I love Easter the same way other people love Christmas. Easter is all about hope and joy and light and so often the outside world reflects that as we turn our back on the long, dark months of winter. Both the plants and our souls are revitalized. This year, Easter was especially tender. Lately, we’ve become more aware of our own mortality and our absolute need for our Savior. As we celebrated Easter our hearts swelled with gratitude for the resurrection that…
Most of you know that Groundhog Day is inarguably my favorite holiday. (You can read about the origins of that love here.) This year though, I was not feeling like celebrating. Matters nationally (almost every cabinet pick and every executive order has upset me on some level), locally (there was a proposal on the ballot in November to raise money for schools that didn’t pass and the school district is looking at closing schools as early as next school year), and…
October was one of those months where I would think, “Life can’t get any crazier than this” and then it would. My job as a middle school freelance educator came to an end at the beginning of the month and our family was ready to get back into a normal groove. Life had other plans though. Two big things happened in October: my mother-in-law was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer and my grandfather died. Those two things were pretty…
This year, Easter kind of snuck up on me. I’d spent all of March studying the Atonement and trying to figure out how to teach my Sunday school lesson on Easter Sunday, but hadn’t given hardly any thought (other than to purchase a ham) to celebrating Easter with our family. Literally, the day before Easter Noel and I talked about what we wanted to do. We decided we wanted to try splitting up the secular celebration of Easter (gifts and…
When I downloaded my photos from this month I found two very interesting stories. First, the tale of our February (minus our awesome Groundhog Day) according to my photos. Then, some amazing gems from the kids’ documentation of our February. Their gallery opening is in the works, stay tuned.
It’s pretty much universal knowledge at this point that I love Groundhog Day. (For the history, read this post.) But even beloved holidays can grow a bit lackluster and I’d say the last few years have been just that.* This year my enthusiasm was back. It was my turn to teach Joy School and I’d planned an awesome, yet age appropriate, lesson about Groundhog Day history with fun books, art, and shadow activities. I was pretty psyched. Then Groundhog Day…
We aren’t big New Year’s people. I’m guessing it has something to do with being non-fancy-non-drinking-morning-people, but at least one of of us is really into New Year’s resolutions. I love the metaphorical clean slate and writing up a slew of goals for how I could be better. Even if I only meet a fraction of them, I still feel like I accomplished more than I would have if I hadn’t set any goals. (Clearly, blogging more was not one of…
Every time someone would ask us about our Christmas plans we would say, “We’re staying here – and we’re so happy about it!” As much as Noel and I love our families, we truly despise traveling this time of year (see Top Ten Worst Moments of last year’s Christmas) and are also enjoying figuring out our own traditions. Growing up, my family had a lot of Christmas traditions while Noel’s family wasn’t as committed to specific ways of doing things…
I always have to warm up to Christmas. As much as I want it to be the most wonderful time of the year, sometimes it’s hard for me to be very joyful when the roads are icy and everywhere you turn there’s a barrage of commercialism. This year it felt like it took extra effort on my part to really get into the Christmas spirit, but in the end I feel like all the work and soul searching has actually…
Our trips to Las Vegas are never what people imagine. When you’re a parent, a Mormon, and you’re visiting family it’s definitely very different from what most people do in Vegas. Our purpose in going to Vegas was to be there for Noel’s grandma’s 80th birthday and because of the way our flights worked out, we were also there for Halloween. Life was a tad bit crazy leading up to our trip. Noel was out of town for work earlier…