The Case For Christ

I'm on our ward Relief Society activities committee and we had our RS birthday dinner this month.

For a month I photographed almost all of the sisters in the ward and made a video to show at our activity, but still felt bad that there were 10 sisters at the activity that I never got a picture of for the video! We asked people to send them in too though so they did have an opportunity.

One of my favorite parts of the night though was while we were cleaning up Kasen asked to talk at the podium. (This month during Fast and Testimony meeting he scooted to the edge of the bench and told me he wanted to go talk too.) So I took him up and helped him bare a testimony. After I helped him he said he wanted to talk again and gave his testimony a second time without any help from me! It was so sweet!
 

While I'm on the topic of testimony, a few Sundays ago we decided to check out a movie on Netflix called The Case For Christ and it turned out to be a good movie! I liked it like I liked God's NOT Dead.

Two quotes from the movie that stood out to me were:

"Even in disbelief you take a leap of faith."

Choosing not to believe, then hoping that you are right requires the same faith that it takes to believe, the only difference is that not believing doesn't require you to change anything. Of course not believing in Christ is way easier, but what is there really to gain from it?

And

"Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance." C.S. Lewis

I've thought about this before, not just about Christianity, but about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

If you live the gospel and after this life find out that it is not true then you have lost nothing, BUT if you live the gospel and after this life find out that it is true then you gain EVERYTHING.

There have been so many things I have been thinking about testimony and the church for the last little while and one little testimony builder, weirdly enough, came from a Grey's Anatomy episode this week!
April has been having a crisis of faith and while talking to her patient Eli he said,
"Faith wouldn't be real faith if you only believed when things were good."
God doesn't guarantee anything. Doing what he asks does not mean that bad things will never happen to you. Nobody lives a life free of suffering. Life isn't going to be fair. We don't get to know why things happen, just like we don't get to know the answers to all the questions we might have either.
"The world is full of brokenness. It is our job to put it back together again."
"Some things just happen and we don't get to know why."

The key is to change our focus to the good things that come from following Christ. Focus on what He teaches instead of requiring all the answers, proof of the truth or expecting life to be fair.

My testimony is that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and what the gospel teaches make so much sense for my happiness.

Families, the commandments, the Plan of Salvation all make sense. The things I do know make sense.
There is a right and wrong.
There is a path we need to be on in order to have eternal happiness after this life.

The good news is though that we will be judged on our character. It's not a scale where we hope that our good deeds outweigh our bad deeds. It's about learning from our mistakes and letting them improve our overall character in the end.

Everyone will have times of weakness, moments of doubt, or a crisis of faith, but the strength and knowledge we receive afterward is a blessing.
 I know that Christ is real.
His love for us is real.
That is why I am stoked for General Conference this weekend! And Easter too!
Reminders of His mercy and His miracles are always what my soul needs.
Bring on the spiritual learning!

March Madness

 Tuesday we went to see the Jazz lose to Atlanta and had lots of fun with the Easons and Gneitings! Kyle, Trevor and Corby play basketball with the stake on Wednesday nights, but this basketball night, the girls got to come too! We've been to a few Jazz games before, but this was the first time sitting in the lower bowl for it. Row 16!

#Standupbecca

We got giant Iceberg shakes before the game started, with not nearly enough cookie dough, walked passed our gate TWICE cause it's not marked, then went to Buffalo Wild Wings after the game for buy one get one boneless wings!

And shared everyone's most embarrassing moments.

When we were leaving for the game I had the worst mom FAIL ever. I still feel so bad!

I drove 2 houses down to drop my kids off at the Gneitings before Lyndsey got there and when I opened the car door Tai fell out and face first on the cement. Our car windows are tinted so dark that I couldn't see her against the door.

Her scraped nose is so sad. I am a horrible person!

 And it just keeps looking worse...

Last week we all got together for a riveting game of Friends Scene It and somehow the boys beat the girls even though Corby hasn't watched Friends!

PS The black paleontologist does not count for not saying Charly. Saying Dr. Burke Jr. for Richard's son, Tim Burke does!

Then yesterday we got together for dinner, games and a little Easter egg hunt for the kids!
Inside, since it was snowing yesterday.
All 3 of us have Traeger grills so we smoked a brisket, Lindsay and Trevor smoked ribs and Corby and Becca smoked some homemade french fries! Mmmm good.

 Tai is all about filling her cheeks with fruit snacks and the jelly beans were no different!

And Kasen here is letting us know that eating jelly beans makes him big and strong!

We were losing it when Lindsay told Kyle that he is a unique friend cause she has never had a friend that makes her feel so DUMB! haha She's nice even when she's not.
And you know Kyle means business when the hood is on!
I ended up winning without even having a big battle though because we were all ready for bed.

MARCHing Along

"Faith is not about everything turning out okay. 

Faith is about being okay no matter how things turn out."

We visited Josh and Marissa in Logan and also helped EmmaLee move into my Mom's townhouse in PG a couple weeks ago.

 We went with Whitney and Lucy to Chick-Fil-A for a playdate and Kasen decided to take all of is clothes off in the play room! He had his pants and socks off and was 1/2 way done getting his shirt off before I got to him!

Made a pie for Pi Day on 3.14

Keeping tradition alive over here! With a good ole apple pie, ala mode of course!

Tai has learned both how to glare and that she loves necklaces! She wore all of those necklaces all night and every time Reagan tried to touch them she got a stare down from Tai. We'd take them off to untangle them and she's sit down and put them all on again one by one!

She loves to twirl, march and bounce while she dances, still has the rosiest reddest cheeks and wraps her head up in a blanket to fall asleep. Her thumb is all gross and cracky from sucking on it too. We tell her to take it out of her mouth and she just looks at us with her side eye and laughs, such a stinker.
She can say: No, mama, daa, nana, baby, beep, dow (both down and up), uh-oh, bah, go go, spoo, and sna (fruit snack).

 I love that at 15 months she still puts her feet on her face.

 We had a play date with Hazel and made a few more puppets! Kasen wasn't into the puppet show part of it though.

That day I laughed harder than I can remember laughing for a long time! I was crying!

We were just sitting in the front room talking when I hear Kasen say, "I will catch you Hazel!"

Kasen has his arms out and Hazel jumps off of the couch and it was like in the movies when you know the person at the bottom could in no way actually catch the falling person.

They pancaked right down onto the floor, but didn't even cry. They just sort of rubbed their heads and got up. Haha Soon after that though Kasen did some sort of running jump thing off of the side of the couch and dove head first into the floor while flipping over. That made him cry and all he could say was "Hazel didn't catch me!" She was nowhere near him so why he thought she would catch him is hilarious. Poor kid.

The next day we had a play date with Axel and Truman and they made a big fort together that was super awesome!

I always love watching Kasen build his train tracks too. Hearing him say, "All aboard!" and "Choo choo" has got to be one of the happiest little things for me. The creative ways he finds to build his train tracks are so impressive to me too!
Also, I just noticed that his front tooth is chipped! I have no idea when or how it happened.

 Watching him play in his hat and boots seriously pulls at my heart strings.

 The life of a kid, ammi right?!

Watching super wings and sippin' on chocolate milk is serious business.

 He's my bud. Always wanting to take pictures!

He will hit his head on the floor to make himself cry when he's upset, which needs to stop real fast,
but oh how I love him! Kids are such fun little people!