The Dancer And The Graduate

May 24, 2013 By 1 Comment

Last night was my daughter’s dress rehearsal for her dance recital.  I always love to go and be able to take close up photos.  We don’t normally get there early enough to get seats this close for the actual recital, which is tonight.  Oh how I love the dance recital.  I look forward to it all year.  I was about to post some photos for some friends on Facebook and decided I would put this photo on the blog.

Dance Recital familybringsjoy.com

I adore how she is set apart in the middle and is making a beautiful pose.  I’m a pretty proud Mom seeing her toe pointed and great form.

Before I go, I survived graduation.  I’m in the middle of packing for our special family trip to celebrate our oldest graduating from high school.  This is our gift to her and it’s one we’ve been planning for many years.  The destination is very special and I can’t wait to tell you all about it when we return.

My graduate familybringsjoy.com

I probably shouldn’t leave out my son.  He began summer baseball this week.  However, I have no photos to share yet. {He doesn’t usually let me take many photos of him anyway. :(}  So, I’ll see you in a week! Until then…oh and thanks for stopping by! 😀  You’re awesome!

Daughters bring joy,

Filed Under: MY Family Brings Joy, Photography Brings Joy, Values Bring Joy

I Have A Life

May 13, 2013 By 4 Comments

You know how sometimes when you are looking at other people’s life via their blog, Instagram or other social media, you think to yourself, “they have a life.”  Well, maybe you don’t think that, but sometimes I do.  {I’m not saying I don’t have a life or that I don’t treasure each beautiful day I’ve been given.}  Usually, I think this during periods of my life when I don’t have much going on.  Well, this month is NOT one of those times.  As a matter of fact, I’ve been so busy living my life that I haven’t had much time to visit my friends’ blogs, etc.

I really shouldn’t even be taking the time to write this post because I have so much to do.  However, a very wise woman shared some good advice with me yesterday.  My Mom reminded me I should still take some time out for me amongst the hustle and bustle.

I’m embarking upon one of the most busiest weeks of my career as a mother.  Not only that, but one filled with lots of emotions.  If you’ve been reading my blog you already know what I’m referring to…our oldest daughter is graduating from high school.

Yesterday was my youngest daughter’s birthday and Mother’s Day.  On top of that, I taught a lesson at church and we went to my oldest daughter’s Baccalaureate service.  Tuesday morning I will be attending my 4th grader’s school talent show.  She and one of her besties are dancing in it as a duet.  We will also be attending her 4th grade graduation banquet Tuesday evening.  Wednesday there are 2 church activities scheduled at the same time for both of our daughters.  One of those occasions where hubby will have to go to one while I go to the other.  The church is hosting a special reception for the 3 seniors graduating this week.  Our new 10 year old’s church activity is a parent’s night where they share what they {equivalent to a girl scout group} have been working on throughout the year.  Family will begin to come on Wednesday and Thursday.  {looking forward to having our parents and siblings here to celebrate}  Thursday is the last day of school and graduation will be held that evening.

Today our pergola was supposed to be delivered.  Just found out it won’t be here until tomorrow…one more thing to add to Tuesday.  Today will be filled with cleaning and finishing a paint project in my youngest girl’s bedroom while the kids are at school.

I can hardly believe the time has come to see our firstborn graduate.  It was only last night as the band played “Pomp and Circumstance” {the beginning of the Baccalaureate service} and we saw our daughter walking down the aisle with her cap & gown that I saw emotion from my hubby.  A tear trickled down his face.  It wasn’t until the closing prayer of the service that the salty liquid came pouring down my cheeks.  “I pray that these parents can let their children go.”  It’s not like we’ll never see her again.  We still have all summer with her {thank goodness.}  It’s just the beginning of a different phase for us as parents.  It’s so weird this feeling.  I’m so excited for her, yet so sad to know it will not be the same after she goes to college.  She won’t be here in our home all the time.  I can’t go up to her room and check on her.  It won’t be the 5 of us here.  I have to trust that all the training and teaching we’ve done will be sufficient for her.  I have to practice faith and trust Heavenly Father will protect her…that she will go to Him when she needs help.

Well, I think that’s enough for now.  Time to get back to work.  It pains me I’m posting this without a photo. :(

Life is a blessing…through it all,

Filed Under: MY Family Brings Joy, Other Emotions, Values Bring Joy

Celebrating Life’s Milestones With Minted

April 15, 2013 By 1 Comment

What’s on your agenda for the next few months?

I’ve seen several friends on Instagram preparing for summer weddings.  Have you received any wedding announcements in the mail?  My friends at minted.com have the most beautiful wedding invitations and announcements.

EX2A wedding is not on our family’s immediate agenda.  Instead, we are preparing for our oldest daughter’s high school graduation.  It is rapidly approaching and with it are many deadlines.  We recently sent out the majority of our graduation invitations.  Addressing Graduation announcements familybringsjoy.comMy daughter was happy to address each and every envelope…made me very happy.  She warned me her hand writing was not as ‘pretty’ as mine.  I told her what mattered was that the recipients would recognize she addressed them.  I try to teach our children etiquette the way I was taught from my parents.  I remember addressing my own high school and college graduation announcements.  I feel like it’s sort of a “right of passage.”  This also helped her know and understand who was sent an announcement.

I know we live in the digital age, but I still feel honored to receive an actual announcement/invitation in the mail…one I can hold and touch.  I prefer the paper ones to the digital ones.  Sometimes I forget if I receive one online.  If I have a paper announcement, I tack it to our cork board to admire every day and use it as a reminder to send a gift or card to the recipient.

Minted.com has some special designs for graduation.  I had fun playing around & making these 3 examples:

3 Graduation Announcements familybringsjoy.com

I was surprised to find some cool graduation gift ideas at minted.com as well:

Art Prints

print minted

They have several appropriate prints for the graduate in your life.

