For the last four years I have had the privilege of teaching an amazing group of young women every Sunday at church and then attending weekly fun activity nights with them on Wednesday evenings. Four years ago I was assigned to teach the 14 and 15 year old girls in a class and then after […]
That is the inscription on the back cover of my Grandmother’s life history book. My grandmother passed away back in November of 2007. She was one of my dearest friends. And I am forever grateful that she left behind her written life history for me and for my children, and their children, and so on. […]
Too much time and energy in life gets spent trying to fit in…trying to be seen as “normal”. I personally think that normal is pretty boring. After all, why be normal when you can be exceptional?! When something simply “fits in” it is too easy to blend in, to go completely unnoticed. But when something […]
When we think of doing an act of service for someone we often think of it as having to be some major time consuming event that even the thought of doing stresses us out because we already feel that we have so much to handle on our plates that we can’t take on even one […]
Today was one of those days. It wasn’t that it was a really bad day and it wasn’t that anything horrible happened…it was just one of those stressful days where you are going like crazy all day yet feeling like you are making no progress at all…when you are being pulled by this person and […]
Packrat, hoarder, collector….we have all heard the terms. Some of us even relate to the terms. Maybe not to the extent that we see on the TV show Hoarders, but somewhere between that and a packrat. My son is someone who I have teased for years as being somewhat of a packrat. He saves every […]
Six years ago December 31st I married the man of my dreams in the most beautiful wedding imaginable. My husband wanted us to get married on New Year’s because he said that would ensure that he never forgot our wedding anniversary – smart man 😉 … On that day we were surrounded by family and […]
I hope all of you had a marvelous Christmas Holiday! For me it was a marvelous day because we were able to be together as a family, with my son joining us on Skype. It was amazing to see his sweet smiling face on the video. It was also fun to watch he and his […]
We made it! It is finally upon us – Christmas Eve followed by Christmas Day. My favorite holiday of the entire year. I am so excited for tomorrow. I even stayed up late wrapping every gift tonight so that tomorrow I can enjoy my time with my family without stressing over the mounds of gifts […]
“Families are like fudge, mostly sweet with lots of nuts!” As we head into the home stretch before Christmas Eve’s traditional gathering together of families everywhere, we ought to pause a moment to prepare ourselves to deal with the chaos ahead. I come from a very large family of ten children. My husband comes from […]
Today I was humbled and honored to receive the UVEF Entrepreneur of the Year Award. At the awards lunch they asked me to share a few words about the things that I would like to pass on to other Entrepreneurs from the lessons I have learned from my own journey. I struggled deciding what lessons […]
Sundance Film Festival is coming up from January 16th – 26th, 2014 and I am super excited about it, especially after getting a sneak peak tonight into the list of films that will be shown at the upcoming festival. For those who may not be as familiar with the film festival, it was originally started […]
I came across a poem that has a great message and wanted to share it with all of you: What a great poem to read, especially at Christmas time? It reminds us that life is short so why waste a moment of it being unhappy? No matter what goes wrong, life is going to go […]
“The most beautiful people I know are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These people have an appreciation, a sensitivity and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion and a deep loving concern.” -author unknown People who have been […]
“How much shopping can one person do?!?”, my husband called out as my fingers clicked madly away on the keyboard jumping from one cyber-deal to another as quickly as I could. “It’s almost midnight! Don’t distract me! I am working against the clock here! Just wait til you hear how much money I saved us”, […]
It was a wonderful Thanksgiving Holiday weekend. We went to visit my husband’s family in Idaho on their family farm. There is very little as fitting as celebrating Thanksgiving on the farm. We had amazing food (all homemade of course!), my daughter learned to drive the front loader tractor, and they went shooting clay pigeons. […]
T’was the night of Thanksgiving, But I just couldn’t sleep. I tried counting backwards, I tried counting sheep. The leftovers beckoned, The dark meat and white. But I fought the temptation, With all of my might. Tossing and turning, with anticipation. The thought of a snack became infatuation. So I raced to the kitchen, Flung […]
Several years ago my family and I were down visiting the small town of Bicknell, Utah with our dear friends. We went to a church meeting down in Bicknell back then and a very humble young man got up and gave a talk on perspective and gratitude that was awesome. In his talk he shared […]
Relationships are a tricky thing. Men and women are so drastically different in so many ways that it is a serious miracle that we actually end up together in many ways. We communicate differently, we show love differently, we have different expectations, we have different emotional responses…we are just plain different. And is if our […]
Today I was invited to attend a luncheon with Ann Romney, Mitt Romney’s wife (former governor and Presidential candidate). Ann recently released a cookbook called “The Romney Family Table: Sharing Home-Cooked Recipes and Favorite Traditions,” and she has been traveling across the country to share stories about her new book. She was incredibly warm and […]
This past week my cousin returned from a 20 month stint working in Afghanistan to come home to his beautiful family that lives on the east coast. His wife and their nine children had been anticipating his return with such excitement. I noticed his wife posted a darling message on her Facebook page last week […]
Happy Halloween Everyone! I love seeing all the cute little kids in their fun Halloween costumes on Halloween going door to door in search of candy. And according to a news report I saw on TV this morning those cute little kids should be hiding their candy stashes when they get home tonight – they […]
“Pride is to relationships as cyanide is to health.” I came across an amazing article today about pride and there was a section that was so powerful I had to share it. “A pride contest has no winner because nobody likes the winner. Humans don’t respond well to being put down, and pride gives others that […]
Anyway People are often unreasonable, illogical and self-centered; Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives; Be kind anyway. If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies; Succeed anyway. If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you; Be honest and […]
Living a life focused on accomplishing is a good thing, except when you are trying to accomplish so much, so fast, that you forget to appreciate and enjoy the right now. I have been a driven person since I was a little girl. I have always been a goal setter and I have always been […]
“Here’s to strong women. May we know them, may we be them, may we raise them.” Tonight the University of Utah held a Women Alumni event at our REES Capital offices and they asked me to hold a Q&A forum with the women where they could ask me questions about my past experiences and life […]
Do you ever have those moments when life’s deepest lessons suddenly click and you say to yourself “Ahhhh, now I get it!” The older I get the more I seem to have those “Ahhhh…” moments where things I have struggled for years to understand suddenly become completely clear and I think to myself “Dang I […]
I came across a story today that really touched me. This story is an amazing reminder for all of us to express our love to our families and friends. Life is full of uncertainty and we should never let a day pass without having those in our lives know how much we love them. The […]
Several weeks ago I was sitting with a group of male friends who are all married and we were discussing their frustration with not being able to understand women very well. One of the men had been in a disagreement with his wife and he was explaining to me why his wife’s side of the […]
This weekend I spent, and this is no joke, 10 hours over the course of two days watching inspirational and motivational talks. These talks were broadcast as part of a General Conference that is done by the LDS Church every six months. I look forward to Conference weekend every October and every April because it […]
