What a great day!

Today was a pretty great day. It was my first official Mother's Day. I was excited to spend the day with my little girl. It has been a great year getting to know her. She certainly makes all the hard work worth it. The cherry on the top of today was that Bella decided it was time to start walking. It seems that she likes to wait until Sunday to get moving. She started crawling on a Sunday and then she did this today. For the last week or so she's been taking sporadic steps here and there, but never walked with the purpose to get somewhere. Today in Sacrament, she decided that she wanted to get going and she took off. It was pretty funny to watch her. She was a little amazed at what she was doing (and what can I say, so was I). One of our friends was sitting behind us and she ask 'when did this happen?' concerning Bella's new ability. And I was like 'right now, this is a first.' We were in awe. Here she is in the hallway.

Another pretty great thing we got to do today was to talk with my brother, Elder Horrocks. It was so neat to hear him in person, even though we get e-mails every week. I realized that when I read his e-mails I hear his voice reading them. But even so, it's just not the same. We got to talk to him for quite a long time (his companion wasn't competing for phone time because he's serving in his home town and often runs into people that he knows and it's his last month on his mission so he let Grant have his time). I think it was one of Dusty's gifts to me for Mother's Day that he let me talk on the phone so long without having to worry about Bella.

It was fun to hear about the little things that he hadn't told us yet. One of those things was that he got very sick his third day in the Dominican Republic and actually had to go to the hospital. He didn't want my Mom to worry, so he didn't tell us. But I guess enough time has passed that it's a funny story now. That and I think he learned his lesson (don't eat food from street vendors) so he's betting that he won't get the same thing again. It was also fun to hear him interact with the guys that he lives with. There are four of them in the house, two from Utah and then Grant and his Dominican companion. They even sang a song in Spanish for us. Most of the time Grant was being his goofy self, so I guess even though he's a missionary now, he's still the same ol' Grant.

After talking for so long, it was hard to say good bye and get off the phone. But I know that he's having a great time over there and doing the work that he needs to be doing, so it's all worth it. We are so proud of him the the choices that he's made to lead him to where he is today. I know he's making a real difference in the lives of the people in the DR. 5 months down, 19 months to go!