Trust in That Spirit Which Leadeth to Do Good

"The feeling of greatest importance is love. 

That feeling of love is a gift from God.  The scriptures call it "charity" and "the pure love of Christ".  You have felt that love...and you can receive it often if you seek it.

A second feeling...is the influence of the Holy Ghost.  Sisters have promised you this day that the Holy Ghost will guide you to find the service the Lord would have you give to others for Him.  

The third feeling...is that you want to be closer to the Savior.

So with those feelings, the first thing you must commit to do is to go and serve, knowing that you do not go alone.  When you go to comfort and serve anyone for the Savior, He prepares the way before you.

The second thing you must do is remember the Lord as you go in service for Him.  The Lord not only goes before our faces and sends angels to serve with us, but He also feels the comfort we give others as if we had given it to Him.

And the third thing...is to be personally modest about [your] good works.  

My prayer for the sisters in the kingdom, wherever they may be or in whatever circumstances, is that their faith in the Savior and gratitude for His Atonement will lead them to do all they can for those God asks them to serve.  As they do, I promise that they will move up the path to become holy women whom the Savior and our Heavenly Father will welcome warmly and reward openly.  

I witness that we grow closer to the Savior as we, out of pure love, serve others for Him."

Trust in That Spirit Which Leadeth to Do Good

By President Henry B. Eyring

First Counselor in the First Presidency

Easter

Happy Easter from the Bernings!

Today I gave a lesson to my four and five year old Primary class about the reason why we celebrate Easter.  I told them the Easter story and in the middle, Maya, one of the children in my class asked, "What makes Jesus so special?"  Writing it down makes it sound kind of weird, but she asked is so sweetly and sincerely.  It was such a wonderful opportunity to bear my testimony of who Jesus is and what makes Him so special.  

I am grateful for my Savior, Jesus Christ, who came to Earth to provide a way for all of us to come and live with Him and our Heavenly Parents again.  He suffered all so that we don't have to - if we follow Him.  And because of Him I know that our family can be together forever and that I can be with those that I love that have already past on again.  Easter should truly be a time to celebrate.  

After I bore my testimony - in a simpler way - little Maya said, 

"He really must be special then."  

Yes, Maya, He is.  

In Jesus Christ, I have found new life.  

Easter Egg Hunt

We celebrated Easter together as a family on Wednesday because of Mark's work schedule.  We woke up and had our traditional Easter breakfast and did Easter baskets.  Then most of the morning was spent with Mark and the kiddos playing (which I loved!) and me cooking in the kitchen for our Easter dinner.

Then in the afternoon we had an Easter Egg Hunt with the kiddos.  This was Sarah's first one (that she participated in) and it was hilarious to watch her.  The kiddos love anything we do outside so this was a hit!  Jacob would get so excited every time he would see an egg and couldn't get over how there were so many eggs in the yard!  I also had a complete "mommy fail" and could not find our Easter baskets so Jacob used a paper bag and Sarah used the cauldron for our Halloween candy.  They thought it was great - thank goodness!

That night we had our Easter dinner and topped it off with some carrot cake, also known as

BUNNY CAKE!

I HAVE to include this one of Sarah because of her total concentration on that cake!  She would NOT take her eyes off of it!

In all seriousness, next to marrying Mark, having children is probably the best thing I have ever done.  I love them all so much. 

Easter Eggs

For FHE, we had an Easter lesson and then finished it up with dying our Easter eggs.  This tradition never gets old!  Jacob and Sarah were both loving it - and it was fun that Sarah was more involved this year!

The kidlets love their EGGS!

First Day of Spring

I love the changing of the seasons!  We were excited to welcome spring with good food and a family drive!  We also had to spend a little time outside playing in the yard.  We are excited to start venturing outside of our home a little more!

Happy Spring!

First Day of Nursery

Can you believe it?!  This little sweetie had her first day in nursery - and boy was she ready!  That little girl strolled in like she was a seasoned veteran and never looked back.  She absolutely loved it!  No surprises there - we knew she would!

I am so proud of my little Sarah but it does make me a little sad too.  It definitely felt like she wasn't my little baby anymore - she's my big girl.  It happens way too fast.  She is growing so much lately and everyday is learning and changing.  It's a really exciting and fun time.

We love our little big girl!

Hatching the Past

Saturday we did some family fun!  We finally made our way to the Museum of Idaho!  It feels like it has been awhile since we have gone to a museum so it was really fun.  

Their main exhibit right now is called "Hatching the Past: The Search for Dinosaur Eggs and Babies".  It was so interesting.  Mark and I were both really impressed with the exhibit and the best thing about it was that it was so geared for children!  Everything in the exhibit was touchable and that made it so great.  It was so fun to just let Jacob and Sarah explore!  They also had dress ups and lots of places to play with dinosaurs and dig in the "sand" for dinosaur eggs.  It was pretty perfect for our family.

