Hope in the Hopoate Family

I definitely love a fresh start. Every week seems like a new start for me.  We are now officially into the Fall of 2022 and I feel another new start has arrived. I am excited about changing my workouts because I can't keep riding my bike and swimming outside anymore. I am excited about trying out different workout classes at the local gym for the cold season. I am excited about putting my summer clothes downstairs and bringing up my sweaters and boots. (We have a very small closet so we have to do this lol.) I am also so excited about the change of pace that happens in the winter. So many things are changing now. I think everything around us constantly changes and has new starts for a reason. I think God put it into the world to show us something. I believe it was to show us that repentance and change should happen IN us, personally, and that it should happen often. We aren't meant to just be the same people. We need to make mistakes, repent and change. We are to try new things...

      So I'd say I'm a pretty typical mom who loves being at home, but can breakdown and be overwhelmed by all of it. I have good days and I have bad days. I'd say I have 80% good and 20% bad and almost always those bad days are due to lack of sleep or lack of routine lol.     Well I was having a particularly good day and working hard and getting things done when I took the time to be grateful it was a good day. I stopped and thought about my bad days in the past and was so grateful to be experiencing it all. I was so grateful to think how much I had overcome personally and how much adversity Malachi and I have overcome as a couple.      I decided to take a picture of the moment.     I was currently at one of sons sports classes. He was enjoying his class, my daughter was playing with some of my sewing supplies right next to me, and my baby was in  child watch having a blast on the slide. It was so good. I was fixing up a tie o...

Have you ever been called a paranoid parent? I have. As well as an overprotective parent, helicopter parent, etc. I have some thoughts on this. Elder Ringwood of the Quorum of the Seventy from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints spoke on Joseph, son of Jacob in the Old Testament. I think parents can learn a great deal from his teachings on the story of Joseph. If you remember the story of Joseph, his brothers sold him into slavery. They were jealous of their father‘s attention to Joseph. Before they sold him into slavery however, his brothers actually wanted to kill him. It was his brother Judah who suggested that they instead sell him into slavery. Judah saved Joseph’s life.  Later in the story, these same brothers are traveling to Egypt and the same Judah promises their dad, Jacob, that he will keep the new youngest son, Benjamin, safe. In Egypt, Judah’s promise was put to the test. Young Benjamin was wrongly accused of a crime. Judah, true to his promise, offered to ...

 I’ve been inspired by a cousin who has a blog, that writing is a vulnerable form of therapy. I want to join him and share some life experiences that are meaningful to me. A few years ago I attempted my first sprint triathlon. It was right before COVID-19 when I signed up-the end of 2019. But it was canceled due to the pandemic. However, I still did it with my friend Susie Lee. She’s the best and we figured out our own course and made it happen and I loved it.  Fast forward 2 years and I hadn’t accomplished anymore sprint triathlons because I had another child and had fallen in love with hiking during the pandemic. But I was itching to do more. Malachi had asked me in December of 2021 about my goals and what a really big hairy audacious goal could be for me. So I said an Olympic Triathlon. After some back and forth I felt like I really could get there… but the steps to prepare me for that would be a lot more sprint triathlons and overcoming my biggest hesitation, the open wat...