sunday recap

Today was a nice and slow Sunday.   My poppy seed muffin adventures (did I tell you that I'm attempting to make breakfast this school year??) turned out pretty tasty.  I've decided to first try out an unhealthy version before adding in the weird replacements and critiquing myself for being a bad cook.  If I can make it yummy with a ton of butter, I can then move onto whole wheat and applesauce.  Step 1 is complete.  Yummy, unhealthy muffins are done.  Half of them are frozen for breakfast on the go while the other half are for breakfast tomorrow.  The best part? (Besides the taste!) I made them while we cooked dinner so it didn't take up extra time or mess up the kitchen again.  I love that I have daughters that enjoy pitching in when it involves food.   :)

The darling sister missionaries from the neighboring ward took Rachel with them on their missionary efforts.   She  got to bike around town with them and they happened to be eating dinner at Rachel's friend's house.  I'm actually a little jealous.  Lucky girl.   Our sisters (yes, we are just adopting them into our ward) are kind of amazing.  Seriously.  We have been so blessed to get to know them more.  I love sisters!!  There is the tall and lovely Sister D, whose family we stalked while in Utah.  They are just as amazing as their daughter.  Surprise, surprise.  Then there is the short, sassy and sweet halfy (Asian) that was baptized as an 18 year old.  And is now out serving The Lord.  Basically, they're overflowing with the light of Christ, which makes them pretty darn fun to hang out with.  We can't hang out with elders quite so readily. I'm sure they're overflowing too.  It's just different.  

Ok, so all of that was lovely.  Church was wonderful.   Our walk to the park?  Fantastic.  The most exciting part of the day (the poppy seed was a close second) was receiving my personal progress award in young women's today.  I have spent the last three years serving in young women's and have slowly plucked away at this achievement program that is designed to help our 12-18 year old young women strengthen their testimonies and grow closer to their Heavenly Father.  It has experiences that the young women work on in 8 different values.  We do 6 experiences and then a 10 hour project that incorporates that particular value.  Yes, this is designed for teenagers.  I may not actually be much of a teenager but I am a daughter of our Heavenly Father, and I'm pretty sure it was designed for them.  ;) I have been blessed by the strength that this program has offered me.  I have been able to build new habits, work on breaking a few bad ones (killing my diet coke habit/exercising was my knowledge project!) and have learned a lot while studying my scriptures.  The biggest take away that I got from working on my personal progress was that we are blessed when we obey.  I know there are some young women out there that don't like working on personal progress simply because they don't like being told what to do.  Yeah.  There is kind of a lot of commandments, standards, guidelines and advice that is given to us through our prophets and scriptures.  I've found that when I try my hardest to listen to do this and obey, I am blessed in miraculous ways.  I love the saying that says "obedience brings blessings.  Perfect obedience brings miracles." This doesn't mean that we're perfect, but instead that we are trying are darnedest.  I've seen countless miracles as I have worked on my Personal Progress and I'm sure that I will continue to see more as I work on it again.  (With 6 girls, I think I should finish it at least twice as I work with them, right?