New Year!

I mentioned this before but quite some time ago Ben gave me a priesthood blessing that encouraged me to continue documenting my family history, which for me, is blogging.  For those of you not familiar with the ins and outs of my religious beliefs, a priesthood blessing is like a prayer where someone who holds the priesthood, or the authority of God on the earth, places hands on your head then pronounces a blessing basically giving guidance and direction to the person receiving the blessing.  There is faith required and simply put, I believe that the words spoken through a priesthood blessing are the words that my Heavenly Father would speak to me if He were on the earth today.  At the time of the blessing I took a few notes to help me remember the counsel I'd received that day, and I've reflected back to those notes in attempt to keep an eternal perspective and focus in my life throughout this school year.  I found it so strange during the blessing and in the days following that the Lord would encourage me to continue writing about our family.  I have loved documenting our family happenings and couldn't foresee why that instruction was important in the moment...of course I'd keep up with my family history.  Alas, the Lord knew what I didn't.  That Ben's schooling and stress would place a new burden on me.  That the nausea and exhaustion of pregnancy would be more lingering than expected.  That my littles would need more attention during the day, and that in the end, nothing short of a heavenly dictate would urge me to catch up and keep on in taking, organizing and documenting our family history.  Finally, in the last few weeks I've put forth a little more effort in getting caught up and to my surprise, found hurdle after technological hurdle in my efforts to blog.  First our computer didn't work.  It's currently still in safe mode, but working-ish at the moment.  Then, the external hard drive that stores all of our pictures crashed and now I can only access our many years of pictures on Ben's mac laptop (even though the hard drive was only ever used on a pc).  After getting Christmas recorded a couple weeks ago we went on a trip to Disneyland (more to come) and upon returning I discovered that my camera battery and charger had gone missing.  It wasn't at the hotel, or in the luggage, or in the car.  Gone.  Mid update, I had to order a new one before I could access any pictures from January 1st on.  So. Darn. Frustrating.  In all seriousness, I feel like Satan himself is conspiring against me!  Which, in turn, makes me wonder if this little blog and the photos of our family adventures are more important than I even realize.  So again, I'll start again, still in need of a photo organization system, but persevering nonetheless.  Last week Meilani said "Mom how come our blog doesn't have anything since Christmas on it?"  I didn't even realize that she looked at it that often, but somehow, reliving the fun and memories drown out the crying and frustration of daily life and remind us all that the struggles and strife are worth all the love and affection.  Alas, Happy New Year!  Just ignore that it says April on the date stamp when you're reading.  We'll get back up to speed in a jiffy.  Well...pending any further technology deterrents from Lucifer. :)