Tag Archives: parenthood

How COVID Has Helped Me

As COVID hits closer to home with more and more friends of ours coming down with it, it’s caused me to more and more realize and appreciate how precious each day we are given truly is…each day of health our family has is a day to be treasured and appreciated to the fullest.  As much […]

You Couldn’t Ask For More

We were all sitting on the floor opening Christmas presents together when my kids said they had something for me. I waited for them to hand me something to unwrap, but instead they asked me to look up at our TV screen and watch a video they had made for me. As the video started […]

We Never Really Grow Up, We Just Learn How To Act In Public

“We never really grow up, we just learn how to act in public.” The other day my adult daughter commented she’s noticed that me being a grandmother has really brought out the little kid in me.  She said it’s been fun for her to watch me getting down on the floor and playing with my […]

Greatness Takes Work

“The heights by great men reached and kept Were not attained by sudden flight, But they, while their companions slept, Were toiling upward in the night.” -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Achieving greatness, whether in business, or a talent, or our personal lives, takes work….loads and loads of hard, dedicated, crazy amounts of work. And there will […]

The Greatest Forces In The World Are Babies

“When God wants a great work done in the world or a great wrong righted, he goes about it in a very unusual way.  He doesn’t stir up his earthquakes or send forth his thunderbolts.  Instead, he has a helpless baby born, perhaps in a simple home of some obscure mother.  And then God puts […]

The Day That Changed My Life Forever

I can’t believe that it has already been 26 years…26 years ago I was at work when my water broke. It took me a minute to figure out that’s what was going on because, let’s face it, wetting yourself isn’t that unheard of when you are nine months pregnant with a baby kicking your bladder. […]

Time Is A Precious Commodity

We realize the value of our time more and more the older we get…perhaps because we become keenly aware that the time we have left is growing less and less… The irony is that our time right now is, and always has, held the very same value – a minute has always been worth a […]

Being An Adult Is Like Folding A Fitted Sheet

“Being an adult is like folding a fitted sheet. No one really knows how.” -unknown That is SO TRUE!  I still remember being a little kid and looking at the adults thinking “They are so lucky to be a grown up.” Then I became and adult and I was like, “Wait…what the?!?!…Well, this isn’t at […]

Do You Know The Life They’ve Lived? Have You Thought To Ask?

Today I had an interesting experience while driving out to Deer Valley, Utah to go to a Limited Partner meeting for a venture capital fund I’m an investor in with my 25 year old son:   As we were making the one hour drive out to our meeting he began asking me questions about the companies […]

May Your Future Be Worthy Of Your Dreams

Barbara Bush, who passed away recently, was an incredible woman and one who set a wonderful example of class and elegance. She was an amazing lady. Attending commencement ceremonies for my daughter-in-law’s graduation last week reminded me of a fantastic commencement speech that Barbara Bush gave back in 1990 at Wellesley College. It was such […]

Choices And Consequences

Life is full of choices. Some are easy choices and some are hard, but the upside of choices is they are always ours to make and no one can ever take that away from us. However, the downside to choices is that while we get to make them, we don’t get to choose what consequences […]

Try and inject a little more of that childhood attitude of wonder into our adult lives

Watching all the cute little kids in their trick-or-treating costumes, running around ecstatic about all the free candy they were collecting, I couldn’t help but think how great it was to be a little kid. So oblivious to the problems in the world, wide-eyed with excitement about even the littlest things, believing in fairy tales […]

Protect that what you value most

When my two children were young they started calling me “Mama Bear” because they knew their Mama would fight fiercely to protect her two little cubs. That’s because we protect what we value most, and my kids have always been what I value most. Becoming a parent is one of the most surreal experiences in […]

There is no such thing as a perfect parent

“There is no such thing as a perfect parent so just be a real one.” – Sue Atkins Without a doubt the hardest job on the planet is that of being a parent. The stakes are so high because every mistake you make as a parent affects your children and you realize that so you […]

If your future self could speak to you…

I have been out in Washington DC for the last few days and I was reminded of how beautiful Virginia is.  I lived in Vienna, Virginia when I was a teenager in High School and during this visit I was able to drive past the house I used to live in while I was there […]

I am a Glam-ma! Some things are so perfect they are impossible to put into words.

