I love you Uncle Harley

"It's only when we truly know and understand that we have a limited time on earth--and that we have no way of knowing when our time is up--that we will begin to live each day to the fullest, as if it was the only one we had." -Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

This past Tuesday my mom's brother, Harley Ray Adams, was in an ATV accident and returned to live with our Heavenly Father. Uncle Harley was, and still is, an amazing husband, father, grandpa, brother, and uncle. He was the life of any party and he will truly, truly be missed.

We all grieve in different ways. Some people get angry, some get quiet, some want to be around people, some want to be left alone. Some people blame God, and some turn toward Him. I deal with it by writing. I wouldn't normally do this publicly, but I need my family and friends to know the testimony I have of eternal life...so here goes.

I can't tell you why my uncle was taken from the earth so suddenly and unexpectedly. I won't tell you that I'm completely at peace with it. I don't know why things like this happen. But I do know that our Father in Heaven knows. I know without a shadow of a doubt that He has a hand in our lives. He loves us; that I know for sure.

I also am so grateful to have the knowledge that I have of the Gospel. It helps me at times like this to know that we have a Savior who has suffered for us and knows what we are going through. And because of our Savior, Jesus Christ, if we live the way we are supposed to, someday, we will be with our loved ones again. I know that this is true, and this experience has only strengthened that knowledge.

Please pray for my family. Pray for my mom and her siblings. Pray for my cousins and their husbands and children. And pray for my aunt. Pray that they will have peace and comfort and understanding. And please know that I love you.

Jubilee of Trees...yes in July :)

So for those of you who don't know, with the help of my mom and sister, I'm decorating a tree this year for the Jubilee of Trees. (If you don't know what the Jubilee is click the link to learn more.) Alan's bank decided to sponsor a tree and he asked if I would design it. Not knowing at the time that I would be delivering a child at about the time it needs to be done I gladly accepted this challenge thinking it would be a fun project. I think it will be a fun project...as long as I get it done before I'm 8-9 months pregnant...so I'm working up some ideas right now. One of my ideas contains this...

the top of a can of soda.

Here's how it looks still connected to the can of soda...I need a lot of these. I don't have a certain number that I need...just hundreds to thousands. So here is my plea: If anyone has family, friends, neighbors, long distant cousins or anyone else who would be willing to save bottle tops for me I would be very appreciative. If you're willing to do it let me know and once a week or so I'll get with you to pick them up from you. I know it's a super odd request, but what I'm doing really is going to be neat.

The theme we've chosen for the tree is Coca Cola. So if anyone has any ideas on where I can get some really cool Coca Cola decorations/props/anything Coca Cola for a reasonable price please let me know.

Interesting Words

Lately Madison has been doing something funny with words. She's been putting two and three words together now for a while, but now it's like she's getting lazy and combining them. For example: whenever Madison see's a car or truck she just calls it a car. The other day Alan was describing the difference between a car and truck...it must be really difficult to tell the difference because she has just resorted to calling them all carcks. Carck: The combination of a car and a truck. The other word she says all the time is eedles...what does this mean...it means she would like to eat noodles. The funniest thing is that yesterday she had her cousin Garrett calling noodles eedles as well. She is quite the funny little thing, we'll see what else she comes up with.