From an absolutely hectic week to a quiet Sunday morning....FINALLY!!

I woke up in a panic at 6 AM over something I forgot to include in a packet of info for my boss (he was picking some papers up from me that I left on my porch - pretty common practice since he's flying all over the place all the time and my house is on the way to the airport), so I hop (dragged my butt) out of bed and go grab my laptop and start printing 3 reports hoping to catch him before he left.  And to my uncanny luck, the printouts were done and he had just barely come and left.....drat!!!  I ended up emailing them to him and he's printing later...no biggie. 

Sooooooo here I am WIDE AWAKE at 6:30 AM on a Sunday morning wondering what to do.  So I poured myself some cereal and start reading/surfing my RSS feeds of my FAV blogs that I love to catch up on and get inspiration from.  Can I just tell you how much I love being able to do this in complete silence?!?  Things you do for fun when you have 3 kids, a full time job and a sick hubby :)

Anyways, while I was doing this I was immediately reminded of a story that my father-in-law sent me - don't know why I thought of it, but it is by far one of my favorite stories and I hope one of you out there will enjoy it too.  It just really sums up why bad things happen to good people.......one of my HUGE issues right now if you couldn't tell :)


Here is a quote from it if you don't want to go read it - I'm putting a link to it after the quote from Hugh B. Brown:

"You sometimes wonder whether the Lord really knows what he ought to do with you. You sometimes wonder if you know better than he does about what you ought to do and ought to become.

I was living up in Canada. I had purchased a farm. It was run-down. I went out one morning and saw a currant bush. It had grown up over six feet high. It was going all to wood. There were no blossoms and no currants. I was raised on a fruit farm in Salt Lake before we went to Canada, and I knew what ought to happen to that currant bush. So I got some pruning shears and went after it, and I cut it down, and pruned it, and clipped it back until there was nothing left but a little clump of stumps. It was just coming daylight, and I thought I saw on top of each of these little stumps what appeared to be a tear, and I thought the currant bush was crying. I was kind of simpleminded (and I haven’t entirely gotten over it), and I looked at it, and smiled, and said, “What are you crying about?” You know, I thought I heard that currant bush talk. And I thought I heard it say this: “How could you do this to me? I was making such wonderful growth. I was almost as big as the shade tree and the fruit tree that are inside the fence, and now you have cut me down. Every plant in the garden will look down on me, because I didn’t make what I should have made. How could you do this to me? I thought you were the gardener here.” That’s what I thought I heard the currant bush say, and I thought it so much that I answered. I said, “Look, little currant bush, I am the gardener here, and I know what I want you to be. I didn’t intend you to be a fruit tree or a shade tree. I want you to be a currant bush, and some day, little currant bush, when you are laden with fruit, you are going to say, ‘Thank you, Mr. Gardener, for loving me enough to cut me down, for caring enough about me to hurt me. Thank you, Mr. Gardener.’”

He goes on to tell of a hardship in his life......

I wanted to tell you that oft-repeated story because there are many of you who are going to have some very difficult experiences: disappointment, heartbreak, bereavement, defeat. You are going to be tested and tried to prove what you are made of. I just want you to know that if you don’t get what you think you ought to get, remember, “God is the gardener here. He knows what he wants you to be.” Submit yourselves to his will. Be worthy of his blessings, and you will get his blessings."

The Currant Bush

Now for some updates on Russ - 2 announcements:

1.  Russ has an appointment up at the Huntsman Cancer Institute tomorrow at 1 PM (they've moved it 3 times now.....hopefully the 3rd time's the charm) - we hope that they can offer some kind of case study or experimental option.  Russ has also been reaching out to other cancer centers across the country, so we'll see if any of that pans out.

2.  Russ has been asked to baptize my best friend's niece next Saturday!! I'm so excited I can hardly stand it!!  This little girl has been working so hard to get to this point and I'm so honored they asked Russ to do the baptism!!  I'll be sure to post pics!!  After that, Taylor and Audra are singing in the children's choir for Stake Conference that night....it'll be a busy day!!

As far as the girls go, they're doing great.....definitely not a lack of things to do for them!

Haley has Young Women activities every week and usually hangs out with friends on the weekends.  She had her 'Viking Showcase' Wednesday night.  I have videos of her Symphony Orchestra playing that I filmed with my new camera I got for Christmas, but haven't figured out how to save them and edit them yet, so I'll have to post it later.   I feel bad that I don't have a pic of her this week, so I'll post one from when we went to Classic Fun Center last week (she's gonna kill me!):

Taylor went on a school ski trip last Tuesday and had a BLAST: 

Taylor is always playing...I mean 'hanging out' (Taylor hates it when I call it playing...lol) with her friends and went to a Cheer/Dance camp yesterday.  We've also been hard at work on her Science Project of making your own Geodes in empty egg shells:

 Audra went to a birthday party at All Star Lanes yesterday for a little girl in her class.  She loves being in 1st grade now and making all sorts of new friends:

Now time to get the girls ready for church (I love that it's at 11 AM now!!) and get dinner in the oven so it's ready to eat when we get home.....YUM!!

Love you all, thanks for reading and I will update again when I know more with Russ after the appointment tomorrow AND we're supposed to be emailed our new family pics we had done over Christmas...can't wait to see them!!

Until next time..........

Lizzie