God's Kindness in Our Lives

As most any of you who read this probably know, last week was the General Conference for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Although it was not easy for me to watch as closely as I would have liked, given our two boys, I did hear a few messages that really touched me. The one that left the greatest impact on me was a talk by President Henry B. Eyring (newly called member of the first presidency of the LDS Church).

His talk, which I encourage you to read for yourself by clicking on the title of this posting, was about remembering God's kindness in our lives. I am definately guilty of being the type of person that has so many blessings that I tend to focus more on the times when things don't perfectly fall into place, rather than focusing on how often I am blessed beyond my capacity to truly appreciate.

One of the things President Eyring mentioned was that for a period of time he kept a journal each day of ways that he say God's hand in his life. He found that as he tried to think of an entry each night he recognized even more ways in which he was blessed.

I'm not ambitious enough to try to write in a journal every night, but I do want to strive to recognize God's kindness more readily in my life. I will also try to continue to share some of the Lord's "tender mercies" with those who read this regularly. I do find that as I try to think of things to blog about, much like President Eyring thinking of ways he was blessed, I find that I recognize more often how many special moments with which my life is filled.

Today, I'd like to reflect on my 3 biggest blessings from my Heavenly Father. My family! I am truly grateful to have such a wonderful wife who loves her Saviour and tries hard to keep me on the right path.

I am also so grateful for two healthy boys. Tyler has such a glow about him and is turning into a loving and caring little person. I love watching him learn from his pre-school, music and church classes. His imagination is soaring and he has a great sense of adventure. He is also quite thoughtful and will often pause to tell Jamie or I how much he loves us. He watches Jamie and I so closely (too close at times) and is the king of funny faces (sometimes on purpose sometimes not). I often love just to watch him in peaceful slumber.

Marcus is really at a cute age. He can't quite crawl yet, but he moves around. The last month or so he has almost always been happy and smiley. He tries so hard to communicate and loves to talk on the phone (quite the opposite of his brother). His laugh lights up a room and he has to be the best eating baby ever (he will eat anything!). He also has really cool hair whenever he first wakes up.

Here are two video examples of my boys. The first one is Marcus pretending to talk to his Grandma Renae on the telephone. The other is of Tyler pumping iron. He has watched Jamie on several occassions work with dumbells in our basement so he was pretty excited when we bought him a couple of 2 lb dumbells of his own.