Saturday, November 30, 2013


“This Christmas, mend a quarrel. Seek out a forgotten friend. Dismiss suspicion and replace it with trust. Write a letter. Give a soft answer. Encourage youth. Manifest your loyalty in word and deed. Keep a promise. Forgo a grudge. Forgive an enemy. Apologize. Try to understand. Examine your demands on others. Think first of someone else. Be kind. Be gentle. Laugh a little more. Express your gratitude. Welcome a stranger. Gladden the heart of a child. Take pleasure in the beauty and wonder of the earth. Speak your love and then speak it again.”
~Howard W. Hunter

Thursday, November 28, 2013

"Not that I speak in respect of want; for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content." Philippians 4:11

Tuesday, November 26, 2013

For each new morning with its light,
For rest and shelter of the night,
For health and food, for love and friends,
For everything Thy goodness sends.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson



Monday, November 25, 2013

"If everything in one's immediate context were constantly clear, God's plan would not work. Hard choices as well as passing through periodic mists of darkness are needed in order to maintain life's basic reality—that we are to overcome by faith."-Elder Neal A. Maxwell

Sunday, November 24, 2013


The Lord gives us ways to help remember Him and His sustaining powers. One way is through that common lot we all share—adversity (see Alma 32:6). As I look back at the trials I have faced, it is clear that they have resulted in my growth, understanding, and empathy. They have drawn me closer to my Heavenly Father and His Son with experiences and refining engraved into my heart. -Elder Terence M. Vinson (Ensign, Nov 2013)

Friday, November 22, 2013


“Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others.”

 Cicero

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

"Hold your soul very still, and listen to the whisperings of the Holy Spirit.  Follow the noble, intuitive feelings planted deep within your souls by Deity in the previous world." 
-Elder James E. Faust "How Near to Angels" Ensign May 1998

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

"If you should hit the mark, you must aim a little above it: every arrow that flies feels the pull of the earth." -Longfellow

"If one should give me a dish of sand and tell me there were particles of iron in it, I might look for them with my eyes, and search for them with my clumsy fingers, and be unable to detect them; but let me take a magnet and sweep through it, and how it would draw to itself the almost invisible particles by the mere power of attraction! The unthankful heart, like my finger in the sand, discovers no mercies: but let the thankful heart sweep through the day; and, as the magnet finds the iron, so it will find, in every hour, some heavenly blessings; only the iron in God's sand is gold."—Oliver Wendall Holmes




Monday, November 18, 2013

"You need Heaven's help in receiving Heaven's child." -President Gordon B. Hinckley



"Love does not exist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction."-Antoine de St.-Exupery

Saturday, November 16, 2013

"NINE Be's" by, President Gordon B. Hinckley

1-Be Grateful
2-Be Smart
3-Be Involved
4-Be Clean
5-Be True
6-Be Positive
7-Be Humble
8-Be Still
9-Be Prayerful

"Where we love is home. Home is where our feet may leave but not our hearts."



Friday, November 15, 2013

"I am careful not to confuse excellence with perfection.  Excellence i can reach for; perfection is God's business." -Michael J. Fox
I found this quote in an old notebook of mine. I like it. I know the Lord invited us "to be perfect, even as He is perfect" but i know that we can't do that without Him. So i like the idea of striving for excellence, doing our best, and trusting the Lord will take care of the rest. Recently my husband and i watched Michael J. Fox's new show. So cool that he isn't letting his illness stop him from doing what he loves to do.

"If everything is coming your way-you are probably in the wrong lane."
I'm not sure who originally said this quote, but someone in relief society quoted it this week. We were having a lesson on adversity and how it is an important part of life and discipleship. Looking back i am so grateful for the trials i've had. I'm also so grateful to my Savior for He is whom we can turn to, to help carry the burdens we face. I keep thinking of the scripture...."Draw near to me and I will draw near to you."


Thursday, November 14, 2013

"Ambition is a path, not a destination, and it is essentially the same path for everybody.  Unconsidered, merely indulged, ambition becomes a vice, it can turn a man into a machine that knows nothing but how to run.  considered, it can be something else-pathway to the stars, maybe." -Wallace Stegner.

