Friends

I wish people would tell you what they want or need you to do. I hate sitting back and watching friends go through hard times. I rack my brain to try to figure out what to do. Send an encouraging, “You can do it” email? Call them and leave a message letting them know that you were thinking of them? Make them cookies? Set up a time to hang out? It is so hard to know.  My intent is not to bother them or give them someone else to stress about. I just want to be there for them.

The problem is that we are all different and our needs/wants greatly vary.  But all people, no matter how similar they may seem, are so different! Yet we are all the same. We all want someone to care and magically be able to know what we need of them as friends. But most of the time we don’t even know what will make us feel better.

But the truth is, there are important moments in each of our lives when we need to cry ourselves to sleep, hash it out to our journal, or just think about what is going on in our lives by ourselves. We must pass through these hard times alone.  It’s a time where we grow and progress, or at least put ourselves back together.  

So I conclude that “being there for them” means that we are willing and ready to help them when they are ready for you. This means you might have to sit back and watch them struggle and cry. As much as I want to, I can not force my “help” on them.

Therefore, my dear friends, here is my commitment to you:

 “I care about you. I want to be there for you. I don’t like to see you sad. I know that you might not know what to tell me to do to help you feel better, but I’ll try as many things until you do. I’ll talk through what is worrying you until we’re blue in the face (and then some). I’ll take you out to dinner so you can feel spoiled and eat some good food. I’ll give you hugs and tell you that you are good enough and let you cry. I’ll sit and watch a funny movie with you to help you forget about how you feel. I’ll put on my running shoes and run a few miles with you until you feel better. Or if you just need time to yourself, know that I’ve been praying for you and wishing you the best. Just know that I love you and I am ready to do whatever it takes to make you feel better. I'm here.”

“What’s New with YOU?”

            First of all, we would like to apologize for not updating our blog for quite a while. We appreciate the chance to keep up to date with all of you, and we know how antsy we get when people we love (YOU!) do not update for MONTHS! So, we will try harder to be better at keeping those we love informed on what we are up to. We have kept ourselves busy these past few weeks. We both have logged countless hours at work.  But we are grateful for our weekends together where we can recharge and get things done.

Since the weather has tried to be nicer, we have been able to start hiking. We love it! A few weekends ago, we went on a fun night hike with our friends Curtis & Shae. It was such a beautiful night! We can’t wait to do more of that kind of outdoorsy things this summer.

We planted our first garden! It’s so cute! We went to the plant store and we were astonished at all the different kinds of tomatoes there were! We decided to get three different kinds and experiment a little. We also go some cucumbers and peas. We are now eagerly waiting for them to be ready to eat. We’ll keep you updated!

We have also been working hard to get into shape and take advantage of being able to run outside now. We don’t exactly LOVE running, but we do enjoy doing it together and feel the results of a good workout.  We are signed up to run a 5k at the end of the month. Here’s the link if you feel like joining us!

 http://intermountainhealthcare.org/communitysupport/giving/uvfoundation/events/af-half-marathon/pages/race.aspx

This past weekend we went up to Green River, Wyoming. Christopher worked on many sewing machines to make all the quilters in Wyoming happy again. There was a big quilting convention called “Quilting on the Green” and so there were lots of sweet ladies waiting for their machines to work smoothly again. While we were there, we were invited to a thing called a “Trunk Show”.  Melissa thought that Christopher would enjoy this event and said that we are excited to go only to find out it was a few ladies showing off many of their quilts.  Surprisingly, it was pretty interesting. Here are a few that caught our attention.

We’ve also been experimenting with some new recipes. The latest and greatest one that we have made is Pig Cake. It is easy to make and deliciously good. Melissa got the recipe from the Pioneer Woman website. We just love it! You’ll have to check it out and try some of the recipes for your self.                          http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2011/01/pig-cake/

That's all for now. Check back soon because we have lots of fun things planned.