Lessons Learned 2010

I loved posting my blessings last year. It was fun to look for things that were blessings and to notice things that I may not have otherwise. I am truly blessed! I am humbled by how blessed I am and how especially blessed I have been recently to have received so many blessings from my Heavenly Father. I am going to try hard to always try to recognize each day the blessings that I have in my life. However, there is something else that I have been thinking a lot about in my life and that is learning. I have a confession to make. I am not someone that thrives on learning. I did okay in school and I graduated from college. I have a degree and I am proud of it. However, once I was done...I was done. I could have gone on to teach-but raising our family became my priority and I don't regret that decision for one minute. I have loved every minute of being home with our children and taking care of them-and Jeff. I have learned a little about this and that mostly to do with my jobs at home. I love constantly learning about the gospel so I have continually participated in that, but anything else...not so much. The other day in Relief Society, the teacher was asking us about teachers in our lives that influenced our life for good and the first teacher that came to mind was my dad. He was a seminary teacher, I even had him for my early morning class in high school. He was a great teacher in the classroom-but he was even more incredible in our home. He is someone that was always learning!! When I say always-I mean always. His first love was religion of coarse. He always had a clipboard, a copy of one of the standard works, and a red pencil and a pen during the day at home while I was growing up. It was his job-so he put in the hours by studying. He loved all subjects though. On any given day I would catch him reading any random book-but never novels! They were always instructional books or biographies, autobiographies, etc. He soaked up as much information as he possibly could in his life here on earth. He even taught himself how to write Hebrew, sign simple sign language, play the guitar and piano, sing harmony in a choir, recognize the flowers of Yellowstone, etc. etc. One of my favorite things to do in his later years was to sit and listen to he and Jeff talk about some topic in history that they both knew the most random facts about. He had amazing retention of information and an incredible drive to learn. My favorite however are the simple things that he taught me through his testimony of the gospel. He was great at lectures-don't get me wrong-but my favorite learning experiences were when he would help us learn things by his example or his simple explanations of things of gospel truths. On more than one occasion, I remember him stopping in mid sentence and telling us that the spirit was there and just to listen and recognize it there. He helped me recognize and be excited about the spirit and how it can testify to you and to others of the truthfulness of the gospel and our Savior Jesus Christ. I don't necessarily love to pick up a book and learn about something-but I know that that is something that is required of us to do while we are in mortality. So...this year I have been pondering blogging about things I have learned. They could be spiritual things, or random facts, or things that I have learned about life, or myself. Whatever it is, it would be something that interested me for a while so much that I would want to share it with someone else. Here's to Lessons Leaned in 2010.