Reasons

There are 19 reasons why it will be a lot harder for me to leave on my mission this time.

My Parents

My Best Friends- Jenesse and CristinaMy GrandparentsMy Siblings: Sis-in-Law Sarah and KeithMy Friend JennieThe Jones Family

My Girls -The Skousens

I have grown so close to all of these people and my relationships with them have strengthened so much since I have been home. I don't want to leave them all! Yes, all of these 19 people were here the first time I left, but it was not the same. I love them even more now and I thrive on being around them. They bring JOY into my life and make me HAPPIER than I ever thought possible!! Leaving them will tear very deeply at my heartstrings.


Why I am going anyway:

Jesus Christ

I only need one reason to go and it is to serve the Lord and bring others unto my Savior Jesus Christ. The gospel of Jesus Christ brings me so much happiness every day and I want to share that with the world. It will be a HARD thing to leave my family and friends, WAY harder than it was the first time, but I will go and serve the Lord and my family and friends as well as myself will be amazingly blessed because of it. My papers for my return are in and I am waiting to here from the missionary department. I could be leaving as soon as the first week in October. It seems like these past 4 and a half months have gone by so fast now that the time is actually here!! I AM GOING BACK ON MY MISSION!

"Healing Fields"

After we finished at the water park yesterday the girls asked if we could go and look at all the flags. Every year after 9/11 Tempe Beach Park has set up the "Healing Fields". It is such a neat display of patriotism and unity!!

3,000 flags, one for each person who died in 9/11- it truly is a breath taking sight to see all of those flags in one place blowing in the wind and standing as a brilliant reminder.

It was so neat to be there with the kids and see their reaction to it all. Both the older two girls right away recognized that this was a reverent situation and were very somber. Hailey liked to go around and look at the pictures on the poles and read the little blurb about the person who died. Once I told them what the stuffed animals meant at the bottom of the poles we went around the field looking for all of the ones with stuffed animals- representing the children who died in the tragedy.

The girls all got small American flags from a volunteer who was handing them out- Annie loved hers!!!

In front of the fields of American Flags stood this GIANT unity flag. It is about three stories tall and comprises all of the flags from every state. In the middle printed on the picture of the statue of Liberty is the names of everyone who died during 9/11.

The older girls loved finding the different state flags that they knew and were pretty much just in awe of the grandeur of the whole thing.



It was such a neat experience, especially with the girls and for me to have the opportunity to view it all from a child's eyes. I almost think the girls liked the healing fields better than the water park- ha who knew?

Tempe Beach Splash Park

I took the girls to the splash park yesterday and they had a blast!!! Kiley seemed to love it the most~ here she is soaking it up under the waterfall

Play'n together- Hailey and Maicy were so cute, they followed Annie around and played with her the whole time

Such a good big sister

Water Slide!!! Kiley cracked me up, she would go down this thing a thousand times and each time she always landed on her bum in the pool of water at the bottom!!

Snack time equals goofy time, oh wait goofy time is ALL the time!!!

Tattoos

First off I want to start this post off by saying- I am a DORK!! Ha ha ok so let me explain. At work the other day I was trying to keep myself entertained and I found our prize box for the kids. I was digging around through all the junk and found a bunch of dinosaur tattoos in the box. I grabbed them and decided to put them on my arm. I got a little carried away and put them all over my left arm. I made a dinosaur sleeve! ha ha Well it was pretty funny at first and the kids thought it was pretty cool. Well some of the parents were a little concerned, I think a few of them thought they were real. I mean honestly what loser would really get a sleeve of dinosaurs tattooed on their arm?!? Ha ha so anyway I got a lot of weird looks, you should of seen the darty eyed looks I got when I went to Jason's Deli that night! lol

Well the real dorky part of this story comes when I had to take the tattoos off. I really didn't want to wear dinosaur tatoos to institute the next day so I took a wet paper towel and started rubbing it up and down my arm. Well all this did was ball up the gooey tattoo stuff and rub it into my arm hairs- one word... OUCH!!! Ha ha so my mom went and pulled out the Goo Gone (amazing stuff by the way) and I poured it on my arm and scrubbed the tattoo residue off! Then I had a bright red lemony citrus arm for the rest of the night! The moral of the story is don't be a total dork and cover your arm in temporary dinosaur tattoos!!

