It's All Worth It

Remember how one of my New Year goals was to grow spiritually and instill a love for Christ in my children? I got to thinking about that yesterday as Carlin made a hasty retreat out of Sacrament meeting carrying our crying, screaming, kicking son and I rocked Lillian in her car seat hoping she would sleep just a little bit longer.

Church is 3 hours. Three! Three hours in which I spend half my time pacing the halls with one child or the other. If I'm not pacing the halls I'm in the mother's room nursing. Our meetings don't even start until 11am and yet we are lucky to make it on time. Even with preparation the night before, (laying out clothes, packing the diaper bag) something is bound to happen Sunday morning that puts us behind schedule. To top it all off the 11am time period puts us right smack dab in the middle of lunch and nap times... Sometimes it seems so much easier to just stay home with the kids and tell Carlin to take notes for me.

Our daily family prayers and scripture studies should really be referred to as our daily wrestling match with Samuel. Seriously, I sometimes think thumping our son with the Bible would be just as effective as us reading it. Praying is often a shouting match against the crying. As for personal scripture study, I seem to fall asleep more often than not (and that's doing it during the day, i.e. naptimes). As for personal prayer, well, these days I'm praying ALL the time (mainly for patience).

I try my best at other things, like reading the Ensign and holding weekly Family Home Evenings, but I'm sometimes so exhausted it's hard for me to recognize the Spirit. And so that brings me to my pondering yesterday in Sacrament meeting when I found myself asking "is it really worth it all?" That's when an incident popped in my head from a few days ago. Samuel had pulled out my pots and pans and was "cooking." He dished his food into his little bowl and grabbed his spoon. As I watched he then folded his little arms, closed his eyes, and started babbling to his Heavenly Father. With what was an obvious "amen", he then proceeded to eat his food.

It was a quiet confirmation to me that yes, it really is all worth it.

Filler Post

So, I should be posting pictures and updating you on events like Lillian's blessing. But instead I wanted to do something a little more fun. Got this from Whitney's blog - thanks Whit.


1. What is your first name? Aubrey
2. What is your favorite food? Italian
3. What high school did you go to? Stillwater High
4. What is your favorite color? Fuchsia
5. Who is your celebrity crush? Richard Armitage
6. What is your favorite drink? Fruit smoothies
7. What is your dream vacation? Europe
8. What is your favorite dessert? Cookies
9. What did you want to be when you grew up? An astronaut
10. What do you love most in life? Carlin
11. What is one word that describes you? Motivated
12. What is your hope? Happiness

My Picture:


If you want to do it too:

1. Type your answers to each of the questions below into flickr search
2. Use only the first page of results and pick one image
3. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the image into here to create a mosaic of the picture answers

Good luck! Have a fabulous day!