This Is The Year

Being that I really don't enjoy Halloween, and October is one of my most stressful months of the year, and we've been having some health struggles with one of our children, and I've basically been feeling very overwhelmed and discouraged recently - I think it is the perfect time for me to link up with Emmy and her Ten Things to Smile About.  I need to take a good long look at the things that brought me joy this month! 1 - General Conference .  The opportunity to be instructed, uplifted and inspired by prophets of God, and those He has chosen to serve and to lead in His church.  I love, cherish and look forward to Conference Weekend every 6 months and heard so many things that my spirit needed to know or to remember. 2 - This sweet, spunky girl turned 9.  I cannot believe how my little family is growing up.  It makes me smile and makes me crazy at the same time!  I love this girl and love celebrating her and the blessing she is in our family....

I think teenagers get a bad rap.  I really do.  I'm constantly seeing memes and viral Facebook posts and letters to the editor about "today's generation".  As if that term is a dirty word.  Repeated often are words like "lazy", "entitled", "disrespectful" and many other unflattering terms.  And I think it's garbage. YES, there are some crappy teenagers out there.  But I think the percentage of "bad kids" today probably isn't any different than it was when I was a teen.  And if "our generation" was so much better, and we KNOW what kids today need and how they should be parented, who exactly is raising these crappy teenagers?  It certainly can't be all those perfect adults out there who think teenagers today suck.  Because if those folks were raising them, I mean they wouldn't be so crappy, right? We always "shudder" at the thought of our kids reaching their teenage years.  Especially when t...

I don't even really know what to say.  Or write about.  I only know that I miss blogging.  And for the past several weeks I've felt the call of the blogosphere tugging at my fingertips.  Things will happen in my life that I want to write about.  Or something will happen in the news that I want to share my views on.  But not in a combative, Facebook debate sort of way.  And then I think - I wish I was still blogging. The world of blogging has changed so much since I first started my blog years ago.  Back then we had a little circle of blogging friends who visited each other regularly, started getting to know each other, and in many cases lasting friendships in the real world were made.  I still keep in touch with many of those friends I made through facebook, or texting.  Some have gone on to be big-time money-making famous bloggers.  Others have quit blogging.  In both cases, I miss reading their blogs each day, giving my lit...