So last week I'm dreaming away in my bed, in my dream I'm snuggling this really big super snugly cat when it starts to wiggle around trying to jump out of my arms smacking me. Meanwhile my dear sweet husband is dreaming that he is wrestling an alligator. I wake up and needless to say TJ was the big snugly cat and I was the alligator.

Today was one of my favorite days! It was a super wake up call that sounded like this, "GOD LOVES YOU ELIZABETH CONNOLLY and He's been trying to show you that but you need to raise your sights higher than the 30 degree angle you've been set on for the past few months". So it wasn't quite a 30 degree angle, but it was like God got out his salt shaker of blessings and started shaking it over me like bland potatoes (I like salty potatoes) and then just to make sure they were salty enough shook it a few more times. Daniel and Lori were sealed this morning, it helped me remember that I am bound to my husband, it does not matter if he is at work or school, I'm never separated from him or from my Father in Heaven. It also helped me see that I am a part of something much greater, greater than I can wrap my mind around. I was about to call it my earthly mind but I know that my mind is set on something much higher than earthly things. I was able to see how grateful I am for the family I married into. They have taught my husband and I how to have an excellent marriage, something far to rare. There are so many people without good examples who do not know what it means to learn to love someone. Some I've decided live unhappily while most these day divorce. I know there is a better way than both of these and intend to apply it everyday. I know there is strength in those covenants we made that help us succeed at life and our marriage as we apply faith. I know that families are for us to learn and to learn to have joy in the journey. Joy in the journey requires work, all kinds of different work, but work, not ease.
As I sat with my hubby listening to the guitar teacher of his youth perform beautiful music with other people whose desire is to lift and inspire through their music I watched the dragonflies dance in the perfect summer eve breeze and thought wow this is heaven on earth. I thought of the beauty of those people inside and out, they truly have gifts and missions in life with bringing beauty to other people's life. I was thinking how much I wished I had that gift when my husband looked at me with his big shinning brilliant blue eyes and said "your beauty blows theirs out of the water", I'm grateful it does to him because that all that matters, I know I'm beautiful, but being Greek I will never have small facial features or perfectly straight blond hair, and so I'm my own type of beautiful and that is just fine with me.
We walked to the place my husband first new he wanted to marry me, a place for me that is filled with all the faith, hope, and dreams I think I have ever had or will ever have. He has made all my dreams all the desires of my heart come true and I know that God knew he would and it has made life all the more amazing. As we lay in the grass I thought God is so mindful of every thought and detail of my life, I really am His daughter and He takes care of me like a Queen. I do feel a little spoiled but I think that is a father's job. It makes their daughters want to be worthy of that kind of love and spoiling.

I've been trying to end my other blog and start this one but it's been hard. However I am just going to dive in. Currently I am quarantined for swine flue. I wish I was better prepared with painting supplies and a sewing machine but I have neither and am not aloud to leave.

Lately I've been thinking the easiest way for me to keep a journal is on this blog thing. Granted my most private and sacred memoirs will be kept elsewhere. I've decided to post a memory or two from the past as well as the present.
Let's see my earliest memories are ones I have longed to preserve for sometime. I grew up the third of four children. Being the first daughter and granddaughter, having curly golden-blond hair, and dancing for everyone merited me a lot of adoration as a young child. I remember my brothers and cousins helping me "fly" as they carried me over their heads as super girl. I remember wishing I knew more words to be able to communicate to my brother Adam. I remember my parents packing us in the station wagon a couple hours before bed with our pillows and blankets all rolled out so we could sleep and they could drive in peace to my grandparents. I remember getting to their house and after having read books about grandmas, asking my yia yia why she didn't have gray hair anymore. She took great offense to this as she was a rather glamorous woman with what I remember being black hair and had never missed a hair appointment therefore never having been gray in her whole life. I remember dancing for her to a music box in her front room. I remember her rocking me like I was a baby in a rocking chair and me crying because I wanted my mom. I remember feeding the birds bread crumbs and watching one of them get attacked by a cat, yiayia said "oh it's time to go inside". I remember my uncle with his afro teasing my yia yia about eating dandelions. I remember reading a cabbage patch book eating cereal on the floor and seeing a huge rat run behind the radiator, I thought it was a cat, but as I have gotten older now recognize it was a rat it's thick tail still haunts me and I wonder if no one had come in the room if it would have come and eaten cereal with me. I remember our Easter egg hunt and giving my yia yia her money back that I found in me egg she said "oops we must have left it there on accident, you can keep it", we never had money in our eggs at home. I remember where she kept her playing cards and she gave me a set of them that had a card missing. I remember where she kept bingo. I remember her telling me never to open the attic door because bees would come out and get me. I regret never going up there. The basement was another story but my memories of that are much later in life so you can hear about them then.
As for today:
I cruised down to Pleasant Grove all by my lonesome for one of my best friends Lori. She's marrying Daniel. There story is a long one but I will tell you my part of it. I can't remember when I met Daniel but he's as he said rough around the edges but as I say it with a heart of gold. Lori I met way back when we were 19, she had a cute skirt on at church and was new, and her roommates talked about me like I was the socialite or something as she tells me. We ended up being in nursing school together a painful time in which we did lots of running, eating ice cream, and studying but little sleeping. Anyway Daniel and I were buds over the years, he would always help me at work and sit by me at church. People always thought we were dating so I started to distance myself from him. One day when I hadn't seen him for a while I went to his families house. They informed me he didn't live there anymore and that I would not be wise or safe to go see him. So of course I went to see him. I decided to leave the elderly center Lori and I were interning at early and wanted to take Lori with me but got a very distinct prompting not to. I walked up to the top floor of many flights of stairs and got weaker and weaker up every one of them. I heard coughing and decided to leave a note for Daniel instead. Later on I found out what was going on there which is again not my story to tell but would have been life threatening to have entered upon.
About 2 years later as I was on my mission Lori mailed me a letter letting me know she was struggling and about to get a tattoo. It was one of the worst days on my mission, I wished she had gone on a mission when I had. A couple months later she wrote me again one of the happiest days of my mission letting me know she had been dating the guy who gave her a tattoo, Daniel, and that he was overcoming a lot as they dated, they were going to church together. At that point of my mission I was serving in a singles ward in Las Vegas and I felt that my faith, prayers, and energy on the lost youth there were also strengthening those I loved the most at home. One point before my mission I felt really guilty for not being a better friend to Daniel, I told the Lord I would do anything to help him come back and I have dedicated that period of my life serving in Vegas to Daniel and Lori. After my mission Lori moved away, Daniel still came to church. One Sunday the man who payed for my mission spoke in sacrament, I explained this to Daniel and when we all met we cried, it was like each one of us understood the role we had as instruments in the Lord's hands all working together to help each other it was beautiful.
Lori and Daniel will be married for time and eternity in the Salt Lake Temple July 10th!