Roy the generous neighbor.

We left Friday for Acorn Cottage and I'm happy to report we had a great time - even without a single picture taken! Saturday morning at about 9:00 a.m. the same man who had brought us wood the last time we visited, pulled up in his white pick-up truck and began unloading a good amount of nicely chopped wood for us. Craig went out to meet him, and they talked for several minutes as he helped unload. I was very touched at his generosity in neighbors that are his strangers. What a nice man, and a good pre-cursor to this sunday's talk...

I felt a bit of guilt today as I sat listening with one ear on the stake conference speaker, and the other on one of my girls asking me to help her draw a heart. As moms, we learn to multi-task and I think I was doing a pretty good job of it today! The guilt came from an ongoing delema or question I've been asking myself as of late; What am I doing for others? I can't remember all of his talk, but I guess that's what happens when you have kids. The part that has stuck in my mind went something like this: It's not how many or how high a calling you've had or have - it's how many people have we helped, changed, affected, or served personally. I have felt very self-absorbed lately, with all our concentration on these fertility treatments. They've taken us away from our Sunday meetings, a time when I've really felt of service to my ward. This talk was a good reminder to me of the importance of our own selves and how we can affect those around us for good or for bad. I promise I am not preaching, this was something I really needed to hear!

This weekend I finally finished Mansfield Park again. The last time I had read it was in 1995. I had forgotten many details of the book, since the movie-if you didn't already know - is strikingly different than the book. One major flaw in the movie, is that Fanny's brother William is non-existant, extinct! They wrote him from the movie entirely and combined the imagination of Catherine Morland in Jane's Northanger Abby book. I felt a little dooped that I hadn't remembered these things when I first saw Mansfield Park. The BBC version, I remember following the book well however.