Food For Thoughts…

Do you remember life before cell phones, texting and emailing? My life has actually expanded and improved because of the way it is utilized by my best friend.  Don is constantly looking for things to send me to brighten my day or to help me stay sane by giving me thoughts to ponder other than how to get industrial strength infant poo out of clothing and the fact that I’m insanely tired and just want to sleep and eat donuts…

Anyway… I just wanted to share my favorites with you:

• “What if you woke up tomorrow with only those things for which you expressed gratitude today?”

•  "Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life," Jobs said during a Stanford commencement ceremony in 2005.
  "Because almost everything -- all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure -- these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important."
  "Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart."
  -Steve Jobs

If you watch this video know that the baby buffalo will amazingly be just fine, BUT you have to watch it all the way to the end!

His greatest strength in our relationship is knowing how to make me laugh – like “bust a gut” make me laugh. And I get it’s his timing and the mood I’m in so if the following doesn’t do the same for you it’s ok. Sometimes I’ll be having a hard day and he seems to know so he’ll send me nonsense to take my mind off of me…

Or it is something completely out of the blue. I’ll text him the question “how are you?” and I get this picture in response …

It still makes me laugh –

My dear friend Crystal has that similar impeccable timing as Don and sent this series of pictures at a much needed time…

Anyway, thought these images and thoughts might shake up your day and add a little “umph” to it – Do you have anymore to add to my growing stash?

Summer is over…Flu season is here

And all I can say is…

Every now and then my snarky side comes out REALLY strong, as I was cleaning up my very sad Liberty who had thrown up in her sleep Rhino kept going off in my head, complete with psycho laugh. So farewell summer…hello flu.

On a more serious note, how cool is it that I can be at home (thanks to my awesome husband) and snuggle up with this precious, sad child?!

And watch how simple things can bring so much joy when you are sick, here she is when I asked if she wanted to watch her FAVORITE movie, The Last Unicorn, and have an Otter Pop…

My children are so gifted at getting me to slow down and helping me forget my schedule to enjoy “the moments” even the gross, throw-up ones, so I can snuggle with them, love them, and really be with them…

General Conference is on my mind right now and my mind goes back to one of my favorite talks given by Elder Ballard in the Spring of 2008 called “Daughters of God.” He quoted a woman I didn’t recognize but who I could completely relate with…

Author Anna Quindlen reminds us not to rush past the fleeting moments. She said: “The biggest mistake I made [as a parent] is the one that most of us make. … I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of [my three children] sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages six, four, and one. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night. I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less” (Loud and Clear‍ [2004], 10–11).

Ain’t it the truth?! So bring it on flu season, let it begin!