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We just spent a wonderful week in Kodiak, Alaska! Maybe sometime I'll take time to figure out how to add photos to my blog, but for now I'll leave it to your imagination to picture what I was so fortunate to see. As green as an emerald, Kodiak offers visual excitement at every turn in the road. We saw bears in the wild, the young one playing with fish in the river until he finally decided he'd better stop playing with his supper and dragged a big silver salmon to the meadow and enjoyed the delicacy. (I wonder if bears have a daily limit on how many salmon they can catch.) From the window of Don and Nancy Rush's home we could see life in the bay: whales, sea lions, puffins, seagulls, boats of all sizes, a cruise ship (The Tahitian Princess), barges, waves slapping at the rocks scattered around the bay, the rising and falling of the tide. I took about five-hundred photos, perhaps thinking that if I didn't capture the sight on my camera it might be lost forever!

We stayed with our daughter Katy's mother-and-father-in-law. They have a gorgeous home on a cliff overlooking the bay. Don and Nancy were wonderful hosts and there is not enough we can do or say to thank them for their generous hospitality.

Their home is lovely and comfortable. I kept thinking, "I could enjoy living like this!" To be able to wake every morning to the sound of the waves slapping at the shore, the morning call of the birds, the horns on the boats and barges alerting the world to the beginning of a new day--ah, that would be heaven for me!

I was pondering this on the way home to my small desert home. After experiencing the beauty of Nancy's and Don's world, could I ever really be content again? Then out of the archives of my memory bank came the discussion I had with my grandson Corbin a couple of years ago after we downsized and moved from West Jordan to Grantsville. In the conversation I had made the comment that this house is not big like the one we had in West Jordan. He in his childlike wisdom taught a very important principle to me and it again travels around in my mind sweeping away silly thoughts about what I was thinking I needed to be happy. His sweet comment to me that made all the difference was: "This house is big enough."

How true it is. All I really need I have. I'm grateful that there are wonderful, thoughtful, unselfish saints like Don and Nancy Rush, John and Pat Jarstad, and others, through whom I can experience some of the finer things of life for a moment here and there. But then I need to come home, home to my grandchildren who love the swing Grandpa built for them, and the little yard that is room enough for twenty piano students to have a party and call it "the best party ever!" The little street in front of our house is perfect for little boys to master the skill of riding bicycles and scooters. My grandchildren and I can sing and dance to our hearts' delight in our small living room. We have a nice view of the mountains from our back yard while sitting under the porch roof Tom built to block the sun and keep us dry from the occasional rain. We have a wealth of friends. We have many of our family close enough to spend time together whenever we like. Within these walls we pray, we study the gospel, we laugh, we cry, we share, we play, we cook, we eat, we connect.

So although part of me will continue seeking for new experiences, new people, new places, always being the wanderer, the rest of me will be remembering Corbin's lesson that will keep me grounded: "This house is big enough." Yes, this house is big enough to be home. And so I am home again.