They also had a great children discovery area.  We all fell in love with this it.  And I am pretty convinced we could have spent hours playing in there.  They had all sorts of crawl spaces underneath a lake with a beaver den, a cliff you could crawl up to look into an eagle's nest, a giant tepee, and a cabin full of things for pretend play.  It was a blast.

St. Patrick's Day

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

We actually celebrated yesterday because Mark was home and it was a great day.  We are still dealing with the sickies so we had a great low-key day at home - and everyone stayed in their pajamas!  We did have some yummy green food - and some real Irish food - and lots of playing!  

These are the cutest leprechauns I have ever seen.  

Each of their single pictures makes me laugh out loud!

We also discovered we are all seriously lacking in green clothing!

I Am a Child of God

This year for family home evening has been really fun so far!  I wanted to incorporate something more big kid - because, believe it or not, my kiddos are getting bigger!  Since Jacob is in Primary now as a Sunbeam we started to receive The Friend magazine every month.  This year in Primary, they are focusing on the scriptures and every month in The Friend they spotlight a Book of Mormon hero.  We have loved it!

The first FHE of every month we spotlight our hero for the month.  I print off their picture big for the fridge (and also a small laminated one for Jacob to keep in his Book of Mormon) and I introduce who they are and we watch a video about them and talk about what makes them a hero.  So far we have done Nephi - who was obedient (but half the time I get told he is a hero because he built a boat :)), Enos - who was prayerful, and this month we introduced Abinadi - who was courageous (and let me tell you, hearing Jacob say "Abinadi" is adorable).  I have been so proud of Jacob because he really seems to be learning their stories and is gives us an opportunity to also talk about these good virtues as well and how we can live them in our home.  It has been a great thing to add to our FHE.  Plus, it never hurts to throw in a "we need to try and be more obedient like Nephi" phrase into our daily life!

Our lessons are evolving too with Jacob and Sarah getting older.  We had a lesson on being a child of God yesterday and it was so sweet.  I truly believe we can not talk about this topic enough.  I feel so strongly that my children need to know and really internalize that they are children of God.  We talked about how our Heavenly Father knows and loves them.  And how we can become more like Him and that each one of them has an important work to do on earth.  I believe this so strongly and am so grateful that my Father in Heaven has given me these two for forever.  

I love them and know that their Heavenly Father does too.  

These dolls were WAY too fun - Sarah was very focused on taking her dolls clothes on and off - she could not be distracted by silliness such as taking a picture!

Pink Eye

This winter has been brutal!  I feel like we are constantly cycling through something and this week has been an especial doozy.  

Jacob and Sarah both had a cough and runny nose since last week.  Mark got it later on in the week.  Then on Monday I could tell something more was going on.  Jacob was sleeping in every day until after nine and taking a solid three hour nap every afternoon.  His eye was also starting to get goupy.  

By Wednesday night we got him checked out and he had pink eye.  We started him on antibiotics and it's cleared up really quickly.  But by Thursday morning I woke up feeling all sorts of cruddy: fever, headache, weak, chills, runny nose, cough.  By Friday afternoon, Sarah's  eye started the same goup as Jacob's had.  We three were quite the group.

By Saturday afternoon we were all feeling a little stir crazy and definitely ready to get off of the couch!  We passed the time by going on a drive and even had some fun bowling inside.  

I think (I HOPE!) we are finally on the up!  But our week has definitely been filled with the sickies and I can't wait for some good health to come back for all of us!

Flooding - Round 2

The day we moved into our new home it flooded.  It was not super fun.  But things happen and it got cleaned up and fixed and we moved on with it being a memory.  

That is...until Sunday.  

We have 9:00 AM church and sometime between then and noon it started to rain hard here in Idaho Falls.  We came home from church and I started making lunch and Mark said he was going to go downstairs and check the storage room to make sure no water was coming through.  

Side note - we have a dry storage room and then through that a separate door that goes to a cold storage room.  This room is cement and under our front porch and has a small vent in the top corner.  We have never understood the purpose of this vent but have since been told it's to help with condensation.  We've noticed that sometimes snow would blow in through the vent (not really a big deal) but for that reason Mark wanted to go down and just make sure nothing was happening.  This was also the source of where the flooding came into the house when we moved in.  Needless to say, we don't trust this section of our home.  

All of a sudden, Mark comes rushing upstairs telling me that we are flooding again and runs outside to try and stop the water.  I run downstairs and start to move everything out of the storage rooms.  The cruddy thing about this time was that (unlike last time when it was clean pipe water plus there was nothing in the house yet) this is muddy, buggy, dirty water.  It was nasty.  Luckily, most of what we had in our storage room were in big plastic containers and so were protected that way.  However, we did have a few boxes of books and scrapbooks.  Thankfully, nothing was really "ruined" just some bubbly edges.  

