I guess she was trying to make more space for herself in her basket. Such a silly, smart girl. When I took her out and put her to bed she was out within seconds of laying her down. She must have been really worn out from playing today. 

Crafting Again

YAY!!!! I am back to crafting again and its been fun. Here is one of the projects I've done since I've been back. Its something very simple and probably done all the time by everyone. But I needed some more color and didn't like the look of cardboard boxes.

I turned our medicine's boxes into something fun and colorful

Started with this "exciting" box ;)

I then measured the sides of the boxes onto two different pieces of scrapbook paper, and then cut them out

And of course I used mod podge to make the box look exciting!!!

And this is how my "medicine boxes" turned out. Aren't they cute?!!

We're Back!!!

We finally made it back to good 'ole Buena Vista!! We are so happy to be back with Ryan again, we missed him a lot. According to Ryan, he is a husband and a daddy again!! He really missed me and the bug.

We had a really good 4th of July. My town goes all out with a breakfast, festivities, dinner, ceremonies, and an amazing firework show. It was a blast. Here are some pictures of our eventful day!

One of the festivities that happen is a watermelon eating contest and guess who won?! That's right Zoie. :) Just kidding.

Zoie Bug with Grandma on the trampoline (and that's Great Ma on the other trampoline in the background), getting ready to watch the fireworks from our front yard. She didn't enjoy it at first, but eventually got used to it. Oh, and yes that is a Roman Candle on the trampoline. :) We go all out on the 4th, one of my favorite holidays!!!

So excited to see me and have some fun with the sparkles!!!

ooooh.... sparkles.... fire... let me try.

We had so much fun with my family, making memories, discovering new things, and meeting new people. We are very excited and can't wait to see my family at Christmas time. It'll be so much fun!!!!

Baths ... Bubbles ... Brillance

I mentioned in the last post that Zoie loves to take baths. Well, Grandma gave Zoie a bath and can you guess what she did? She added bubbles and Zoie got really excited and had so much fun with Grandma. Now it's something we are going to have to continue doing every once in a while. She smiled and giggled so much.

Look at those bubbles on her head :)

Splashing and playing with the bubbles

This is so much fun!!

It's Pool Time

My Mom bought Zoie two cute swimsuits and one can't have swimsuits and not go swimming. So the next thing to do was to get a pool, and that's what my Mom did. She got a little kiddy pool and Zoie loves it!!! At first she was scared to be in there all alone, but once me and Uncle Doz got in she was just fine. Bentley even decided to join us.

           

        

Zoie had so much fun playing with the water. I was positive that she would love swimming because she loves to takes baths. I taught her how to splash with her hands and legs. She LOVED it!! I would splash with my hands to show her and she would copy me. So cute, if I say so myself. To get her to splash with her legs, I would hold her right above the water and say "run run run" and she would start running with her legs and splashing water everywhere. We both had so much fun and even got a little tan. :)

Pretty... Pretty... Girl

Last week Zoie got her first experience with the pain that is beauty. Can you guess what that is?!
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Yep, that's it, Zoie got her ears pierced! She looks so cute. In my "professional" opinion I think that wearing earrings makes all the difference on a girl. It makes a girl even more pretty, and it sure does for my little girl. Just take a look for yourself:

And here she is enjoying seeing a pretty...pretty...girl in the mirror. :)

Oh she is such an adorable baby. She did really good when we got her ears pierced. It was just like she was getting her shots. She only cried for like 30 seconds maybe a minute. She is such a trooper. Good Job, Zoie!

Meeting the GREATS

Zoie was able to meet her Great Uncle Matt, her Great Ma, and her Great Pa. She had lots of fun with them, playing on the kitchen tabe, watching us play band hero, going swimming, and much more.

With Great Uncle Matt

With Great Ma

With Grandpa