We lived after the manner of happiness . . .

In the Book of Mormon, Nephi listed several of the activities (2 Nephi 5) that he and his people were doing and summed up their lives with “...(we) lived after the manner of happiness.” (2 Nephi 5:27)

This is Nephi’s outlook even though he and his family were told to “...flee into the wilderness...” and start a new community to save their lives. They weren't popular or safe.

I love Nephi’s list. I agree with Nephi’s list. I want to share Nephi’s list. I think it's useful to anyone that wants to incorporate more happiness into their lives.

For the next few weeks, I'll post Nephi's insights along with a comment and picture about how that behavior has also brought me happiness.

Our grandson Henry gave a textbook-perfect response to this project.
I laid the quilt on the floor to finish it, and Henry climbed right on top of it.
He said, "Look!  There's a car!  Look!  There's a man swimming!  Look!  There's Pooh!"
He was excited with each discovery.  Then Henry measured his hands against
the stitched hand prints around the side trying to find his and guessing
which handprint went with which cousin.

Creativity

2 Nephi 5:16  " . . . the workmanship was exceedingly fine."

Cali was making an "I Spy" quilt for her children and asked if I wanted the leftover scraps to make a napping quilt for our grandkids.  Indeed I did.

I used her scraps and added a few more, then on a few snow-days last winter put them together using replica 1930 aunt grace fabric as the alternate blocks.  I asked each mother in the family to send me the hand print of their children and stitched those on the quilt border along with the child's name. 

The stitches are far from perfect, the binding even less so, but Henry responded without prompting to it just like I hoped.  He looked from square to square excitedly telling me the unique things he found.   President Deiter F. Uchtdorf said, "What you create doesn't have to be perfect" and Henry made that clear to me.

I had a fun time stitching the hand prints, shopping for the fabric, laying out the pattern, and creating something bright, fun, and cheerful for our home and grandchildren. 

I have learned that when Calvin is creating in his shop, be it bows, guns, bullets, or wood projects, and I'm creating in my fort (water-heater-closet-turned-into-a-craft-room) that we find a particular happiness and excitement with the long winter nights.  Much more so than watching TV.  Creating makes us happy.

"The desire to create is one of the deepest desires of the human soul." President Dieter F. Uchtdorf