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 […]
That quote comes from a talk given by one of my favorite speakers, Dieter F. Uchtdorf. Here are a few excerpts from the talk: “Over the years, I have had the sacred opportunity to meet with many people whose sorrows seem to reach the very depths of their soul…Often their grief is caused by what […]
A research study at Harvard Medical found that, in fact, happiness is contagious. It suggests that happiness is influenced not only by the people you know, but by the people they know. The study showed that happiness spreads through social networks, sort of like a virus, meaning that your happiness could influence the happiness of […]
Waking up in the morning is hard. Especially when you are working late into the night and not getting nearly enough sleep, which I am sure many of you suffer from just as I do. That alarm going off in the morning has to be my least favorite sound in the world. But tonight my […]
When I sat down tonight to contemplate what to write about my day my first thought was to write about wanting to throw a temper tantrum at the end of a really bad day. I had just gotten off the phone with Comcast’s customer service line with a gentlemen offshore who, bless his heart (its […]
“Think the best of each other, especially of those you say you love. Assume the good and doubt the bad.” -Jeffrey R. Holland So many times in life we hear something, or read something, or receive bits and pieces of information that leave room for interpretation of a situation or another person. And the instant […]
Let me start by saying Happy St. Patrick’s Day! And what better day to talk about the subject of Good Luck and Good Fortune? Back to the question I posed in the title of today’s blog – Do we make our own luck? I am a firm believer that we do! The times I have […]
Growing up in a family of ten kids led to some awesome memories. One memory in particular that I thought about today was the following story: We were sitting around our massive dinner table (it took a huge table to hold all 12 of us!). We were preparing to sing Happy Birthday to one of the […]
“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 […]
I’ll be happy when ____ happens. I’ll be happy when I have ______. I’ll be happy when _____ loves me. I’ll be happy when I look like _____. The “I’ll be happy when” trap is one of the easiest to fall into. I know because I have fallen into myself far too many times. For […]
Things Work Out -By Edgar A. Guest Because it rains when we wish it wouldn’t, Because men do what they often shouldn’t, Because crops fail, and plans go wrong Some of us grumble all day long. But somehow, in spite of the care and doubt, It seems at last that things work out. […]
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 […]
Choices. We make them almost every second of every day. Some matter, some don’t. Some have lasting consequences, some have next to no impact on our life. The most important choices we make are the choices between right and wrong. I also think those are the easiest ones to make if you know your values. […]
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 […]
Somedays you have to be your own cheerleader. Some days you have to look in the mirror just like the little girl in this AWESOME video clip and say out loud, “I like myself, I like my hair, I can do anything!” Watch this short little video clip and see exactly what I am talking about […]
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 […]
I hate that we sometimes feel alone in this life – the fact is that we are never alone – there are always others out there going through the same thing that we are, it’s just that we need more of us who are willing to be honest about it so we give permission to […]
So for those of you out there who are like me, and who are still struggling to come up with a few more gifts before Christmas next week, I decided to put together a list of some last minute gift ideas that could help you if you are stuck trying to find a few more […]
Tonight my mother and father-in-law arrived to stay with us for a few days. They came down from their farm in Idaho to visit us so they could come to see their son (my husband) tomorrow night when he will be singing with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir at the Conference Center in Salt Lake City. […]
Today I was feeling the stress of the holiday creep in and I decided that I needed an action list of things I could do to help take the stress off during this holiday season. Here is the list of ideas I came up with to help all of us cope with holiday stress: Make […]
Christmas season casts a truly amazing spell on the world. People’s walls come down, their hearts are softened, they notice the needs of strangers, they have the desire to care for their fellow man, and hurts anger seems to get let go and be replaced with the Christmas spirit of love. It truly has an […]
Only 10 days til Christmas! I can’t even believe it! How did that happen so quickly??! Good heavens I am not even kind of ready yet! Thank heavens for Amazon Prime two day shipping is all I can say! Maybe I am the only one that feels this way, but picking out Christmas presents is […]
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 […]
Today was another great day in San Francisco at the TED Women’s Conference. Here are a few inspirational stories to share from today: Diana Nyad: In 2013, at the age of 64and as her fifth attempt to do so, Diana swam all the way from Cuba to Florida. A total distance of 110 miles in […]
“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 […]
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 […]
And there is no better week to take the action of giving thanks and showing gratitude than Thanksgiving week. This is the perfect week to extend a helping hand to someone in need. And we can always find someone out there who is in greater need than we are. It’s so easy to get sucked […]
