My reasons to be grateful

Number one.  My husband.

We had to drive from Rexburg to Spokane on my birthday last Sunday and he STILL somehow managed to make it special.  The night before we had stayed at Christie & Jeff's.  I started out on the couch with Luke laying next to me on the floor.  In the early hours of morning, I lay awake with all my thoughts consumed with the pain in my back.  Jeff woke Luke up early to give a blessing to someone in his ward, when he returned, I was still up..... knowing I wouldn't be able to fall back asleep, he made some room for me next to him on the floor.  And then, while rubbing the pain away in my back, and as he was slowly drifting back to sleep, he whispered, "Happy birthday my love."

All of his actions that night - going to give a blessing to a complete stranger, taking care of me, and wanting to be the first to wish me a happy birthday - made me fall in love with him all over again.  How did I get so lucky??

Number two.  Answers to prayers.

Luke's work schedule has required that he work every Sunday evening.  We hate that.  Our ward met at 11:00 am so he never got to stay through all 3 hours.  We have been praying very hard that he might be able to switch with someone, or for something else to open up.  We knew with the start of the new year that our ward would switch to 1:00 pm and then he would hardly be there at all.  Well, we found out this past week that our whole stake was to meet together today for just sacrament meeting.  We thought that strange, but were glad to have one more Sunday we could attend church together.

So we're sitting in sacrament meeting, all the while wondering what this special meeting was for, when they announce that there will be significant ward boundary changes!  Starting next week, we will now be in the Silver Lake Ward that meets at 9:00 am!!  We could hardly believe it!  Now we won't have to drive separately AND Luke will get to stay through all 3 meetings!!  We really feel it was in answer to our prayers.  Particularly because Luke had already asked EVERONE at his work if they would be willing to switch days with him and not one person could.  We are grateful for tender mercies.

Hightlights:

Did I mention Luke has an interview in California next week for PT school??  We are praying everything goes smoothly.

Also, I will blog tomorrow on this past weekend.  Luke dedicated the whole day to me for my "birthday" celebration since we couldn't really do anything for it last week.

Happy 2014!!!!!  It's going to be a good one!!!!