Tag Archives: lds mission

Friendship Is Built In The Present, But We Can Deepen Its Roots By Sharing Stories From Our Pasts

Dalton here, Amy’s one month shy of turning 25 year old son (feel free to mark that in your calendars so you’ll remember to send birthday wishes my way 🙂 ) filling in for my Mom tonight so she can have a little alone time with my Dad…and frankly, I prefer to not know what […]

Opportunities come when we actively seek to do good

First, I want to take the quick opportunity to say “Thank You!” to all those who sent birthday wishes my way. I can’t think of a better birthday gift then words of kindness from others and I received that today in spades 🙂 I also want to share with you an amazing birthday gift I received today […]

Be In Their Lives Today

“To be in your children’s memories tomorrow, you have to be in their lives today.”   Oh, how I love that quote. And it is such a great reminder for all of us that have the blessing of being a parent. I remember throughout the growing up years of my children when they would ask me […]

A Harrowing Experience and My Gratitude For Those Who Got Me Through It

Last week my family and I went down to Lake Powell for the week to host our kids and their college friends for a welcome home celebration trip for our daughter Ashley. We knew she had missed Lake Powell vacations tremendously while she had been serving her mission for 18 months so we made it […]

One Chapter Ends And Another Begins

Last week I shared five blogs that each gave clips from different emails we had received from our daughter during her 18 month mission. I hope you all enjoyed hearing the life lessons she shared in those emails. Today was the final event of her 18 month journey – she gave a homecoming talk at […]

Lessons on Surviving, Turning Trials into Trails, and Choosing Happiness (Part 5 of 5)

Today is the part 5 of a 5 part blog series I have been sharing all week this week. Throughout this week I have shared snippets of emails that my daughter Ashley sent home while she was serving her 18 month mission. For those who have followed along all week this week I am hoping […]

Lessons on Study, Selfishness, Repentance, and Never Looking Back (Part 4 of 5)

We have come to month fourteen of the eighteen months of lessons learned along the journey. I hope you are all enjoying reading these email snippets from Ashley’s emails. The life lessons she shares as she learns them was so valuable to me and I hope it proves to be valuable to all of you […]

Lessons on Love and Charity (Part 3 of 5)

Today was one of the happiest days of my life!!  My daughter Ashley is HOME!!!! Yep, after 18 months of doing service as a missionary she is finally back home with us and I am beyond words with happiness. This enitre week I have been sharing snippets of emails I received from my daughter Ashley while she was out serving her […]

Lessons on Character, Change, Hardships and Blessings (Part 2 of 5)

Today is a continuation of yesterday’s blog sharing some favorite snippets of my daughter Ashley’s emails she has sent home over the course of her 18 month mission with the valuable life lesons she was learning along the way – these lessons are such relevant lessons for all of our lives and I hope you […]

Incredible Life Lessons Along an 18 month journey (Part 1 of 5)

This week is one of my happiest weeks EVER as my daughter Ashley is coming home from her mission Tuesday! In last Thurssday’s email I explained just how much I have loved getting Ashley’s weekly emails she’s been sending home over the last 18 months because they share the cool life lessons she has been learning along the […]

Feeling Like A Little Kid On Christmas Morning!

Going into this weekend I feel just like a little kid on Christmas morning! I have waited 18 months for my daughter Ashley to finish serving her LDS Mission so she could come back home to me…and next week she is finally coming home!!!   YAYYYYYYY!!! I literally cannot describe how excited I am. It’s impossible to describe […]

The best thing in life isn’t things

The best thing in life isn’t things…its family. Family is a pretty amazing thing. First and foremost it is made up of our own immediate family, then our extended family, and then our friends that we love as family. Last week was a wonderful week. My own family was able to host several other families […]

Thank heaven for Guardian Angels

Today when my weekly email arrived from my daughter Ashley who is out serving a mission the subject line “I GOT HIT BY A CAR”. My heart dropped! I opened the email to find that she had been riding her bike with her companion and as she crossed the road an elderly man was entering […]

The Secret of Discipline is Motivation

“The secret of discipline is motivation. When a man is sufficiently motivated, discipline will take care of itself.” – Sir Alexander Paterson Last week I spent the entire week out of town down at Lake Powell with a group of business associates and their families along with my own family. It was gorgeous as always […]

HOORAY FOR HOLIDAYS! Happy Memorial Day to All!

