January 3, 2016
Well it has been exciting around here the last two
weeks, Christmas has come and gone and mine and Chad’s anniversary has come and
gone. Now that those celebrations are
over it’s time to settle down to normal life.
It sure is nice that normal life is very enjoyable too.
For Christmas Eve we had Brenda, Chad’s mom, and a
few of Chad’s siblings--Shannon and Aaron and kids, Deserie, Hayley and Nick,
and Anna and Tyler--over for a Chinese food dinner (our tradition) and to act
out the Nativity. It was fun to host it
in our home for the first time. Brenda,
Deserie, Hayley and Nick stayed through the night as well and were able to open
gifts with us on Christmas morning. That
was fun! It was wonderful to experience
the excitement of Christmas with my kids.
I was sure glad that at 6:40am on Christmas morning Karalee whispered,
“Is it time to open presents yet?” because I had woken up a few minutes before
that and knew I wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep because of excitement. Each year I worry about being able to spoil
the kids a little bit, but not too much.
When I expressed that to my friend Remy Neher she wisely said that “spoiling our kids once in a while is a way
we moms spoil ourselves too”. I
agree with her.
Chad and I went on a trip to Cancun to celebrate
our 15th anniversary this week.
Chad has been planning it and researching and making all the
arrangements for tours for several months now.
Planning vacations and looking forward to them is how he deals with
stress at work. Chad was able to make
the trip much cheaper than if we had just booked through a travel agency. We left on Monday morning. We arrived in Cancun with no trouble around
5:00pm Cancun time. We checked into our
resort and found things to be pretty nice.
Our room did smell pretty musty, but it was clean and comfortable
enough. I’m sure in a tropical area I’m
sure it is hard not to get a musty smell.
The white sand beach in Cancun was AMAZING. I loved the feel of the sand beneath my
feet. It was as smooth as white flour. It was so nice to squish between my
toes. It is almost as if I did that
every day I would never have any stress.
I know that is not true but it was very therapeutic and relaxing. We went on two tours while we were
there. By the way, Mexico Adventures
tours are done very well. They have nice
buses and great tour guides.
Our first tour was on Tuesday. We went to see Chichen Itza a Mayan
Ruin. It was a wonderful tour and the
ruins were incredible. However, when I
learned that the Mayan’s used that place to offer human sacrifices I was quite
creeped out at that place. I could
imagine people screaming or worse yet, people cheering while someone was being
sacrificed. Before had the tour I was
picturing in my mind that it was a Nephite temple, but after having the tour
and learning about the sacrifices I learned it was more of a place of
wickedness built by people like those mentioned in Moroni 9:7-9.
On Wednesday we took a ferry over to Isla de Mujeras. We opted not to go to the underwater museum
there because it was 30 feet deep and we didn’t think we’d be able to see much
at that depth, instead Chad found a national park where for a few dollars we
could snorkel. It was fun and we saw
several tropical fish and even a barracuda!
The waves were really big that day though and I felt quite sick to my
stomach for about 30 minutes after we finished snorkeling. I guess I got sea sick.
Thursday we took our second tour to Xel-ha.
(Pronounced shell ha). It was SO much
fun. It was a natural water park with a
rope swing, small cliffs to jump off, a rope course over the water, a tight
rope, zip lines, amazing snorkeling, a bike path, a lazy river, all-inclusive
all you can eat food, and a few other things.
It was run as well as Disneyland.
Friday we were supposed to return home. That morning we took a city bus into town to
get some souvenirs for the kids. Our bus
ride back to the resort was CRAZY. It
was packed. There were well over 100
people packed in a bus with 45 seats. People were in the isles, on the stairs
by the door, plus there was a lady sitting on the dashboard holding her little
baby. Chad and I were standing near the driver. I'm sure this is old hat to
people who've lived and traveled in foreign countries but it was sure
adventurous for me.
We were supposed to fly out of Cancun back to
Phoenix at 5:10 on Friday evening, but after we boarded the plane they noticed
a big gas leak during their final tests before we left the gate. Lucky for us
they completely canceled the flight and booked us a stay at a fancy resort, the
Gran Caribe. We got a free extended
vacation! However we were at the airport
for a long time before all the arrangements were made so we were only at the
fancy resort from about 10pm Friday night to 7:30am Saturday morning. Our flight back home was a little nerve
racking at the end. We started our
descent and were quite close to the ground when all the sudden the pilot pulled
the plane back up and we had to circle over Phoenix again and then we
landed. I don’t know what happened, my
guess is there was a problem with the landing gear or the runway wasn’t
clear, but it sure gave my stomach a lurch and made me very anxious. I said a lot of very sincere prayers during that
time!! Out second approach at landing
was fine and we had no trouble.
We are so very
blessed that we can pay all our bills, save money for emergencies and then save
some for fun trips like our trip to Cancun. I feel so spoiled.
It was sure nice to give all our kids a big hug
when we got back home yesterday. Since
it was our anniversary and the birthday of our family we took the kids out for
burgers and ice cream then we all went to bed early since we switched to 8:00am
church today.
In closing today I’ll share some scriptures and a
thought instead of a quote.
1 And it
came to pass in the fifty and fourth year there were many dissensions in the
church, and there was also a contention among the people, insomuch that
there was much bloodshed.
2 And
the rebellious part were slain and driven out of the land, and they did go unto
the king of the Lamanites.
3 And it
came to pass that they did endeavor to stir up the Lamanites
to war against the Nephites; but behold, the Lamanites
were exceedingly afraid, insomuch that they would not hearken to the
words of those dissenters.
4 But it
came to pass in the fifty and sixth year of the reign of the judges, there
were dissenters who went up from the Nephites unto the Lamanites; and
they succeeded with those others in stirring them up to anger against
the Nephites; and they were all that year preparing for war.( Helaman 4:1-4)
I have noticed that when people leave the church
today many times they follow this same pattern that the Nephite dissenters
chose. Those who leave the church stir
people up the anger against the church.
I have an old college friend on Facebook that does this to my churchy
posts a lot. Chad says it is so they can
feel good about their decision by getting other people to agree with them. I hope that I will have the courage to be a
peacemaker; to understand others and to kindly share the things that make me
happy and to not tear other people down.
Criticizing, mocking, stirring people to anger, and tearing people down
take no courage.
Love,
Mindy
P.S. Here
is a video I made for Chad for our 15th anniversary. It is kind of like a highlight video of our
life together:
You can see pictures of our Cancun trip here:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10153766213002332.1073741853.792032331&type=1&l=c818e04b88
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