Tag Archives: sunshine

Some Words Of Advice Are Timeless

Some words of advice are timeless…the words in this poem qualify as such… Wear Sunscreen  -by Mary Schmich Wear sunscreen.  If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than […]

Bring On Those Two Virgin Pina Coladas!

It feels like we’ve been waiting forever for summer to arrive this year.  The weather has been cold and rainy, the flowers were late coming in, and life just seemed to get nutso every since 2019 began. I think I’ve officially spent more time in hospitals in 2019 than any other year in my life. […]

We All Scream For Ice Cream As We Begin Summer 2019!

Guess what??  Today is National Vanilla Milkshake Day! YEEE HAWWW 🙂 Why am I so excited about that, you ask?  Because I LOVE ice cream!  That’s why. So when I heard that today was National Milkshake Day I thought, “What could be better than that?!” You see, I growing up in the Rees Family, ice […]

Lessons Learned From The Easter Bunny

I hope everyone had a marvelous Easter weekend. I don’t know about you all, but I ate far too many jellybeans over the weekend – I’m about as sugar-rushed as a person can be as I head into this week ahead, which may prove to be a good thing because I’ve got all kinds of […]

In Pursuit Of Perfection

Around the time I sold my company I started a foundation called the IPOP Foundation, which stands for In Pursuit Of Perfection. I was recently asked why I chose that name. Here’s my answer: Perfection.  It is an intimidating word for sure.  One which can be the cause of discouragement and anxiety for many who […]

Work as if everything depends on you, Pray as if everything depends on God

I must have been out of my mind to think it was going to be possible for me to be gone for a week to London and then come home for a few days and go right back out of country again to Prague, Cesky Krumlov, Vienna, and Budapest for another full week and then […]

Don’t stop dreaming just because you had a nightmare

“Don’t stop dreaming just because you had a nightmare.” Some days I come across a quote like that one and instantly know it’s what I need to write about in that day’s blog, and for whatever reason when I saw that one I knew it had to share it… We all go through our own […]

If we all took the summer off none of us would get behind on work

I love summertime. I love the sun and the water and everything about summertime. The only thing that is hard about summer is that for every week you take off and every trip you go on you have to carry the stress of coming back home and facing all the work that has piled up […]

Spring Cleaning For The Soul

Sunshine, warm weather, birds chirping…I LOVE Springtime and for the first time all year we have finally gotten warm, spring weather here and that just makes me HAPPY!  However, with the warm weather finally beginning I am reminded that it is also time to do our Spring Cleaning! And the truth is that I don’t […]

Hard Luck

With St. Patrick’s Day around the corner and the thoughts of good luck and fortune I thought today I would touch on the subject of hard luck because all of us have had those times we have felt sorry for ourselves thinking all the bad luck in the world comes our way. But as this poem […]

It’s not the What or the Where – It’s the Who

There is little better in life than spending time with the people we love. And this year we were especially lucky because we had an extended Christmas holiday break off from the kids colleges – they had an extra week off this year because of the way the holiday dates fell so they were off […]

Bring Your Own Sunshine

Most days when it rains outside we tend to feel bummed out about it and we seem to behave a little less cheery those days. But something happened last weekend that reminded me how easily we can rectify that. It was a bright yellow raincoat just hanging on the rack at the Mall. My 20 […]

RETWEET – The Breakfast of Champions (by Ashley)

Since my daughter Ashley has gotten home from her mission she constantly says the word “Retweet” whenever we say anything she agrees with. So today, in honor of her, I thought I would “Retweet” a blog she wrote for me back when she was only 17 years old. It was such a great blog that […]

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 […]

We Do Not Forget

I have to say that there is something especially great about the Memorial Day Holiday weekend. For one thing it signifies the start of the Summer season and I don’t know about all of you, but I am SO READY for summer! I feel like it has been an especially cold and rainy Spring this […]

Spring is the Perfect Time to Take Out All Of The Trash In Our Lives

It is finally starting to feel like spring outside with sunshine and warm weather and blossoms and flowers cropping up everywhere. I LOVE it!  And with Spring comes Spring Cleaning. Yep, it’s time for all of us to wash our windows so the sunlight can come through. And it’s finally warm enough to open those […]

This feels like a great week to be HAPPY!

