waking up in our new home

Today we woke up at 3:00 a.m. the usual for me since I can't get the time change right. I still think my days are my nights and visa versa. I like my new home. It is beautiful and with a lot of room for the two of us.

This year I have traveled extensively, starting the year kick off in Uruguay, continuing to Mexico, Peru. Utah, Idaho, El Salvador and Miami more than once. Houston, Denver and now Manila our newest home. There is nothing quite like the feeling of waking up into what it will become your home after having been away.  No more clothes inside my suitcase! I think that is the part that bothered me the most. Not having my clothes put away in a closet and drawers. Today for the first time we woke up in real bedroom not a hotel room and that felt wonderful.

The Dalai Lama said: "A loving atmosphere in your home is the foundation for our life." And like friend explained the other day: " Our home should be our place of refuge and our sanctuary in life it allows us to be far more courageous in venturing out into the world to explore and have adventures and experience new and exciting things we know that the safety of home will be there waiting for us to return to. It takes effort to create a good feeling in our homes. It takes exercise patience and kindness with our family. It takes some cleaning and organizing to make it pleasant and the smell of homemade bread or freshly bakes cookies never hurts either."

I hope there will be a good spirit felt in this home. I think you can always feel the spirit of peoples homes. And that spirit has nothing to do with how nice the hone is, or how luxurious the furnishings are. I think the spirit you feel comes from how the people living there feel about one another and how they treat one another within that home. Each of us can impact the spirit we create in our hone through our words and our actions and our prayers. When Daniel and I got married, Elder Jensen told us to remember to speak to each other in tenderness. "hablar con tiernos acentos."

In this new home, we hope to crated an atmosphere of LOVE here in our new home and to truly follow Elder Jensen's advice to speak to one another lovingly because after all, home is where my husband is and there is no place like home!