What a great day.

Days like this make me wonder what I did to deserve all my blessings.

My friend Laura G, from Tennessee, is in town and she was nice enough (huge lifesaver) to take the metro to my house. We spent the day at my house and went to lunch at yummy Cosi and the girls had smores brought to their table. I have to say I have not really let myself miss Tennessee too much because I knew we had no choice to move, but today I really missed it. She asked me an amazing question.. "What do you miss most about TN and what do you love most about D.C.?" It really got me thinking. What I miss most is the little things you take advantage of like knowing someone's phone number or how to get somewhere. What I love most about here is always having some fun place to go or things to see. Thanks Laura it was a great day!


A great mail package from Michelle who is back to the blogging world and is on high speed! Yea. The post mark is September 15 so it must have gone slow boat. It came with a very smashed Idaho Spud (the best candy bar of all time) which I will say tastes the same as a not smashed one. Then she made the most incredible book. It has three dividers in it one for each of my girls with their name stamped on the divider. The book is to record all the sweet sayings of my girls. It is so timely because the other night I wrote down Caroline's prayer because it was so cute. Now I just need to find what scrap piece of paper I put that on. Thanks Michelle I am amazed at the detail inside the book and even the back. I love it!

We had a little craft day with the girls making a Halloween bracelet for Annie Kate. I had checked out all these books at the library. Yikes it is hard. It turned out cute and Caroline and Sally Jane threw beads all around.

Then Jeff came home early and we went for a long walk around the lakes, fed the fish wheat bagels off the pier (those fish will eat anything) played at the park came home to red beans and rice, YUM!

Got a message on the phone from a girl (Jennifer Markoff) in the ward who made our family dinner and wanted to bring it over. Oh my how nice! She packed it up and is bringing it tomorrow, don't tell my husband but I am faking it out that I made it. hee hee

Then we got a call from our home teacher that he wanted to see if he could come by tonight. He is so incredibly amazing. (he came in a suit!) He has been in Iraq for the past year and left 2 months after he was married and came home in the middle of his tour to see his daughter born. He has been home for 2 months. He can't be a day over 24. I could have talked to him all night about his experience and was so grateful for Annie Kate being able to hear it too.
Hands down the best Home Teaching lesson in my life. He brought different things to help us to get to know him better. A Gee telling us about his family all took karate together, a painting he painted when he was in high school, a family calendar to show us photos of his family, and to top it off a plate of brownies.
The lesson was on Fathers. He did such a wonderful job. He told us that ever since he could remember his dad always told him "I have so much to learn from you" He said it always made him want to be better and knew his father respected him. When he came home from Iraq his father looked at him and said " I still have so much to learn from you" He then challenged us to find one individual special things about each of our girls and constantly remind them of that wonderful quality about themselves. ( I was just sitting on the couch crying)
He then read a quote from the lesson.

“First of all, fathers are giving a name and a heritage to their children—clean and honorable. Fathers are for long, hard work, mostly their own kind of work; … for trying to give their children things [their] fathers never had. Fathers are for talking with, for encouraging, for putting arms around; for understanding mistakes, but not condoning them; for disciplining when needed, then loving all the more; for being strong and forceful, and for being tender and gentle.”

I still remember the home teacher my family had when I was a little girl and he taught me how to find the north star and used to bring us popcorn. This young man 11 years my younger taught Jeff and I how to better parents tonight and how to go above and beyond in serving others.
The blessings I had today were many.