Tag Archives: family

Only 58 Days til Christmas..Say WHAT!?!

Can you believe it?  We actually start the month of November this Saturday!  It is insane how fast time has gone since the warm days of summer and sunshine. I am amazed how fast the fall has come and is now going this year.  Even daylight savings will come to an end this weekend and […]

Writing Your Own Life Story – Pass it On

This weekend I received a copy of the life history of my Great Uncle Mel.   My Great Uncle Mel Dalton is in his 90’s living down in Moab, Utah and I have heard stories about him from the time I was a little girl.  He is the brother to my Grandmother, who was my best […]

The Best Part of Life is When Your Family Becomes Your Best Friend

There is very little in life that we value more than a true friend.  And if you are truly lucky in life, you get to have the privilege of having that true friend also be a member of your own family. This afternoon some things happened that made for a really tough day emotionally. Toward […]

The Cure for Frustration

There are about a zillion things that could cause us frustration in any given day.  The traffic, the weather, the line at the grocery store, your spouse forgot to do something you asked them to do, your kids didn’t listen, your boss is grumpy, your employees are slacking, and the list goes on and on…all […]

What Legacy Will You Leave Behind?

Four years ago, October 16th of 2010, I received a phone call telling me that one of my very best friends, Steve Gasser, had died suddenly while participating in a bike race down in St. George, Utah.  I was at Disneyland when I answered that call and I literally crumbled to the ground when I […]

The Friends We Choose

“If you find yourself racing through life, slow down long enough to take along some good friends.”  – L. Tom Perry This last week I was reminded of how blessed I am to have amazing friends in my life.  My husband and I were able to spend last week with a group of 15 friends […]

Children are Happy Because

“Children are happy because they don’t have a file in their minds called, “All the Things That Could Go Wrong.”  – Marianne Williamson That is SO TRUE!  You don’t see little kids worried about what could go wrong!  They are far too busy being focused on what they plan to accomplish.  Kids create, they get […]

“Love your Parents. We are so busy growing up, we often forget they are also growing old.”

Life the past few months has been a reminder that I am growing older, especially facing an empty nest.  However, in all my focus to deal with seeing my own children grow older I have honestly lost sight of the fact that my own parents are also growing old… My parents stopped by the other […]

Try New Things!

“Never be afraid to try something new, because life gets boring when you stay within the limits of what you already know.” Many of us are creatures of habit. We get into routines where we do the same things day after day and we get settled into our pattern of living our lives.  We can […]

Throwback Thursday – Forgive and Let Go

For some reason this week I thought it would be fun to go back in time to this very day two years ago to see what was on my mind back then when I wrote my blog that day.   When I finished reading my post from that day it hit me how important the […]

Four Things You Cannot Recover

I once heard a story called the Parable of the Cookie.  It’s a simple story with a surprising twist that teaches an incredibly valuable lesson. See for yourself: The Parable of the Cookie A young woman was waiting to catch a flight in the boarding area of the airport. Given that her wait was going […]

Growing Old is Inevitable, Growing Up is Optional

Today was (is) my birthday.  Yep, I am growing older, which is inevitable for all of us. But, I have decided that growing up….well that is optional 🙂  … For my birthday my kids and their friends are spending the weekend with my husband and I and nothing is better for making you feel younger […]

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 […]

Time Management and the Parable of the Rocks

Getting back into work after being gone for the summer has made for a hectic week so far. As I started to go through all of the meeting requests and emails and calls I missed the last few months in order to prioritize them, the memory of a parable I once heard came to my mind. […]

“Just go right along and you’ll start happening to”

Welcome back!  I hope all of you had an amazing Labor Day Holiday!  So mine was awesome, mainly because my two children came home from college for the weekend to spend it with me and that was pure heaven!  Oh my goodness how I value every second I get with them now.  Saying goodbye to […]

Nursing a Hole in My Heart

Today was brutal. Today I moved my baby girl down to her college dorm and tonight is the first night of her being gone from home.  Even though I will get to go see her tomorrow for the Orientation meetings on campus, it doesn’t change the fact that after today things will never quite be […]

Uncompromising Loyalty

Many of us grew up with a security blanket.  It typically started as an actual blanket for most of us when we were small children, one we couldn’t go to bed without.  Then as we grow older our parents and our home become our security blanket, the place we felt safe and secure.  And then […]

The Nest Will Soon Be Empty

Today was an amazing day – we had planned to take our kids out to the Lake to go boating with their friends, everyone got their swimming suits on and we packed the boat with snacks and we drove 45 minutes to the lake and got the boat on the water only to have our […]

Take the Time to Consider Every Angle

Today I heard a story about a woman who went through an experience that taught her a great life lesson about perspective.  I will try and relay the story the best I can remember it (since I wasn’t taking notes when I heard it). This woman was driving to the grocery store in her car […]

Feeling like you’re failing?

Today I received an email from a dear friend who expressed her struggles to keep up with everything in her life while also attempting to be a good mother, which she usually feels she is failing at miserably.  As I read her email I couldn’t help but think of how so many of us struggle […]

Forced Family Bonding

Last week my family and I went down to spend a glorious week at Lake Powell with a group of friends.  We had a great trip, and although we all came home with colds…yet again…the trip was worth it.  We had gone down to Powell a few days before our guests arrived because we wanted […]

Making Memories

“We didn’t realize we were making memories, we just knew we were having fun.” This summer has been such a special time for me. I have been able to have so much fun with my children and the memories we will walk away from this summer with will be with me forever.  The most interesting […]

Talk to each other instead of about each other

“A lot of problems in the world would disappear if we talk to each other instead of about each other.” Misunderstandings, hurt feelings, anger, frustration, sadness….so many of these negative emotions all stem from the fact that two people don’t talk to each other about things.  It happens in the workplace, it happens in friendships, […]

A Reminder of what a SMALL WORLD it can be

Last week I had the privilege of taking my family to Disney World for the entire week to spend time together as a family.  We have been trying to spend as much time as we can with one another before my two children leave to college at the end of the month.  First you must […]

Family Fun Ideas

It’s hard these days to come up with fun ideas of things you can do together with your family that are inexpensive, fun, and get everyone involved at every age in the family.  A few years ago I started to make a list of ideas for things to do with family by gathering ideas from […]

Friends by Design

“In friendship…we think we have chosen our peers. In reality a few years’ difference in the dates of our births, a few more miles between certain houses, the choice of one university instead of another…the accident of a topic being raised or not raised at a first meeting–any of these chances might have kept us […]

Sometimes You Have to Choose

Sometimes in life you are faced with a choice between two things that both matter to you.  Today I had that experience.  I will give you some background that will help explain the situation:  My entire life since I was old enough to have a workers permit (which I think was 14 years old) I […]

“Sometimes the most ordinary things could be made extraordinary…”

“Sometimes the most ordinary things could be made extraordinary, simply by doing them with the right people.”  -Elizabeth Green How true that quote is!  Today was another rough day for me…sick again…arghhhh….not fun.  I woke up thinking if I jumped in the shower that it would somehow magically make me feel all better today…nice try, […]

What Do You Want To Do Before You Die?

Life is hectic.  We go go go and we are way too busy and we can’t seem to keep up with the ever growing to do lists we have.  We spend most days just trying to make it through our day and hope to get one or two items done on our list.  And this […]

Before You Assume…

“Before you “assume”, try this crazy method called asking.” Wow….that is a powerful quote.  When I first read it, it really hit me.  It is so true!  So often in life we just assume we know…we assume we know what someone thinks, we assume they did something just because someone else said they did, we […]