The Eternal Family assignment I did.

 Feeling like I could use a few gold stars from some dear friends for validation

Hey there everyone!

My name is Karra #crazypants Snyder, and I live with my Husband and 4 kids on Fort Bliss, El Paso, Texas. Mike, the hubs, is in the Army and we get out out of the Army in 34 days! We will be moving to Albuquerque NM, and are thrilled to open a new chapter in our lives.

I moved all over Utah as a child, spending the most time in Tooele, and Lehi. I claim Tooele High as my school mostly to annoy my husband and dad who both attended Lehi High. I do the same thing with the University Of Utah, but only during the football game with BYU, and yes I do see the irony in my current enrollment. I love the diversity in our family because it challenges what we see as truth.

I love to laugh, and play with my family, and yes I have adopted crazy pants as my middle name. I did it as a joke to cheer up a friend who was really struggling with discovering a mental disorder, and it stuck! I firmly believe in being open and honest about the struggle of mental health, and the effect that it has on our society. I am hoping to enter into that field of study as soon as my babies are old enough to all be in school.

Mike and I have been married for close to 13 years. We have 4 beautiful, busy, and creative children. Occasionally we feel overwhelmed by the demands that family can bring. It can be lonely, frustrating, and while potty training a particularly stubborn toddler, super gross. Reading on the family and the heritage of my righteous mothers that went before me brought me a more patient spirit as I deal with the demands of my family. I felt inspired on how to settle and argument between siblings without the yelling or punishment. I feel more inspired to guard the spirits that I have been entrusted with.

The family is not an accident of mortality. What a powerful phrase. I was even more chilled with the revelation that President Spencer W. Kimball declared in the 1980 General Conferance:

75. “Many of the social restraints which in the past have helped to reinforce and to shore up the family are

dissolving and disappearing. The time will come when only those who believe deeply and actively in the family will

be able to preserve their families in the midst of the gathering evil around us.

76. “... There are those who would define the family in such a nontraditional way that they would define it out of

existence. ...

77. “We of all people, brothers and sisters, should not be taken in by the specious arguments that the family unit is

somehow tied to a particular phase of development a moral society is going through. We are free to resist those

moves which downplay the significance of the family and which play up the significance of selfish individualism.

We know the family to be eternal. We know that when things go wrong in the family, things go wrong in every

other institution in society” (in Conference Report, Oct. 1980, 3–4; or Ensign, Nov. 1980, 4).

If we do not defend the Eternal Family, the earth is "Utterly Wasted". I know that when the Savior comes, my home will not have been a waste.