I'll be...

Home.How do you NOT pull over and take pictures of the breathtaking-ness???

 And then decide even the fence posts are beautiful?!?

And then still not be satisfied??

(These may have been taken while I was driving...my eyes were on the road!!!... just through a lens...)

My favorite road in the whole world the one-- home.

A friend of mine, laughed at me the other day when I mentioned our eventual plans to settle in Cardston. 

Oh yeah, she said, I almost forgot you're one of those Southern Albertan people with an inner need to "return to the homeland."

And I really am. 

I may not have ancestors who rolled in with the first wagon trains of LDS pioneers, or a recognizable last name (my parents are both converts to the church...and finally having lived in Glenwood almost 3 decades are close to not being considered "new")

Nope, I don't play the "who are you related to?" game very well...but I did spend my childhood looking at those mountains out our front window. I watched the prairie sky change, every magically evening, the sun melting and eventually catching fire as it dipped behind my mountains. 

That skyline, the immenseness and accessibility of the sky itself, the snow dusted fields, even the gusts from the ever so graceful arch of an eventual Chinook...they were mine. 

Part of who I was. And would always be.

I remember seeing Sister Ardeth Green Kapp's (also a  "Glenwood girl" and so instant hero of mine!) book Echoes from my Prairie, and thinking yes, there is something about this land that lets you feel like it's your. 

Really though,  I think I am the lands.

It owns my heart for sure.

I hear people complain about small towns and everyone knowing your business, but the reality is that with the knowing comes caring. 

I could blog away countless hours, telling stories of Glenwood people influencing, loving and inspiring me. Believing in me and through that example tenderly urging me to believe in myself.

Solid, faithful people, as constant in my mind as Old Chief itself.

To live, again, insight of Chief Mountain is on the dream list.

We'd attended a Sacrament meeting right after we were married, where this child's drawing was featured on the front of the program.

They'd entitled it "home".

It touched me enough that it's still in my journal.

So this Glenwood girl will often throw her kiddos in the van and drive that glorious road home.


Last weekend we went out to the Glenwood Nativity --yay! for the village that never changes adding some new traditions, and such a beautiful one.


Speaking of beautiful...
here's my Levi all bundled up for the show.

McKye was pretty raptured by the whole thing.

Quite frankly so was I. 

I left The boys sitting with Grandma and Grandpa and ran around trying to capture the night...

...not very successfully. I could see all these marvellous photos in my mind, but with all the tricky lighting, realized I had no idea how to take them!

CONFESSION: I'm not actually very good at photography....I like to take pictures and feel pretty good about my composition abilities, but when it comes to the ins and outs of exposures and what not, no matter how many times I try and learn it it doesn't stick...must be too many numbers)

Oh if you could see, what I saw! They had, what may have been thee entire primary dressed as shepherds, and their little faces, literally lit by the light of the angels above them, with these innocent expressions of pure wonder !I thought I was "in the sam country" in fields near Bethlehem!

They didn't take their eyes of those angles!

 It was ...glorious. So simple, so perfect.

Next year I'll just snuggle with my boys and do the "picture-taking" in my mind. 

The boys really enjoyed it. 

Especially the cookies, inside the church , afterwards. 

And the all the nativities on displayed 

(I could of taken pictures of McKye's excitement at once again finding the baby Jesus, "dare He is!!!!"...forever.)

Twinkle lights, children's faces, little baby Jesus'!!!
Just doesn't get any better. Unless, of course,  you add...


...hot chocolate!

Loved every minute of it!

Home.

Home. 
Pretty sure Heaven feels a little like driving that familiar road, looking at those familiar  mountains.

“Nothing will surprise us more than when we get to heaven and see the Father and realize how well we know Him and how familiar His face is to us.” 

― Ezra Taft Benson

Familiar. Loved. Known. 
A part of us, in a deep, sensed and inexplicable way.
Because He is ours, and we are His.
And always have been.


That constant, unchanging love is what 
my mountains remind me of.


So yeah, I wouldn't mind seeing them everyday, one day, maybe even out my own  living room window.