Mark dug a small trench to get the water to drain out into the yard and away from the vent and so luckily stopped the water from continuing to come in pretty quick.  In the back corner of the cold storage room there was probably a good 2 to 2 1/2 inches of dirty water and then varying amounts everywhere else.  

On the side of the vent Mark noticed a small hole on the bottom that was allowing the water to go straight down.  This is what it looked like after Mark dug the trench letting it come out.  

The cold storage room where the water was coming in.

Our "dry" storage room - which had the most damage.  It also went beyond this room into an unfinished bedroom but there was nothing in that room to cause any damage.  And luckily had not yet reached the carpet.  

Luckily, our neighbors had a shop vac and we were able to suck up the water pretty quick with that and then got some fans going.  

Once everything settled down and we ate lunch finally and put the kids down to bed, Mark and I were frustrated.  We felt like we had been deceived.  We hadn't done anything to the vent - hadn't even touched it.  So either this was a problem every time it rained and we were never told or it didn't get fixed properly when it flooded the day we moved in and now we are paying the price.  It was really frustrating.  

When we first were putting in our offer for this home we noticed that there had been some flooding damage before.  It was a red flag for us.  When we pushed the matter they assured us that it was while the house was being built and it hadn't been properly graded yet and so the problem was now fixed.  We were concerned this time because that was a red flag for us and now we are worried that we have been in this home only three months and had two separate flooding instances that we will now have to report on and that means three red flags when we try and sell it.  Boo...for a couple hours we were definitely not happy campers.  

It grew increasingly apparent to us though how many tender mercies there were in this incident.  The biggest one being that Mark was home.  Considering that is not the case 80% of the time, this was a huge blessing.  There is no way if I had been home alone with the kids that I would have had the time or even thought about going down and checking the storage rooms.  And I am sure it wouldn't have hit the carpet yet when I would have taken Jacob downstairs for naps and so it would have been hours before I would go down there again.  Plus, then I just wouldn't have even known where to begin and the damage would have been so much worse.  

The fact that it didn't reach the carpet is yet another tender mercy.  That would have upped the damage by so much.  We feel so blessed that it didn't happen a week ago when we were on our trip and I don't even want to think about how badly the damage could have been then.  So many things to be grateful for. 

So when all is said and done everything is fine.  It was still frustrating but we acknowledge that it could have been so much worse.  Now we just need to figure out some permanent solution to the problem (other than our current muddy trench) and hopefully we will no longer have any flooding problems.  

What a day.

Miss Mischief

This little one is the sweetest, most mischievous little girl!

I love her but there are days she definitely keeps me on my toes!  Sarah is our number one mischief maker in the house.  She is a climber and also very creative which makes for a scary combination sometimes!  She is always discovering new places to get to!  

Although, that can be a little scary in the house we have learned it is WAY more scarier OUTSIDE!  Last week we had beautiful weather and so we decided it was definitely time to stretch our legs and head out.  We were having a great time doing chalk, playing basketball, and just running around but it became quickly apparent that Sarah loves to run everywhere she shouldn't.  And that girl is fast!!!  She was constantly running into the street and up and down the sidewalk in either direction.  It was exhausting.  Luckily, our street really isn't busy except for the couple minutes before and after school, but it is still not something you want!

And the thing about Sarah is she can be so "naughty" but she has the world wrapped around her little finger and COMPLETELY knows it!  She just turns and gives you the sweetest, most innocent smile and goes on with exactly what she is doing!

Finally, I thought that maybe if we went into the backyard maybe she would stay a little more contained.  So I walked back there with Jacob and Sarah and then went into the front yard to grab some toys.  I was on my way back when our neighbor (who volunteers at the school) was walking back and I stopped and waved to her when all of a sudden someone on the other street stops their giant suburban and calls out, "is that your baby?!"  Of course, yes, it was my baby.  

Sarah had gone from our backyard, through our neighbors yard, across the street and was booking it to the elementary school playground.  I, of course, run after her and she smiles at me like she just accomplished the greatest thing ever.  This girl.  It's terrifying to think about what could have happened (so I am just choosing to not really think about it) and I am so glad I didn't have to completely panic either looking for Sarah had someone not told me where she was.  It amazes me how quickly things can happen.  I was truly gone from the backyard thirty seconds.  

Needless to say, we went inside after that.  A fence is looking like less and less of a desire and more and more like a necessity.  

I am, sadly, positive this is not the last of Sarah shenanigans that we will see but it's definitely one to remember.  We love you, Miss Mischief.  

(I took the picture above after we came in and were having lunch - the face of victory!)