“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 […]
Today I am going to share a very impactful analogy that a counselor once shared with me. It was an analogy that literally changed my life and I hope that it can help some of you that might be facing challenges in breaking bad habits that are holding you back from finding real happiness, so […]
“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, […]
The last two weeks have been crazy for me and my family! Let me backup and explain. My family’s favorite place on the planet is Lake Powell. Lake Powell is our heaven on earth. We started going there when my kids were just little at the invitation of some good friends. They invited me down […]
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 […]
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 […]
I heard a news story today about someone who was been killed in a car accident. It made me stop and think a lot about how fragile life is. The person in that car woke up thinking that today would be a day like any other day, with absolutely no idea that today would be […]
“Once she stopped rushing through life, she was amazed how much more life she had time for.” Tonight was a good friend’s birthday so we had a small group over to celebrate. Nothing elaborate, just bbq, swimming in the pool, a lot of laughter, playing fun games, and of course dancing…in our family it isn’t […]
My son Dalton arrived HOME today from having been gone for two very long years on a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints! As we gathered at the airport with family and close friends to await his arrival the excitement was building like crazy. We had a huge welcome home sign […]
“O thus be it ever, when free men shall stand; Between their loved homes and war`s desolation; Blessed vict’ry and peace, may the heaven rescued land; Praise the power that hath made and preserved as a nation; Then conquer we must when our cause is just; And this be our motto, In God is our […]
Throughout my career I have encountered many people in the business world: Some are honest and good, and some are not. The most important thing to recognize is this – when someone shows you who they are through their actions and their behavior – BELIEVE THEM! If someone has shown a track record of honesty […]
Back in 1999 a poem came out that I thought was cute, but not especially meaningful. Later they even made the poem into a song. As I read that same poem today I no longer find it just cute, I find it extremely meaningful and I can’t help but get choked up by it. Oh […]
I can hardly believe the day has actually come….we get to move in to our new house this weekend! YIPEE!! After an insane amount of hard work, stress, craziness, disappointment, frustration and every other emotion you can imagine, we have finally come to the point after a very long year and a half that our […]
Happy Easter to everyone! I thought for my blog today I would take the opportunity to share a few of my thoughts about Easter and what it means to me personally. I love Easter because it reminds me that at any point we can make the decision to be a better person and repent for our past mistakes […]
One of the most valuable assets we can have in life is to be trustworthy. It is worth gold whether in business or friendships or family. When you can trust a person it creates a bond of loyalty that runs deep. And when someone can trust you it gives you that same bond of loyalty […]
I have thought a lot about changes lately as I just spent the last several days with my daughter and her high school friends on a trip to Las Vegas for her Senior Spring Break trip I had promised to take her on. The timing of the trip couldn’t have been worse as we are […]
I cannot believe that Monday is the last day of March and Tuesday will be April 1st. Better known as, April Fool’s Day. I have personally never been a big fan of April Fool’s Day but perhaps that is because I haven’t put much effort into celebrating this holiday in the past. So in order […]
Tonight I came home after working an incredibly long day with the subcontractors at our home and collapsed into a chair. My daughter came home and I told her that the rest of the night was all time just for her and I to spend together. We sat together on the couch and started having a […]
Every summer when I was a kid, my family would make the long drive from Washington State where we lived at the time out to Utah to visit our grandparents who lived here. That drive was a brutal 14 hour drive if you didn’t add on all the time for every potty stop we had […]
A few days ago I posted a blog about a young girl who was being bullied. Then today my son sent me the link to a video and he asked me to watch it – he said it is a video that would change people’s lives because it hits the viewer in such a powerful […]
Figuring out who your ancestors are is one of the coolest things in the world. I was lucky to have Grandparents who were big into doing genealogy research when they were still alive and they provided me life history books for their own lives as well as providing me life histories written by my great-grandparents […]
“Above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.” -Ronald Daw I believe in magic…I believe we actually make our own magic by the way we think, the dreams we dream, […]
“If people are trying to bring you down it only means that you are above them.” I spent time tonight talking to a close friend who has a teenager daughter who is being horribly bullied in school. Her daughter, like many teenage girls, suffers from low self-esteem. She thinks her body isn’t thin enough, she […]
Every year the BYU Founders Board gathers together from different parts of the country to meet in a location for a week-long adventure. Last year we went to the Dominican Republic. This year we went to Brazil to embark on a cruise that left from Sao Paulo, Brazil. For the last week my husband and […]
With Valentines Day almost upon us I decided to search for creative Group Date Ideas that would help spurn my creativity as I attempt to plan a fun Valentine weekend. I came across multiple websites such as www.niftydateideas.com and several others that had great date ideas. I pulled my favorites from several of the sites to share in today’s blog. Hopefully these will […]
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. […]
Today I was talking with one of my dearest friends and he said “Some days I look in the mirror and don’t recognize the aging man staring back at me because he looks nothing like my young spirit on the inside.” I knew EXACTLY what he meant because I feel that very same way every […]
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 […]
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 […]
