"Whether it is the best of times or the worst of times, He is with us.  He has promised that this will never change....May we have a commitment to our Heavenly Father that does not ebb and flow with the years or the crises of our lives.  We should not need to experience difficulties for us to remember Him, and we should not be driven to humility before giving Him our faith and trust.  May we ever strive to be close to our Heavenly Father.  To do so, we must pray to Him and listen to Him every day. We truly need Him every hour, whether they be hours of sunshine or of rain.  May His promise ever be our watchword: 'I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee' [Joshua 1:5]
-President Thomas S. Monson

"If you want to see what children can copy, provide a model. If you want to see what they think and their creativity, provide a blank piece of paper"
-Groutage

Art by Julia

"The life in us is like the water in a river, it rises, even floods, but then it recedes until it finds its true level." -Thoreau

"I'd much rather be a woman than a man.  Women can cry, they can wear cute clothes, and they're first to be rescued off of sinking ships" (too bad we still have to shave our legs) -Gilda Radner

"One can  never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar."  -Helen Keller

"April, the angel of the months, the young love of the year."
-Vita Sackville-West

we must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey. 
-kenji miyazawa

 When we make life a grand production, our children become audience members and their appetite for entertainment grows. Are we creating a generation of people who cannot find the beauty in the mundane? 

Do we want to teach our children that the magic of life is something that comes beautifully gift-wrapped -- or that magic is something you discover on your own?

Planning elaborate events, daily crafts, and expensive vacations isn't harmful for children. But if the desire to do so comes from a place of pressure or even a belief that the aforementioned are a necessary part of one's youth, it's time to reevaluate. 

A childhood without Pinterest crafts can be magical. A childhood without a single vacation can be magical. The magic we speak of and so desperately want our children to taste isn't of our creation, and therefore is not ours to dole out as we please. It is discovered in quiet moments by a brook or under the slide at the park, and in the innocent laughter of a life just beginning. 

We constantly hear that children these days don't get enough exercise. Perhaps the most underused of all of their muscles is the imagination, as we seek desperately to find a recipe for something that already exists. I'm Done Making My Children's Childhood Magical

"Our Creator would never have made such lovely days and given us the deep hearts to enjoy them unless we were meant to be immortal." -Nathaniel Hawthorne

"...and let it be a delightful habitation for man, and a resting-place for the weary traveler..." -doctrine & covenants 124:60

i was just flipping through my journal and i came across this scripture that i had written down.  It was just after visiting my parents home.   They've really created a welcoming and enchanting place to be.  I'd love to do the same. I would love our home to be a haven. I hope it already is, at least for our kids.  I know our son asked the other day, "will we get to live in this house when we die? I want to always live here."   I tried to explain to him that when we die we will be "home" a home that we don't remember now but when we go there we will remember it and will be happy to be there.   

"Reflect upon your present blessings of which every man has plenty; not on your past misfortunes of which all men have some." -Charles Dickens

recently my sister reminded me of how i used to write pages and pages of "gratitude lists" and "happy lists."  I had them in my journal, i had them hanging on the walls, i had them jotted down in school notebooks, and i think i talked about what i was grateful for a lot.  It's not that i'm not grateful anymore, because i am...i feel so incredibly blessed, but, i haven't been taking the time to reflect and be grateful for so many blessings and for the many miracles that daily surround us.  i really want to change my focus to gratitude.

General Conference weekend has been so fortifying so far. It is always so nostalgic to see the tabernacle choir singing and President Monson sitting on the stand. It brings me back to my childhood days and waking up on a saturday/sunday morning to the sound of all the radios and TV tuned in to the General Conference. (I guess i really got to sleep in back in those days!) My parents would let us come and go during the saturday conference but it seemed whenever President Monson spoke i would be drawn to his voice and his stories. Now he is the Prophet.  It is comforting to hear his testimony, his faith and his hope in Christ. I am so grateful that we know "by the voice of my servants or by mine own voice, it is the same!"