Summer is Fast Approaching

The boys are done school this Thursday by noon and then we are heading to the coast for five days.  Rick had a few days off in a row and suggested we go on a trip.  We rented a beach house and the Schoenrocks will be joining us.  I am so excited to get away and was super excited that Blake wanted to join us.  Kayla graduates this weekend and I thought for sure he would not want to miss it, but he is all for going with us.  Blake and Kayla took the kayaks out Friday night to the lake and had a fun time.  She will be supposedly heading to college in Corpus Cristi which is 3 1/2 hours away in the fall and so I sure hope that happens.  Caden is finishing up his tennis career and they have a tradition of water wars.  That pic is of his team and they went against the seniors.    School has been basically a waste of time for the month of May but they need the kids attending to get their money.  Both boys exempted most of their finals so this week they only go on Tuesday and a bit on Thursday.  I cannot believe they will be seniors but I am ready for it!
We had a momma dear have a baby in our backyard and she is often teasing Gracie.  They will race each other and have lengthy stare downs.  Gracie is also on squirrel duty but since the squirrel is not much smaller than she is, she doesn't intimate them at all.
Our Relief Society issued us the 100-day challenge of reading the Book of Mormon before Labor Day.  I guess there are 100 days between memorial and labor day.  I am excited for this for all the sisters.  It was perfect timing for me, I had just finished and had started over last week so I am a little ahead of the schedule, but know the power that reading from that book can bring into our lives and I am excited for the sisters to see miracles in their lives.

We had a talk on hunger and thirsting after the gospel and not becoming complacent in our lives.  He likened it to a trip he just took to Disneyland.  It was his first time and his two little girls' first time and they were filled with wonder at everything.  His sister in law had been several times and so she didn't have that same feeling and would just go to her favorite places not noticing the amazing things all around.  He said that often we lose our sense of wonder of the gospel because it has become something we take for granted.  I really liked that,   I read a quote recently on marriage but I likened it to our conversion and that it needs to be a daily decision.
"On your wedding day, you're choosing to love that person forever, but that is just the beginning.  You have to continue to choose them every day.  Marriage isn't what it once was to a lot of people, and if you really want it to work, you're not making a one time vow.  You are committing to a lifetime of remarrying that person every day."

I think we are seeing so many people fall away from the church because they are nor choosing every day to do the small and simple things that protect us from the adversary.  In my reading today, Nephi was telling his brothers about the rod of iron " I said unto them that it was the word of God; and whoso would hearken unto the word of God, and would hold fast unto it, they would never perish; neither could the temptations and the fiery darts of the adversary overpower them unto blindness to lead them away to destruction" 

Our speaker ended with a quote from C. S. Lewis that I had not heard before, "You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you. It is easy to say you believe a rope to be strong and sound as long as you are merely using it to cord a box. But suppose that you had to hang by that rope over a precipice. Wouldn’t you then first discover how much you really trusted it? Only a real risk tests the reality of a belief."

I love the quote from Elder Larry Wilson this past conference "We need the Holy Spirit as our guide in calm waters so His voice will be unmistakable to us in the fiercest storm."  I want to trust that rope over the precipice because I have proven the rope when there wasn't as much at stake.