When it comes to living our lives, Christ doesn't make up the difference. He IS the difference.

It will be a long time before I am able to write 7 years and 8 months with regard to David's passing, but this day is memorable in more than one way. It has been 7 years today since Dave's father, Clayton Allred, passed away due to complications from a brain tumor. In the 4 years that I knew him, he had a profound influence on me. He taught me much about family and unconditional love. My favorite words that he always spoke were, "I love you and I'm proud of you." And I knew that he was. Dave and I were both the oldest, so our first year of marriage was very intense most of the time. (We both insisted that we wouldn't have to argue so much if the other would just concede their position.) But even amid our quarrels,regardless of who was right or wrong, Clayton always took the side of the in-laws. (Wise man. It's much easier to stay on the good side of the women.) It also helped unite our family. It was he who truly made me realize that I was a pa...

If you can believe it, this was our house just three weeks before we closed on it. Adam Lake performed a miracle getting us into our house before the holidays. We can't thank him enough. Dave and I both thought that we had to get into the house so that we wouldn't loose our interest rate, but that wasn't it. We had to enjoy making memories of Thanksgiving and Christmas together- for the last time. Here is an entry from my journal just three days after we had moved in. " You think it's all too much, and then it starts to rain. We moved into our house last Saturday. We had over 20 men show up ( most of them high priests) to help us move into our new home that we haven't closed on yet. Then, about 5 women in the ward came to help me unpack. It was amazing to have the show of support that we did. Additionally, my dad came down, brought Jacob's pirate bed, and helped us assemble Allison's castle bed. My mom also came down and was completely amazin...