Gratitude

Dallin's often uncooperative about getting his picture taken, but every once in a while I'm able to catch him anyway. I love this picture because it's such a natural smile for him.

The talks in sacrament meeting today were about gratitude. It's a topic I love and have been working on over the past year. I remember a talk in general conference in April 2007 about the importance of gratitude - not just for our obvious blessings, but also for our trials. It's easy to be grateful for our trials after they're over because we can see how things worked out and how much we've grown because of them, but the conference talk challenged us to be grateful for our trials while we are going through them so that they will be lessened. I decided I would try to do that. It wasn't long after that that someone threw a rock in our big living room window one night while we were watching a movie and totally freaked me out. I remembered the talk and tried to be grateful for the experience, and it really did make it seem like less of a big deal. A few months later Brennan was diagnosed with multiple food allergies, and I left the allergist's office in tears as I thought of all the foods he would never enjoy, including cake and ice cream for his first birthday. My dad came up and gave us blessings, and in them he told us of all the many blessings our family would receive because of Brennan's condition, similar to the word of wisdom. I have tried to find aspects of his allergies to be grateful for, although it's been hard to do. So anyway, I have a strong testimony about expressing our gratitude. Here are a few of the things I am thankful for today:

1. air conditioning
2. the ants are gone
3. Brennan has starting folding his arms during prayers - it's the cutest thing
4. my sharing time went well today
5. leftover Chinese food for dinner tonight - talk about easy
6. the primary water activity was successful yesterday
7. we haven't lost the hamsters we're watching for our friends, although they have escaped a couple of times
8. Tyler slept through sacrament meeting today - he really needed it
9. Dave cleaned out the garage while we were at the primary activity yesterday to make room for our new exercise equipment - he even vacuumed the whole floor

10. Ibuprofen