Sacrifice!

Today in Relief Society we had a great lesson on Sacrifice. It was a wonderful lesson that I really enjoyed and I wanted to jot down a few of my feelings. As Mothers we are constantly sacrificing whether it be our time, cooking, cleaning, listening or all other manner of things. Sometimes quite frankly I don't want to cook or clean, but I do it because we need to eat and I love my family. It was mentioned that we as women don't share our true feelings with each other for fear of judgement. I know I am guilty of this. I have felt lonely many times needing someone to talk to but not wanting to be judged so I keep it in. Why is it that we women are so hard on ourselves? I was talking to Mike yesterday about how tired I am for apologizing for myself whether it be I'm sorry I'm not as smart as others or my house isn't as clean as others or whatever it may be. I am fed up with apologizing for being me. I am different from other people and that's okay. We as women need to give ourselves a break. We sacrifice so much for our families and I am glad to do it, but I also need to be true to myself and accept my imperfections and be proud of being me. I know this is a lot of rambling, but I want to make an effort in 2011 to stop apologizing for not having a College degree yet or any thing else. I want to be more confident and look at my accomplishments instead of imperfections. Mike was saying yesterday that he thinks a lot of women are afraid to show confidence and that it's okay to say I think I'm pretty neat. I will continue to cook for my family and do the laundry because I love them, but I'm going to try harder to be happy with who I am today not what I hope to be. No more being afraid to open up to others about my feelings. If they want to judge then I guess we're not that great of friends. I am not perfect, but I try really hard to be the best I can be. Let's all pat ourselves on the back for all the good we do.

Christmas 2010 Part 2

Here's a few pics from our Christmas festivities. Like I said earlier we had Mike's family staying with us so we had lots of fun playing games and eating of course. There was some serious rock band going on too. We hosted the Keil Christmas party at our house. We decided we would incorporate the ugly Christmas sweater into our party. Cheryl also decided we needed some flashy necklaces to go with our beautiful sweaters so we designed our own creations and boy were they festive. We had a lot of fun picking out our most fabulous sweaters. Eric did a fine job with his sweater, but the candy cane turtleneck underneath really sealed the deal. Cheryl picked out the same sweater as Eric, but added the sparkly sweater underneath. I made Mike purchase his sweater out of the womens section. It had ginger bread houses on it and said something about Happiness is Homemade. He thought it needed some manning up so he added a flannel shirt with it. We had a great time laughing at each other.
We played games on Christmas Eve and had a fun time just being together. Then Christmas morning I woke up at 6:00 and waited for the kids to come get us. They never came so finally at 7:00 I woke them up. I guess it is official our kids have grown up. Here's some pics of Christmas morning:



We were so grateful to get to spend time with our family and create more memories. Mike and I did say after it was over we wish we hadn't been so busy so we could have enjoyed it a little more. Next year I need to find a way to be a little more organized so we can truly enjoy the month of December and reflect more on the true meaning of the season.

Christmas 2010

Our Christmas was a success. Of course our December was hectic and non stop, but we had an enjoyable time. Mike's Mom and Sister came and stayed with us for the month of December. We had a fun time spending the holidays with them. We attempted to take a family picture for our Christmas Cards, but that was not successful. You would think a family of four could pull off one decent picture, but it wasn't meant to be. Here's a look at one of our attempts:


We went to the Caldwell/Breinholt Christmas party. That's a yearly tradition for my side of the family. We added a white elephant exchange, which made for some good laughs. Here's some pictures of the family.



It's always so fun to get to see our family. I wish it could happen more ofter, but we are all so busy that it just doesn't happen as ofter as we would like. I'll add more later about our Christmas fun.