So let’s just say it – HOLIDAYS ARE AWESOME! Right?!  I mean what could be better than getting a day off from life when everyone else is taking a day off too! I LOVE HOLIDAYS!  And I love that we had the entire day today to be with the people we love. This Memorial Day […]

The Perfect Way To Spend A Day

Today was AWESOME! First of all it was Mother’s Day! And as the Mother of two of my own and one daughter-in-law, I want to say that I love being a Mom! It’s the most amazing blessing ever, but let’s admit it, sometimes it can feel like all the effort and sacrifice goes unnoticed. So […]

Bust Out Those Holiday Traditions!

Last week was a rough one. I was down sick the entire week and then Friday I had to haul myself out of bed and get down to Bryce Canyon Utah to attend the Open House for my son and his new bride. I made it through the evening and then crashed again, sick as […]

Having a Vision

One of my favorite quotes is the quote from the book Alice in Wonderland where Alice has come to a fork in the road and she asks the Cheshire Cat which way she should go. Says Alice: “Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” “That depends a good deal […]

One Season Ends, Another Begins

I cannot believe that summer is coming to an end and fall is beginning. Our summer vacations have come to an end, most everyone’s kids are back to school at this point, and we all have to get back into our normal routines again. In some ways it’s sad to have summer playtime behind us […]

Your Get Rid of List

I read an amazing blog the other day written by someone I know who lives in Arkansas where my daughter Ashley is serving a mission. She and Ashley have become dear friends and this gal shared with Ashley some of the bad habits she is trying to get rid of in her life. Together she […]

See How Far You’ve Come

It was exactly three years ago today that I signed the final papers to sell my company. As I look back over the last three years I am blown away at how much has happened since then. I transitioned out of my old company, I launched REES Capital (my angel investment firm), got our charity […]

Go To Bed and Get A Good Night’s Sleep, Tomorrow Will Be Better

Today was a long, busy, stressful day, and it was a Monday which always feels a little more stressful than the rest of the days of the week for some reason…perhaps that’s because we put everything out of our minds in order to enjoy our weekends and then Monday morning we are forced to deal […]

“If we aren´t laughing and having fun everyday…we´re doing it wrong!”

As those of you who follow my blog know, once a week I get an email from my daughter who is serving her mission.  This week she shared that her group set a goal this week to see if they could follow all the mission rules with “exact obedience”.   Now I don’t know about all […]

“No matter how you feel…Get up. Dress up. Show up. And never Give up.”

“No matter how you feel…Get up. Dress up. Show up. And never Give up.” That is going to be my mantra for the next few days to help me get through things. As any of you who follow my blog know, today I sent my daughter off on a mission for The Church of Jesus […]

“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.”

Tomorrow early morning we send our daughter off to go and serve a voluntary 18 month long mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.  For the next 18 months she will be sacrificing time away from her family, home, friends, cell phones, Facebook, Instagram, college, vacations, trips to Lake Powell, movies, etc […]

“Please pass me that parenting book. I need to smack my kid with it.”

The quote in today’s title pretty much sums up my day today…just kidding…only kind of…. We have known for the past several months that my daughter is going to be leaving us for 18 months to serve a mission. We have been given checklists of what to pack and prepare and all the things that […]

“Sometimes the smallest things take up the most space in your heart.”

“Sometimes the smallest things take up the most space in your heart.” That quote from Winnie the Pooh is so true. In life it is those little things that are so meaningful to us and become our favorite memories. Growing up I remember our family dinners most. Every night we would all surround our huge […]

Happy New Year! 2015 Is Going To Be Epic!!

Happy New Year everyone! The start of a brand new year – it is so exciting!  2015!!!  Don’t get me wrong, 2014 was a major year for my family that was full of big time milestones. We finished building our new house and our new houseboat, we moved into our new home, my daughter Ashley […]

Always Act Like You Are Wearing An Invisible Crown

I love that! Maybe because I am a girl and every little girl is born thinking she is a princess, so the crown just seems natural to us 🙂 Today was my daughter Ashley’s farewell talk that she gave in our church meeting in preparation to leave on her mission. The subject of her talk […]

Life’s Milestones

Milestones are something we all have in common with one another.  There are several milestones that are the exact same for all of us, like birthdays.  Then there are milestones that are the same for the majority of us, such as:  graduating from high school, falling in love for the first time, getting our heart […]