Birthday and Easter

Happy 29th Birthday to me!! Yay! It has come and gone and now I am 29 years old. Nothing else has changed. Trisha made me an awesome birthday cake and invited some of our friends over to celebrate with us. The cake was a delicious double-chocolate-coke cake!

Then we headed out to Salt Lake for the Easter weekend. We had an easter egg hunt, we dyed easter eggs, we hung out a lot with family, we went to dinner at Zupas and watched "Wild Hogs" with some of my siblings. The Easter bunny visited Sam with some new toys and gave Trish and I lots of candy. It was a really fun weekend.

Sam in his Easter outfit playing with the pony that I named "Nasty, The Pony"

So just before Christmas, our Stake Presidency issued a challenge to read the entire Book of Mormon between Christmas and New Years. Both Trisha and I really wanted to do it so we set goals to do it. After about a month it became apparent that there was no way I was gonna finish it if I didn't find a way to fit my readings in every day and read even more from then on. So, I came up with a plan to find the CD's that I had made a while back of the BoM audio tracks. It took me a few days but I found them and I made more to complete the set and I determined that I would listen to the audio tracks on my way to work each morning to catch up and stay current with the challenge. It's not my favorite thing to do. In fact, I hate listening to people speak at me while I am in the car or otherwise (and it really annoys me that the man narrating says "Seth the Lord" instead of "Saith the Lord"). Nonetheless I really wanted to complete the challenge and make the scriptures a part of my day, everyday. So I continued to listen and when I fell behind I would listen on my way home from work too. Many times I would not realize the CD had restarted and I would listen to the same CD over again until I finally realized I had already heard that before. Anyway I got to the Book of Ether and I realized that the schedule that someone had given me had miscalculated the date of Easter. I started to listen to my music again on the way to work and the way home, cause I had plenty of time to finish it. Well, as we were driving back home from Salt Lake on the night of Easter sunday, it suddenly dawned on me that I had not finished the challenge. I instantly tuned back to the CD and hoped that it was on Moroni 9, but remember only getting to Mormon. To my surprise this CD got me to Ether 11. However, I had never made the last CD to get me to the end of the book. I was pretty mad at myself for not making the last CD and for not just finishing the challenge 4 weeks earlier when I was on a roll. But it was too late to do anything about it. So, I have finished the Book of Mormon three days late. Does that mean I am 3 dollars short? I hope not. I think I still reaped the blessings of listening to and reading it. I think it still had an impact on my life and the days that I read it. I know that it is true and I am very grateful for the opportunity to re-read it from cover to cover and to finish it around Easter time to remind me of the infinite blessing that I have because of my Savior, Jesus Christ.