St Patrick's Day!

 Happy St Patrick's Day!

After 15 tries, we got a decent picture. :)

We had a really nice Sunday. Jeff and I spoke in church on repentance and forgiveness. Jeff did a great job as always. He is a really good speaker. I spoke at little in my talk about how Abigail has taught me some good lessons. I will just include the part that talks about Abigail, that I would like to remember. I mostly talked about how pride is a stumbling block to repentance.

"Throughout these past 19 months being a mom, I have been taught so much by my daughter.  She is a perfect example of humility and innocence.
One occasion, not very often, but occasionally  she will get herself into these huge messes. Huge messes. Sometimes by total accident, and sometimes by curiosity. But once she has made the mess, there is no way for her to get clean by herself, at least at her age, right now.  And when she tries to clean herself up, or even just go on playing, ignoring her mess, the mess grows and grows. Every time I find her in her messes,  the first thing I see is a sweet and somewhat helpless little girl who needs help. I have such compassion for her, and want to help her get cleaned up. Each time this happens, my testimony of God’s love and mercy for us grows. I know that if my desire for my daughter to be clean and happy can make me feel compassion instead of anger and annoyance, I am sure that Heavenly Father and Christ, who are much more compassionate than I am,  love me even in my weakness and sin and have those same kind feelings towards me when I sin and am in need of Christ’s atonement to make me clean again.

Lately Abi has been learning to say her own name, which is super cute, but has also taught me another really valuable lesson.  We will ask her, by tapping her and saying, “who is this?” and invariably she will look up at us, and then point at me and say “Mama?” and then point at Jeff and say “Papa?” and when we confirm that we are in fact Mama and Papa, then she will finally point to herself  and say “Abi!”  This weekend I realized what a wonderful humble example that is for us. In order for her to learn who she is, she has had to come to know us and trust us, and that is how it is for us with Heavenly Father also. I think a lot of times we try to become better, or closer to Heavenly Father by focusing on ourselves, when really that is opposite. When we lose focus on our ourselves and shed our pride and self centered ways, and seek to learn of Heavenly Father, we will come to know ourselves."

For dinner we didn't do a corned beef and cabbage meal, b/c we had some vegetarians over for dinner. So our green was in our Strawberry Spinach Salad. We also had Pioneer Woman's Vegetable Lasagna (so good) and homemade baguette bread, (which is super quick and easy). Then our friends brought over homemade ice cream.  

We ended the night with a nursery training, and then talking until past midnight. Such a wonderful Sunday.