December 31, 2014
It's the end of another year and what a wonderful year it has been! We've been to Africa, we've had a fabulous gathering of our family for our 50th year anniversary celebrations and my 70th birthday...what a sweet time with our family. We are serving as ward missionaries and have had some good experiences with that. I've developed a great desire to do family history work and missionary work in the new year. We have declared 2015 is the year of the family. We want to have as much family interaction with our grandchildren as we can and possibly.
As we move into our 70s we need to take extra good advantage of the health and time that we have. We are seeing more and more of our friends lose their companions and realize how precious it is to have this period of time together.
For Christmas Bob gave us a Caribbean cruise that we plan to take February 14 through the 21st. We are finalizing those arrangements with the air transportation. He is most anxious for us to have some experiences together while we still have the health. What a blessing it is to be healthy and able to do as many things as we do.
It's true we get tired faster and work slower but there's still so much that we can contribute. We are blessed to be near family. We have six of our nine children right here in the valley and many of our 36 grandchildren. Life is moving forward for each of these families and we are grateful to be a part of it. I don't think a day goes by that we don't think about and express our gratitude for the many blessings that are ours.We realize that those blessings stem from a foundation of the gospel and we're so grateful to have had it to raise our families, to build our marriage and to give us direction in this life. It is my greatest desire to share those same blessings with others by teaching them and helping them to understand the plan of salvation and the beautiful blessings that are available by living the Gospel. I feel like this comes through missionary work and family history.
We attend the temple weekly whether we are in Arizona or in Idaho and that's such a great blessing to us. We hope that our children and our posterity will develop a true love for the temple and want to be there as often as they can.
Sometimes we struggle to know just how to develop personal relationships with each of our children and grandchildren. We have nine children and 37 grandchildren at this point and the numbers keep growing. I would like for each of our grandchildren to know how very dearly we love them and that we are here for them as much as we can be. I know we need to spend more time having the little ones over. They are the ones that enjoy being with us so much. There's nothing better than to have them greet us with warm smiles and hugs and be excited when we come by. Yesterday Bennett ask if I could stay to lunch or stay and sleep at their house. Sometimes by living close we don't have the same opportunities of interaction that we would if we were staying right with them once in a while. We need to figure out how we can make it work well in our circumstances.
We are thankful for a new year to make new years resolutions and to look forward to improving in the areas that we see that we are weak. I pray the Lord will help us in our journey. He's done a pretty good job so far, and we are grateful to know that he's the source of our strength and our power and all our opportunities.
For Christmas we gave each of our children the opportunity to come and have a destination vacation in Rexburg Idaho. I'm not sure each of them will take advantage of it but we look forward to hosting some of the families this summer and having a good time with them in our Idaho home. We are anxious to have one-on-one time with them so that we can be grandparents in a more individual way.
How grateful I am for this new mini iPad that makes it possible for me to speak my journal. That will make all the difference! It was a Christmas gift from our children.
