Happy Fall, Happy October, and Happy General Conference!

Provo Canyon

Happy fall and happy October! I love Provo in the fall, and I get super nostalgic every time I think that we just had our last summer here, this is our last fall here, our last football season here, etc. But it's fun too that all of it is Lydia's first fall, football season, etc. so that makes things fun! :)

I'm so glad we won the game last night! :D

Another great thing about fall is General Conference! October and April each year, we get to hear from the Apostles and Prophet of God! This October the Prophet, President Monson, encouraged us to be examples and shine as lights in the world. I love him so much and am thankful for his dedication.

There were lots of talks about how to find answers to gospel questions and what to do if you have doubts or concerns. It made me think about how up until about a year ago, I believed that the men and women God calls to lead us in the Church are all perfect (no one ever taught me that, but for some crazy reason that is what I thought). Obviously that makes absolutely no sense. No one was perfect except for Jesus Christ. People can be made "perfect in Christ" or whole (which is what perfect means in Hebrew) through grace, but we still make mistakes and need to take the Sacrament each week. This applies to all of us, even God's leaders.

God told Moses to command water to come out of a rock. When Moses hit the rock to get the water to flow instead, God still let the water flow from the rock. Moses wasn't suddenly evil, or removed from his position as prophet, but he didn't do exactly what God commanded him. Joseph Smith lost part the manuscript for The Book of Mormon, which obviously was not what God wanted, but he was still a prophet of God.

What I do know is that Jesus Christ lives, and He is the head of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I know this because I prayed to know if The Book of Mormon is true, and I know that it is. I know that God has given His power of the Priesthood again on the earth and that there is a Prophet, Thomas S. Monson again on the earth. He is not a perfect man, but he is a man called of God and I can know that the words he speaks are from God if I pray about it and receive my own witness from God that his words are true.

Those are some of my thoughts after General Conference. :)

Lydia and I watched the General Women's session together for the first time! I know she's not 8 yet, but it was so fun! (she always sucks on her dresses now:)) Mitch was at a man's night out with pizza and games, it was was just mommy and daughter time!

We get more mommy-daughter time each day as we have our scripture study lesson. I will read to her out of The Book of Mormon, The Bible, and use lessons from the "Behold Your Little Ones" manual. Elder Bednar says that even infants can respond to the Spirit as we read them The Book of Mormon, and Lydia and I enjoy it very much.

Here I let her look at my scriptures once but soon she wanted to lick it! :D I had to move them, but i thought it was cute that she was literally "feasting upon the words of Christ." ;)

During Conference, we were at Mitch's parent's house and celebrated his mother's birthday!

Here's grandpa letting her lick a strawberry:

Grandma feeding her squash:

Lydia sucking on her favorite toy:

And on an apple--which she held on her own for the first time!:

And sucking on her little toes!:

Last week we went on a walk along the Provo River trail where we took our engagement pictures this month, 3 years ago! It is so beautiful there!

The Provo River

Mitchy and I on the bridge.

Smiling baby Lydia

The three of us on the trail

So I am finally fulfilling my dream of writing/illustrating my flamingo book, The Green Flamingo!!! Here is one of my sketches:

Here is my first painting for it! I'm learning how to use watercolor correctly. I'm used to using acrylic but decided to go with watercolor for this book, but this painting still looks like it was done with acrylic! All well! My kind neighbor Katie is helping me learn better how to use watercolor and I'm watching youtube tutorials all the time.

Also, speaking of flamingos, we finished Tom Sawyer and started reading The Swiss Family Robinson, and it is SOOO different from the movie! They shot and killed a flamingo! :(

I seriously cried. Usually I read the girls' lines in the book, but when the mom said how tender the meat was because it was an old flamingo, I let Mitch read that part, there was no way I could! We are enjoying reading it though, even if they were flamingo-killers!

Anyway, Mitch joined an intramural soccer team with the Elder's Quorum in our ward :) He has so much fun and we had a blast watching him! It was funny because we played against a single's ward and there were all these girls next to us watching the guys play while a bunch of us mothers were watching our husbands play. :)

We finally bought some jackets and a warm winter coat for Lydia, but we didn't know we'd need them that chilly night! Luckily Tamra from our ward had an extra one just Lydia's size! We loved the little ears!

Lydia has been getting a little bored with the toys we have at home for her. There aren't very many and the most interesting are these stacking doughnuts:

But when I went to my sister Kay's house for a visit this week, Lydia tried out her Exersaucer!!! She LOVED it, bouncing around and playing with the toys! So we went to Babies R Us to find one, but couldn't find the perfect one we liked. There was a Finding Nemo one that had a lot of potential...but not much was interactive on it, you could just look at the characters. We found one that we loved but it didn't have the stretchy chords that let her bounce so much.

So we found this Rainforest one on Amazon and it was Prime, so we got free shipping! Woot! Needless to say we can't wait for it to come.

After shopping we went to one of our favorite parks at the mouth of Provo Canyon! We love the gazebos, grass and view of the mountains. It was so fun!