Welcome Home!

This is Brigham worn out after Thanksgiving.  The only thing this picture has to do with this post is that we welcome him, and his parents, into our home any time!

While waiting for our house to be built I found myself thinking a lot about hospitality.  We used to enjoy inviting people over to our house in Payson for Family Home Evening puppet shows and I liked it back in the really old days when we could have all of my brothers and sisters and their families come for Thanksgiving!  I feel that our blessings are to be shared and enjoyed with others as much as possible.    

The definition of hospitality is:  "the friendly and generous reception and entertainment of guests, visitors and strangers."(from the online dictionary)  I am going to use Home and Hospitality as my words of the coming year.  I added home because I feel like the family attached to the home should be received in a friendly and generous fashion too.  I don't particularly want to be totally in charge of entertaining anyone, but I do want to do better at spending time with family doing things we can all enjoy.  I am still working on subsections of the goal for each month.  There are so many good things to learn about and practice that relate to hospitality that it's hard to choose!

While waiting for our house to be built I read books on hospitality.  I really enjoyed one by Myquillyn Smith called Welcome Home. I wrote down quotes from her book that I thought would be helpful in my quest to become more hospitable.  One of my favorites is, "When I find myself focusing on me, my house, my outfit, or my stuff, it's a red flag."  Hospitality is about loving other people -- not about me!  Some of my favorite people to visit are the ones who welcome me in like family and don't apologize over some mess -- either real or imagined!  

As I learn I hope to share with you my successes and failures, and the joy of learning to love better!