Thursday, April 30, 2009

Life Constantly Continues to Move Forward...So Live it to the Fullest!

Wesley has developed a love for food, cars and chasing down poor defenseless animals Elmira (sp?) style. Here he is devouring one of Grandpa's famous waffles. He saw Grandpa take a waffle off the plate and had to help himself. He got a step stool climbed up grabbed the waffle and ran to hide from Sandy.



Christy Ann had her very first hair cut this week. Isn't she a doll? Auntie Christy Mikaela did a fantastical job. You should hire her to do your hair!



I had my hair done too just recently but rarely get behind the camera...so just imagine your best image of me with brown hair with copper highlights. It's still long. And I love it.

My sister Christy brought home a kitten a few weeks ago. My children adore him. Milo is what she named him, and Milo seems to fit him well. He is very curious and cute.

I am almost done with school. Six weeks left. About 4 weeks until graduation ceremony. Which by the way you are invited to attend!
May 30, 2009, 10am - noon, at the Provo Tabernacle 100 South University Ave. Provo, Utah
There will most likely be a gathering of some sort afterwards at my house. But due to this being a public blog will refrain from posting my home address. If you don't already have it and would like to join the after party (hehe) you can email me here.

I feel that in the past year I really have gained a lot of skill and knowledge that will help me to support my family and better our lives. There were many at the school who really helped me to make it here, but mostly Shellie. She is amazing. She always recognized me for being in class even though she knew of some of my hardships. She would even thank me sometimes. She taught me more than just massage, but also to not just "bend-over and take it." I have learned that if I want something that i have to take charge, not only do I have to, but I can. And that is something more valuable than any of the other amazing skills she has taught me. Thank you Shellie! I love you!

With Swine Flu sweeping the nation....

Here are some recommended oil protocols from Dr. Hill:
Swine Flu- On Guard & Oregano (used together on bottoms of feet or in capsules)
Alzheimers(from new research done by Dr. Lin's wife)- Oregano, Thyme & Clove
Anthrax- Thyme & On Guard
MRSA- Oregano (study just completed where oregano outperformed 18 of most popular anti-biotics for treating MRSA)

---------------------------------------

Monday, April 13, 2009

Bliss and Beauty in a bottle...

Save 10% on Geranium this month. www.mydoterra.com/blueoasis


Really, the more and more I learn and study about Essential Oils, Massage, Energy Work and other homeopathic remedies (or as my mother calls them my witch medicine), the more and more I look to western medicines.
When we go to the doctor, the average amount of time he spends in the room with you is about 15 minutes. He'll usually send you home with a prescription or samples of some kind of new drug. The new drug may help to "fix" your symptoms, but wont fix the problem. They may also cause damage to your kidneys, your liver, or both.
So, why not try something natural? It certainly isn't going to harm you.
I had a client come into me on a Friday night, she told me about her arm. It has been hurting for years. She's been on major pain killers. After evaluating her, I noticed that she had huge trigger points along the insides of her scapulas, her arms, and her serratus anterior. I worked out what I could and told her to drink a lot of water (nobody is drinking enough water, if you think you are, drink more!) and I also suggested she do some stretches. She came back a week later and we worked out some more, this time I applied some peppermint and some lavender to the places that were the most tense.
After about 4 sessions, she told me she was amazed that she had full mobility back in her arms. She said she had been on steroids for years to help with the pain and was so excited that she no longer hurt when she used her arm. She didn't feel she needed to use the pain meds anymore. It was a miracle!

While I still believe that doctors and western meds have their place, I think it is so important to use both the holistic practices along with the western practices. Can you imagine the miracles?

Sunday, April 12, 2009

None Were With Him



This is a beautiful and touching video to go along with Elder Holland's talk.

Saturday, April 11, 2009

Happy Easter!