Look Who's Two!!

My Chubba Bubba is Two today!! I can't believe she is so big already! I love her so much and I am so grateful that she is a part of my life. She melts my heart with her smile and she constantly has me laughing! She loves to repeat things I say and I have a lot of fun teaching her new phrases!! ha ha the other day mom and I got her to say "my bad" instead of uh-oh! I just love that little girl so much!!

My Annie Girl!

This girl cracks me up!! Oh how I just love to hold her in my arms and cuddle with her!

I took Annie to the splash pad at Tempe Market Place the other day and she LOVED it!!

Lov'n the water!!

She would play for a while and then she would come running at me like this and give me a big wet hug! So cute!! One time she came running back to me and looked around and asked "where Stella?" ha ha she had gone with her cousin Stella to a different Splash Pad a few days before! Such a funny girl! Oh how I love her!!!! Happy 2nd Birthday Chubba Bubba!

My Third Nightmare

I have two nightmares when it comes to shopping. I usually LOVE going shopping with my mom, it is always more fun with her around. Sometimes I will go shopping by myself, but then about 10 minutes after being at the store I will pull out my cell phone and call my mom and the conversation will go a little something like this:
Me: Hi Mom!
Mom: What's up Kris?
Me: Mom the next time I decide to go shopping without you please stop me!
Mom: ha ha Why?
Me: Because shopping without you is NO fun and I hate it!!!!!! I guess I just forget and so I attempt to do it and every time, the same result, I am not happy!

So suffice it to say, I like shopping with my mom and any time she asks if I want to go it is a rule of thumb that I will say yes, but there are two exceptions to that rule. Number one- if the intended place to go shopping is a Micheal's, Joanne's or Hobby Lobby I will say NO!!! Wandering around in a craft store for over an hour is torture!! The other exception is the grocery store. I do not, repeat do not like shopping at the grocery store with mom!!! One trip takes forever, she says "oh I just need a few things" but then we end up going down every aisle and fill the cart to capacity!! Both the craft stores and grocery stores are my two biggest nightmares, but this week I have added a third to my list!! As if two was not enough!!!!!

Any ideas as to what my third nightmare might be? I will give you a hint... it involves this

Have you figured it out yet? I'll make it easy for you....
Here is a shot of the outside of this wretched place

That's right there exists a store devoted solely to buckets, rows and strands of these evil little things!!

Now why you might ask would I even say yes to going to such a store as this. Well in all of my naive innocence I thought it would be fun to pick out some beads. See my grandmother is quite an amazing necklace maker (not a word I know, but ask me if I care) and she loves to make jewelry for me.

So I accompanied mom and Grandma to this absolutely awful place!! The beads never ended, it went on and on forever so it seemed!! Mom and grandma seemed to sort through almost every bucket and pick out just the right beads! I was going crazy waiting for them. So I have found my third nightmare!!! Beads Galore! -An extremely evil store in which I will be forced to lose my mind and wish I had never crossed the threshold of such a wretched place!

4 Months

It has been exactly four months since the day I came home from the MTC on Medical Release. I just wanted to take the time to let you all know how I am doing and also bear my testimony to you. I know that although coming home after only 6 weeks of my mission was never in my plans, it was in the Lords- and that is truly all that matters. It has been a very tough 4 months and I have had a lot of challenges, but through them all I have grown up a lot and also changed a lot. It was the Lord's will for me to come home from my mission. He knew that I needed to grow and change before really serving my mission. I am so grateful for this opportunity I have had to be home and am also SO SO SO excited for the opportunity I have to put my papers in (for the second time) next Sunday. I am going to go back out on my mission a better person with greater desire to serve. Throughout this whole process of being home my desire to serve has NEVER decreased, only strengthened!! The reason this was possible was because I have a testimony. I know that the Lord wanted me to come home but I also knew that He wants me to serve a mission. I was so at peace with that and was able to put all of my Faith in him and His plan that he has for my life, without that there is NO WAY I would be returning as soon as next month!! I love the Gospel and I know that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is truly Christ's church restored on the earth once again. I am forever grateful for the power of the atonement and the knowledge that I have that my savior Jesus Christ suffered for my sins and all that I have gone through and has felt all of my pain- I am never alone no matter what I go through and that is the greatest blessing I could ever recieve.