The desire to be happy. It’s a desire shared universally. It is one thing in life we all have in common – the desire for happiness. Some people wait for happiness to find them, only to learn that this kind of happiness is temporary and it goes as quickly as it comes. Other people have […]

Make Pearls from Sand

The Oyster Story There once was an oyster whose story I tell, Who found that some sand had got into his shell. It was only a grain, but it gave him great pain. For oysters have feelings although they’re so plain. Now, did he berate the harsh working of fate Which had brought him to […]

I don’t know about you, but I am SO READY for the weekend!

Perhaps my love for the weekends started when I was a child. Every Saturday morning we awoke to the smell of Mom’s pancakes….oh how I miss those Saturday morning pancakes being cooked by someone else! Somehow everything smells and tastes better when you don’t have to cook it yourself. And then you add to that […]

Some days you just have to create your own sunshine

I woke up this morning so excited to go out into the warm spring sunshine…I put on my short sleeved shirt and sandals, and I opened my door to find ridiculously cold wind and rain! NOOOOOO!!!…. Back inside I went to change my sandals for winter shoes and put on my warmest sweater. I was […]

When you get to the end of your rope…

Growing up there was a poster on one of my siblings bedroom wall that they got for free when they ordered books from the scholastic book order forms we used to get back in elementary school (ps. I loved those book orders!). The poster had a picture of a kitten that was barely hanging onto […]

“Every day may not be good, but there is something good in every day.”

Within any given week we are going to have good days, and bad ones. Rarely is an entire week perfect…at least I’ve never had a week like that myself. There are up days, and down days…there are stressful days and fun days…there are monotonous tasks that have to get done and there are new and […]

Look at it from a different perspective

Over the weekend I thought quite a bit about gratitude and our ability to completely change our thinking and perspective of situations that would be easy to be upset about or frustrated about to instead see a situation where there is something to feel truly grateful for.  I realize that as easy as it sounds for me to say […]

We Will Never Regret The Moments We Took

Here we are on August 3rd and I am suddenly aware of the fact that this is our last month of summer vacation before our kids go back to school again…And even though we can’t change the fact that summer vacay will be coming to an end in a few weeks for all our children […]

Don’t Do Something Permanently Stupid Just Because You Are Temporarily Upset

There are always things that are going to happen that will cause us to be temporarily upset. That’s just part of life. But when those things happen we have to find a way to keep our wits about us so we don’t do something permanently stupid that we will regret later. Instead we should focus […]

#Blessed

Well hello there sunshine! How are all of you? Can I just say that I LOVE sunny days and summertime!  I mean really, they are the greatest!  There is something about the feeling of sun on your skin that just makes you happier…am I right?! Today I am thinking a lot about all the good […]

TODAY IS THE START OF SOMETHING BRAND NEW!

That’s right! Today is the start of something brand new!  It is the start of a brand new week! And it’s a new week that can literally become whatever we want it to be because it is something BRAND NEW! Look, I’m just going to say it – last week was miserable – but I […]

Choose to be Mentally Strong!

“Strength doesn’t come from what you can do. It comes from overcoming the things you once thought you couldn’t.”   – Rikki Rogers As we go through life we have to decide what kind of person we are going to be. Will we be mentally strong, or will we be mentally weak? The choice is ours. […]

 “Forget the Forecast, Live Like’s It’s Spring.”

80 degrees last week, snow today…?!  What the heck?!  Since when does it snow on spring break?  Yikes! I love springtime and I have been so looking forward to sunshine, flowers, blossoms…did I say sunshine? All I know it that sunshine makes me so happy! I agree with Robin Williams quote: “Spring is nature’s way […]

The Rules We Learned At Recess

I loved recess as a little kid. I loved being out on the field running around with the sun shining. Now that  I am an adult I can look back and see that not only was recess a time for fun, it was also a teaching ground full of life lessons that would apply to […]