Early last Friday morning my cell phone rang. It was my son Dalton letting me know that his wife Alexis was in labor and they were heading to the hospital. I jumped out of bed feeling a mixture of joy, excitement, disbelief, and wondering if this was really going to be day we welcomed our […]

When Someone Believes In You

Nothing is more motivating or inspiring than knowing that someone else believes in you and is willing to put their trust in you. It is one of the greatest feelings on earth. As parents one of the best things we can do for our children is to start when they are very young letting them […]

Stay True To Yourself

As a young adult who was trying to take on responsibilities that I felt totally inadequate to take on, I came to learn that in order for me to be able to feel truly confident I needed to stay totally focused on living my life with integrity, as doing so provided me the confidence to […]

If parenthood came with a GPS it would mostly just say: RECALCULATING

The other day my son Dalton, whose wife is expecting their first child in August, called me sounding a little stressed and said something to the effect of, “Mom I just realized that I am going to have a kid here soon  that’s going to be with me forever and that I need to parent! […]

The Lessons We Teach Our Children

I often have people tell me how impressed they are with the character of my son and daughter, and that compliment is often followed with the question – how did you do it? How did you raise those kids to be such great people? Well as much as I would love to take credit for […]

The things we CAN do for others and the things we CANNOT do

One of the most difficult challenges a person can ever take on is the task of being a Parent. Being a parent is intimidating, it is heart wrenching, and some days it is downright terrifying. You do your best to teach your kids everything even though you are still learning yourself, you do your best […]

Amazing blessings, tender mercies, little miracles…

I had the coolest experience last Sunday night and I just couldn’t help but share it. So the story started on the Friday before. My son Dalton called to let me know that he and his wife wanted to come over to our house for Sunday dinner. I, of course, was thrilled because as an […]

Motherhood Is Not A Liability To A Woman’s Ability In Business, So Don’t Act Apologetic As If It Is (Forbes Article)

When I started my first technology company in my early 20’s it never even crossed my mind that I was a bit of an anomaly being a female CEO in a male dominated tech industry. Frankly, the first time I really even became aware of how few women executives there were in the tech industry […]

Wishy Washy Wishing

The last two days I had the privilege of attending the invitation only Annual MindShare Conference hosted by Intermountain Healthcare. At this conference they bring together top healthcare executives and experts from around the world to network with one another and to share innovations and ideas around healthcare. It was a fascinating conference and it […]

Rediscover the joy, excitement, and mystery of the world we live in

As we age we grow wiser from life experience, which is a good thing. But sometimes as we grow older we also become a little bit jaded…almost too realistic…we often lose that sense of wonder and excitement we had as a child, and that is a not such a good thing… Now that I am […]

Those Words A Parent Never Expected to Hear

As those of you who follow my blog know, my son Dalton recently got engaged to his sweetheart and we are now in full blown wedding preparation mode. Because they want a short engagement it is like wedding planning central at our house with invitation selections, picking colors for the reception, figuring out venues, booking […]

If At First You Don’t Succeed…

“If at first you don’t succeed, do it like your mother told you.” We all remember the famous mom advice we got as kids:  Wear a coat, brush your teeth, look both ways before you cross the street, put on sunscreen, don’t take candy from strangers…..  We would roll our eyes and grumble under our […]

“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 […]

Just Remember Life Goes On

“You have to take the good with the bad, smile when you’re sad, love what you’ve got and remember what you had. Always forgive but never forget, learn from your mistakes but never regret, people change, things go wrong, just remember life goes on…” Tonight as I was FaceTiming with each of my kids I […]

Thanks for Waiting Up

Growing up I wasn’t always the easiest teenager.  I was stubborn, fiercely independent and ridiculously tenacious.  I thought I knew everything. I thought I didn’t need anyone to watch out for me.  And even though my parents were aware I didn’t want anyone watching out for me, every night I went out I would come […]