Happy New Year!

Hey Everyone! Can you believe that it is New Year's Eve already and
that tomorrow on the 1st of the year it will be my 11 month mark in
the amazing Washington Kennewick Mission!?!? Crazy! I am absolutely
loving it!

It was so great to see and visit with everyone on Christmas. I am
sorry if I seemed weird. It was very hard for me to talk to you and
see you and want to be with you all, but at the same time I wanted to
be here and not thinking about home (for the most part). I am so happy
to be able to tell the people here when they ask me how my family is
doing that I can say that they are growing physically, spiritually,
and eternally! I am so happy about the babies and I want to scream
with excitement every time I think about it. I am even more happy that
they are being born into the new and everlasting covenant of marriage
sealed by our loving Heavenly Father! I rejoice when I think about
Jakob and Sara getting ready to be sealed in the Temple! It is getting
so close! :) I love families and I love that they can be eternal. I am
giving up my family for 18 months but I get to have you forever and so
it makes everything worth it!  I often tell people that most
missionaries and their families are blessed when their missionary is
serving, and while that is true in my case as well, I also feel like I
needed the blessings that I received before my mission to get me out
here so now I am paying it forward to my Heavenly Father.I love that I
have the opportunity to share this knowledge with families here in
Vancouver, WA!

Okay, enough with the sappy stuff...I got some pretty amazing stuff
for Christmas I am will thank you all personally for it in handwritten
snail mail letters, but I wanted to say THANK YOU one more time via
email/blog!

Our Christmas was great! We ate too much and had a great time with
some families in the wards. We were able to play a couple games
(apples to apples and uno attack). It was lots of fun! I got to hold a
life size barbie doll Cinderella so it made me feel like I was holding
one of my 3 princesses. It was a great way to ease my longing to hold
a child. lol. I am telling you this rule is killing me slowly! I told
Sis.S, when I saw her yesterday to invite their family to the New
Year's Eve party, that I would be breaking that rule when I get
transferred out of this area because I WILL be hold baby girl C and
taking pictures! haha! She is just so darn cute and I love that
family!

So about the New Year party and the baptism! The Combs are inviting a
bunch of people over to play wallyball in their court and we are
invited too. I am so excited! We played for about 15 minutes on Saturday night to let off some stress that had built up about Sondra's
baptism. The baptism was great and it went perfectly (kinda) we had a
few mix ups with the speaker and the piano player and it didn't go
quite like it would if I had planned it, but the Elders did a great
job and I am grateful that they are taking care of Sondra in their
ward. The Brother that baptized her said that it was like trying to
baptize an air mattress she was so buoyant. It was so funny! But
he got her all the way under the first time! Playing wallyball I must
say was quite hilarious because Sister Mecham is not a good volleyball
player. Tonight should be a blast. We will be going to bed at 10:30 as
usual and we have to be home with our car parked at 6:30. We will
probably set the alarm to go off at 11:59 so we can say Happy New Year
and go back to sleep. haha! Gotta love being a missionary! :)

We are also going hiking today at Multmulma Falls again. It is about
37 degrees outside so this should be exciting I guess. Sister Mecham
is terrified to go because I had already told her how hard it was for
me the first time. We can do it though. I am excited to see it in the
winter instead of the summer... I am sure it will look completely
different! Sister Combs is driving us, so that will be fun as well!

Well I gotta get going! I love you all so much and I am excited to see
you again on Mother's day! I am still praying about the date I will
come home on, so don't make any plans for July or August just yet...

I will send pictures next week! Love you!