This year as we have been preparing for the Easter holiday, I have had a lot of my thoughts on family and the Savior. I love being a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I love the blessings that come from knowing His true Gospel. I love knowing that even if I can't see the end of my journey, even when things get tough, He can. He knows that things will be okay.
As my divorce comes to an end, papers have been signed, now we wait of more paperwork and then the final Judge's decision, I have felt a peace come over me. But along with the peace of an end in sight, I also have felt lonely, stressed and overwhelmed with my trials in life. School, finances and children seem to constantly be at the top of my list. I have about 9 weeks left of school. I am so super excited. I brought home my client review sheets from the prior terms last night, and people seem to like me! I have a few returning clients, one who has had me come to his home to work on his wife, his daughter, his sister and brother in law and the neighbors as well as himself. This is exciting! But I don't really want to stay in Utah. I still dream of California. I am plan on sending out resumes next month and hoping to have some interviews lined up so I can take a little vacation up there and figure some things out. Money always seems to be lacking. No matter how hard I try to save, there's always some kind of emergency that seems to come up. This week I am supposed to be going in for eye surgery. I am no very excited for that. My parents and my siblings have been a great help to me as I have been going through this trial, but I think my need of a babysitter sometimes becomes too often and too much. I don't like leaving my children any more than they like to watch them on a constant basis. Sometimes I think it would be easier if we were living on our own. But then the reminder of "we have no money" always seems to come back and bite me in the rear. Charise, I am starting to be on the "lets win the lotto train" with you!
Even with these struggles, with seem to be more and more common with most people I know, I am trying to stay positive. I have an amazing family, really I do. I have great friends and neighbors. Jasper is an amazing little companion, I'm really glad that I have him. And most importantly I have my testimony and the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost. My faith seems to be the best and most reliable thing to hold on to. I think I'm getting rug burns in my knees ;).
This years Conference was great. I got a lot out of it. This was one of my favorite talks, and I thought it would be nice to share, especially at this Easter Season. I hope you are all doing well!
Love always, Aimee.

None Were with Him

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland
Of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles

Trumpeted from the summit of Calvary is the truth that we will never be left alone nor unaided, even if sometimes we may feel that we are.

Elder Jeffrey R. HollandThank you, Sister Thompson, and thanks to the remarkable women of this Church. Brothers and sisters, my Easter-season message today is intended for everyone, but it is directed in a special way to those who are alone or feel alone or, worse yet, feel abandoned. These might include those longing to be married, those who have lost a spouse, and those who have lost—or have never been blessed with—children. Our empathy embraces wives forsaken by their husbands, husbands whose wives have walked away, and children bereft of one or the other of their parents—or both. This group can find within its broad circumference a soldier far from home, a missionary in those first weeks of homesickness, or a father out of work, afraid the fear in his eyes will be visible to his family. In short it can include all of us at various times in our lives.

To all such, I speak of the loneliest journey ever made and the unending blessings it brought to all in the human family. I speak of the Savior’s solitary task of shouldering alone the burden of our salvation. Rightly He would say: “I have trodden the winepress alone; and of the people there was none with me. . . . I looked, and there was none to help; and I wondered that there was none to uphold [me].”1

As President Uchtdorf so beautifully noted earlier, we know from scripture that Jesus’s messianic arrival in Jerusalem on the Sunday preceding Passover, a day directly analogous to this very morning, was a great public moment. But eagerness to continue walking with Him would quickly begin to wane.

Soon enough He was arraigned before the Israelite leaders of the day—first Annas, the former high priest, then Caiaphas, the current high priest. In their rush to judgment these men and their councils declared their verdict quickly and angrily. “What further need have we of witnesses?” they cried. “He is [worthy] of death.”2

With that He was brought before the gentile rulers in the land. Herod Antipas, the tetrarch of Galilee, interrogated Him once, and Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor in Judea, did so twice, the second time declaring to the crowd, “I, having examined him before you, have found no fault in this man.”3 Then, in an act as unconscionable as it was illogical, Pilate “scourged Jesus, [and] delivered him to be crucified.”4 Pilate’s freshly washed hands could not have been more stained or more unclean.

Such ecclesiastical and political rejection became more personal when the citizenry in the street turned against Jesus as well. It is one of the ironies of history that sitting with Jesus in prison was a real blasphemer, a murderer and revolutionary known as Barabbas, a name or title in Aramaic meaning “son of the father.”5 Free to release one prisoner in the spirit of the Passover tradition, Pilate asked the people, “Whether of the twain will ye that I release unto you?” They said, “Barabbas.”6 So one godless “son of the father” was set free while a truly divine Son of His Heavenly Father moved on to crucifixion.

This was also a telling time among those who knew Jesus more personally. The most difficult to understand in this group is Judas Iscariot. We know the divine plan required Jesus to be crucified, but it is wrenching to think that one of His special witnesses who sat at His feet, heard Him pray, watched Him heal, and felt His touch could betray Him and all that He was for 30 pieces of silver. Never in the history of this world has so little money purchased so much infamy. We are not the ones to judge Judas’s fate, but Jesus said of His betrayer, “Good [were it] for that man if he had not been born.”7

Of course others among the believers had their difficult moments as well. Following the Last Supper, Jesus left Peter, James, and John to wait while He ventured into the Garden of Gethsemane alone. Falling on His face in prayer, “sorrowful . . . unto death,”8 the record says, His sweat came as great drops of blood9 as He pled with the Father to let this crushing, brutal cup pass from Him. But, of course, it could not pass. Returning from such anguished prayer He found His three chief disciples asleep, prompting Him to ask, “Could ye not watch with me one hour?”10 So it happens two more times until on His third return He says compassionately, “Sleep on now, and take your rest,”11 though there would be no rest for Him.