I think i like quotes by wallace stegner so much because my grandma used to talk about him and how they went to college together and because her last name began with an "S" as well they usually were assigned to sit by each other in class. She said she knew that he would always amount to something in his life.

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

"He is a very mild and pleasing personality.  His faith was my faith; his trials were my trials and our interests were one..."-one of my ancestors about her husband. 

"The Last Days, however dark, will precede the Glorious Milennial Dawn." -Elder Neal A. Maxwell

Tuesday, November 12, 2013


Let knowledge grow from more to more,
But more of reverence in us dwell;
That mind and soul, according well,
May make one music as before,
                               -Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Monday, November 11, 2013

"Teaching is the noblest profession in the world. Upon the proper education of youth depend the permanency and purity of home, the safety and perpetuity of the nation.  The parent gives the child an opportunity to live; the teacher enables the child to live well."
-President David O. Mckay

Sunday, November 10, 2013

"Without a knowledge of the Gospel plan, transgression seems natural, innocent, even justified.  There is no greater protection from the adversary than for us to know the truth-to know the plan!"
-Elder Boyd K. Packer

"You always hold the key of repentance to unlock the prison door." -Elder Boyd K. Packer

"Satan makes sin appealing to the undecided."
 -Elder Richard G. Scott

Saturday, November 9, 2013

"Let them hear a kind voice amid all the angry, vile voices that they will hear throughout life." -President Harold B. Lee

Friday, November 8, 2013

"Why love, if losing hurts so much? I have no answers anymore. Only the life i've lived.  Twice in that life i've been given the choice, as a boy, and as a man.  The boy chose safety. The man chooses suffering.  The pain, now, is part of the happiness, then.  That's the deal." -C.S. "Jack" Lewis (Shadowlands)

"before criticizing people, walk a mile in their shoes. then when you do criticize them, you will be a mile away and have their shoes." -jack handy

Thursday, November 7, 2013

"just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, it became a butterfly." -anonymous

Wednesday, November 6, 2013

"We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty." Maya Angelou


Good Timber

by Douglas Malloch

The tree that never had to fight
For sun and sky and air and light,
But stood out in the open plain
And always got its share of rain, 
 
Never became a forest king
But lived and died a scrubby thing.
The man who never had to toil
To gain and farm his patch of soil, 
 
Who never had to win his share
Of sun and sky and light and air,
Never became a manly man
But lived and died as he began.

Good timber does not grow with ease:
The stronger wind, the stronger trees;
The further sky, the greater length;
The more the storm, the more the strength. 
 
By sun and cold, by rain and snow,
In trees and men good timbers grow.
Where thickest lies the forest growth,
We find the patriarchs of both. 

 
And they hold counsel with the stars
Whose broken branches show the scars 
Of many winds and much of strife. 
This is the common law of life.

i just read this on the 71toes.blogspot.com
it is such a great poem. it reminds me of when i was visiting family in montreal canada, and i heard about a project of some sort that someone tried to recreate the earth on a smaller scale but something was really strange about the trees with the finished product. they were weak and bendy. the creators then realized that they forgot to create wind. the trees needed that adversity to grow stronger. anyways...it was about 15 years ago that i heard about that so i don't remember the details of the project but i do remember that they discovered trees needed wind, just like people need adversity to become strong. 


Monday, November 4, 2013

"It is the sweet simple things of life which are the real ones after all."
-laura ingalls wilder

"Children aren't things to be molded, but people to be unfolded."

Sunday, November 3, 2013


“I have come to believe that we do not walk alone in this life. There are others,fellow sojourners, whose journeys are interwoven with ours in seemingly random patterns,
yet, in the end, have been carefully placed to reveal a remarkable tapestry. I believe God is the weaver at that loom.”
 Richard Paul Evans



Saturday, November 2, 2013


"No one has yet fully realized the wealth of sympathy, kindness and generosity hidden in the soul of a child. The effort of every true education should be to unlock that treasure." -Emma Goldman, author



"The soul is healed by being with children." -english proverb


"A person's a person, no matter how small." Dr Seuss

Friday, November 1, 2013

"first and forever fan the flame of your faith, because all things are possible to them that believe." -Elder Jeffrey R. Holland