After a year and a half, I am finally blogging again. Mark has missed the blog posts turned journal entries and asked me to begin again. It's not that I ever meant to stop... so much has happened in the last while... Oh my has it happened! A long, long, loooooong story for sure. AND it's not that I expect anyone to read these.. with so much social media it is way too challenging to keep up with blogs when you can just "tweet" and facebook instantly. This is really all about us and if it is amusing or uplifting to anyone else we are blessed!
So, of the many things, a simple pleasure that brought a lot of joy and blessings for obedience... the annual "obedience garden".
Early spring our stake decided to sponsor a community garden on a plot of land in our stake boundaries that used to be one of the chapels in our stake. It was very old and not up to seismic standards and would cost too much to bring it to that so they tore it down, plowed up the parking lot, planted grass and built a small pavilion. Mostly the dog-walkers enjoyed it because it was only accessible through a small gate.
It is now the host of nearly one hundred 4' x 8' plots that have been tended carefully since early spring. Mark kept encouraging this journal entry this weekend by taking photos of the harvest and repeatedly, though gently, saying, "These are for our family blog/journal." How could I not begin again.
So... here's to a new chapter... a new blogging/journal chapter in the life the The Family Raymond!!!
We hope all are well and happy! We love you so!
The gourds from our garden turned centerpiece for a few days...
Everything else... we've been harvesting and sharing beans and cherry tomatoes for weeks now but just harvested the carrots and onions this weekend. Made tomatillo salsa today... a first and yummy for a couple of novice tomatillo sauce makers!!!
I wish I knew why I feel this incredible yearning for cozy... cozy colors, cozy places, cozy pictures, cozy feelings, cozy everything... hmmmmm. I've wondered if it's the weather but that doesn't really seem to be the answer. It's much more than being warm and dry. Here are some photos that feel cozy to me. They all seem very peaceful. Maybe that's the real yearning... peace. 
God's peace! I had a dream a while back where I begged Heavenly Father saying, "PLEASE! Can we all come home safe now?" He hugged me and said, "Not yet." I think my yearning is really a longing for home! There! That's it! I've finally figured it out. I knew if I wrote long enough it would come! I just want to go home! Does anyone have any ruby slippers that I can click together 3 times and say, "There's no place like home!?" Of course I 
know the slippers that really matter are the pretty, little, white-satin ones with the bow that allow me to walk in the sacred halls of the temples where the real power to go home is! I LOVE the TEMPLE! I think I'll ask if I can move in! It feels so safe, and cozy inside those walls... I'm understanding more and more the prophecy that 
we would yearn to be in the temples day and night and to have our children with us there... for protection from the wayward, wicked, wandering world. I love God's peace! I pray He pours it out abundantly on all we love! God Bless!