Later, after Jesus’s arrest and appearance at trial, Peter, accused of knowing Jesus and being one of His confidants, denies that accusation not once but three times. We don’t know all that was going on here, nor do we know of protective counsel which the Savior may have given to His Apostles privately,12 but we do know Jesus was aware that even these precious ones would not stand with Him in the end, and He had warned Peter accordingly.13 Then, with the crowing of the cock, “the Lord turned, and looked upon Peter. And Peter remembered the word of the Lord. . . . And [he] went out, and wept bitterly.”14

Thus, of divine necessity, the supporting circle around Jesus gets smaller and smaller and smaller, giving significance to Matthew’s words: “All the disciples [left] him, and fled.”15 Peter stayed near enough to be recognized and confronted. John stood at the foot of the cross with Jesus’s mother. Especially and always the blessed women in the Savior’s life stayed as close to Him as they could. But essentially His lonely journey back to His Father continued without comfort or companionship.

Now I speak very carefully, even reverently, of what may have been the most difficult moment in all of this solitary journey to Atonement. I speak of those final moments for which Jesus must have been prepared intellectually and physically but which He may not have fully anticipated emotionally and spiritually—that concluding descent into the paralyzing despair of divine withdrawal when He cries in ultimate loneliness, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”16

The loss of mortal support He had anticipated, but apparently He had not comprehended this. Had He not said to His disciples, “Behold, the hour . . . is now come, that ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone: and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me” and “The Father hath not left me alone; for I do always those things that please him”?17

With all the conviction of my soul I testify that He did please His Father perfectly and that a perfect Father did not forsake His Son in that hour. Indeed, it is my personal belief that in all of Christ’s mortal ministry the Father may never have been closer to His Son than in these agonizing final moments of suffering. Nevertheless, that the supreme sacrifice of His Son might be as complete as it was voluntary and solitary, the Father briefly withdrew from Jesus the comfort of His Spirit, the support of His personal presence. It was required; indeed it was central to the significance of the Atonement, that this perfect Son who had never spoken ill nor done wrong nor touched an unclean thing had to know how the rest of humankind—us, all of us—would feel when we did commit such sins. For His Atonement to be infinite and eternal, He had to feel what it was like to die not only physically but spiritually, to sense what it was like to have the divine Spirit withdraw, leaving one feeling totally, abjectly, hopelessly alone.

But Jesus held on. He pressed on. The goodness in Him allowed faith to triumph even in a state of complete anguish. The trust He lived by told Him in spite of His feelings that divine compassion is never absent, that God is always faithful, that He never flees nor fails us. When the uttermost farthing had then been paid, when Christ’s determination to be faithful was as obvious as it was utterly invincible, finally and mercifully, it was “finished.”18 Against all odds and with none to help or uphold Him, Jesus of Nazareth, the living Son of the living God, restored physical life where death had held sway and brought joyful, spiritual redemption out of sin, hellish darkness and despair. With faith in the God He knew was there, He could say in triumph, “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.”19

Brothers and sisters, one of the great consolations of this Easter season is that because Jesus walked such a long, lonely path utterly alone, we do not have to do so. His solitary journey brought great company for our little version of that path—the merciful care of our Father in Heaven, the unfailing companionship of this Beloved Son, the consummate gift of the Holy Ghost, angels in heaven, family members on both sides of the veil, prophets and apostles, teachers, leaders, friends. All of these and more have been given as companions for our mortal journey because of the Atonement of Jesus Christ and the Restoration of His gospel. Trumpeted from the summit of Calvary is the truth that we will never be left alone nor unaided, even if sometimes we may feel that we are. Truly the Redeemer of us all said, “I will not leave you comfortless. [My Father and] I will come to you [and abide with you].”20

My other plea at Easter time is that these scenes of Christ’s lonely sacrifice, laced with moments of denial and abandonment and, at least once, outright betrayal, must never be reenacted by us. He has walked alone once. Now, may I ask that never again will He have to confront sin without our aid and assistance, that never again will He find only unresponsive onlookers when He sees you and me along His Via Dolorosa in our present day. As we approach this holy week—Passover Thursday with its Paschal Lamb, atoning Friday with its cross, Resurrection Sunday with its empty tomb—may we declare ourselves to be more fully disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ, not in word only and not only in the flush of comfortable times but in deed and in courage and in faith, including when the path is lonely and when our cross is difficult to bear. This Easter week and always, may we stand by Jesus Christ “at all times and in all things, and in all places that [we] may be in, even until death,”21 for surely that is how He stood by us when it was unto death and when He had to stand entirely and utterly alone. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen. (http://lds.org/conference/talk/display/0,5232,23-1-1032-27,00.html)