The Beauty of Life

Hello everyone! We are back and are rested up from our very busy past couple of weeks. We had a blast with my family and Justin's family here with us for their spring breaks and our 4 days in Guatemala were just too short! I was surprised at just how beautiful Guatemala is! I hope in the next few days I can post about all that.

But for today I wanted to write down some thoughts I had this morning while taking a nice, long morning stroll with Ethan. Usually I don't take walks for exercise probably because of my high school volleyball coach's mentality of, "It's not a good work out unless you are pretty much dead" which has pretty much stuck with me since then. So I have taken the time to run with the stroller around La Primavera (the neighborhood where we live) but I usually focus on "how much longer" and "why is it so incredibly hot here" rather than the beauty around me. So today, because I successfully convinced myself that I was too tired to get up and work out this morning, I decided to take a long walk with Ethan around the neighborhood. I realized once again, just how beautiful this earth is especially if we do our part to beautify it. There are places in Mexico (im sure we have all seen them) that are super dirty, dusty and trash filled. But where we live, there are people out everyday watering the trees, planting and taking care of flowers, painting their houses and fences, sweeping their steps and doing other things that have to do with taking care of their lawn, and it is absolutely beautiful! Although the owners of these houses are never the ones actually doing the work, I realized today that I want to put in that effort someday to have a beautiful and cared for home. I want to get on my hands and knees to plant a garden, plant flowers, mow the lawn and have big, beautiful trees growing in our yard. I think that our Heavenly Father wants us to beautify this wonderful earth by "dress[ing] it and keep[ing] it" and Im so excited to do so! When I see yards that are full of big trees and flowers I feel peaceful and that peaceful feeling is what I want to have in my own yard someday!

I know that I could definitely work on beautifying our apt right now until we get our own home but without a Michaels or JoAnns (or any craft store at that), it makes it kinda hard. So for now, I will have to just accept a clean home and dream of the day when I can make and have a beautiful yard! I was also thinking on the way home of just how lucky we are to be living in Mexico at this time in our lives. We LOVE living here! I'm so grateful that I have been given this opportunity to learn Spanish and learn to absolutely love the Hispanic people. They have so much faith and I have felt so surprised at how truly happy they are when they have almost nothing. Some live on dirt floors, no TV, no AC, bugs crawling everywhere and yet they are so happy and give thanks everyday for the work (which never brings in a lot of $, the good jobs are like $100 a week), their families and the blessings that they have. We have truly learned a lot living here and it will be an experience that we will never forget. Wow, I'm already getting sad and emotional to leave this place and we have a little over a year left! Anyways, those are just some thoughts that I had on our long walk today and thought I would share with you guys. Moral of the story, walks may not be a high cardio workout, but it sure is good for the soul and a good time to do some thinking about life every once in awhile. :)