Stationery

note pad minted

This note pad would be a lovely gift to celebrate this milestone.  They have several CUTE styles to choose from.  Personalized stationery is another perfect gift.

Journals

I am glad journaling has made a come back.  I LOVE to journal.  I couldn’t believe the variety of personalized journals minted.com has available.  You have to check out the MANY cool designs they have to offer.

journals by minted

What a great gift!  Every high school graduate will love pulling this baby out and documenting all of their college memories.  Every college graduate will love writing about their new adventures in life.

Personalized Congratulations Cards

Or maybe you just want to send some money to your grad with a special card like this one:

graduation card minted

Now that I’ve talked you into the greatness of minted.com…how about a deal for you…my fabulous readers!

 

Click HERE and Minted will give you $25

toward your first purchase of $50 or more!

senior collage familybringsjoy.com

Have fun shopping,

Filed Under: MY Family Brings Joy, Photography Brings Joy, Values Bring Joy

You Are Invited To Learn…It’s Not A Secret

April 6, 2013 By 1 Comment

While running this morning I was thinking about how excited I was to watch General Conference via broadcast for our church this weekend.  I reflected over Mitt Romney’s run for presidency and how the press continually mentioned how secretive Mitt was about his faith.  It’s not a secret what we believe.  It is sacred and personal…our faith.

I decided to offer an invitation to all who want to know more about my church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, to join us this weekend.  General Conference is held every year on the first weekend of April and the first weekend of October.  This conference is special for Latter-day Saints as we listen to the president/prophet of the church and other leaders including the 12 apostles.  They give us instruction on what we need to be focusing on to be better followers of Christ.  We already had one session this morning from 11AM – 1PM CST and the next session is about to begin…3PM – 5PM CST.  If you have BYU TV on your cable or satellite it will be broadcast on that channel.  Otherwise you can watch or listen via the internet here.

LDS General Conference

There will be 2 more sessions tomorrow, Sunday at the same times as mentioned above.  As you listen, feel free to take notes or write down questions.  I then encourage you to ask me or other members of the church your questions.  We are happy to answer questions and if we don’t know the answer we have missionaries who do.

Time to go watch,

Filed Under: Home Brings Joy, Values Bring Joy

Help Me Choose

March 27, 2013 By 6 Comments

Which Easter mantel do you like best?

Mantel One

mantel 1 familybringsjoy.com

Mantel Two

Mantel 2 familybringsjoy.com

I was super ecstatic about finding this chalkboard art at Dear Lillie.  Oh my goodness if you haven’t been to Dear Lillie’s site, you must go. {As soon as you finish reading this post and voting on which mantel you like best ;)}  Jennifer has a beautiful elegant style.  I found out she’ll be attending Haven blog conference and hope to meet her!

Anyway, I purchased and downloaded the chalkboard art onto my jump drive and took it to Staples.  They printed the poster for me.  You should have seen the look on the girl’s face after I thanked her profusely for helping me.  I was acting as if she made my day {jumping up and down squealing,} which she did make my day because I LOVE THIS!  I think she thought I was a little weird, but I don’t care.  I rushed home and cut it to fit over a mirror I had in storage {used double sided tape.}  I don’t use much gold in my home anymore, but this print fit the frame and I think these precious words deserve to be framed in gold.  I paid a total of $14 for that wonderful piece.  I splurged and bought real orchids which set me back about $24, but is nice to smell and see real flowers up there.

I love Easter.  It doesn’t seem to get as much hype as Christmas and I’m okay with that.  It’s an important spiritual holiday.

The good people at Hershey’s were kind enough to send me an Easter basket again filled with goodies.

Hershey's Easter familybringsjoy.com

I’m afraid we already ate most of the candy before I got around to writing this post.  You can see the crumbs of the Hershey’s eggs in the bottom of the milk bottle on the left.  The kids said the Jolly Rancher Sour Bunnies were better than Sour Patch Kids.  I agree they are very yummy.  Of course the first to go were the Reester Bunnies.  Reeses is a HUGE favorite in our home.  All of these are perfect to add to Easter eggs and sure to brighten your Easter celebration.

I hope you and your family have a very blessed Easter,

Filed Under: Blogs Bring Joy, Crafts Bring Joy, Home Brings Joy, Photography Brings Joy, Values Bring Joy

Sharing BB’s

March 20, 2013 By 1 Comment

homemade firing range familybringsjoy.comFirst up, this post is not about guns.

To be honest, I went a long time without buying a toy gun for my son because I’m not a huge fan of “encouraging” violence.  My view has changed somewhat, but I don’t want to focus on whether guns are good or not.

No, this post is about a red letter day…yesterday.  It was a Tuesday.  It was March 19th.  If you look on the calendar you will not see a holiday typed there.  {The kids are home for Spring Break this week.}  Yet, it was a special day.  Why is that?  My kids, my two youngest, played together.  Your thinking, “so what? what’s the big deal?”  Well let me tell you, it IS a big deal.

There is 5 years difference between my son and daughter…14 and 9 (almost 15 and 10.)  Our son, I will call him J, was the baby for a long time.  He has quite the animosity against his little sis, A.  It’s quite sad indeed that J would hold this feeling well into his teen years.  He constantly wishes A was a boy, that he had a brother.  It’s understandable being he’s the only boy besides his dad in the house (dad works a lot so he’s not here all that much.)  It’s also understandable that he wished for a brother being that he doesn’t have many friends here.  I’ve mentioned before in earlier posts about him being bullied and told he looks like a monkey.  Oh how it makes my heart hurt.

Back to J & A.  They constantly fight.  I’ve touched on this in earlier posts as well.  Dinner time, prayer and scripture time are not always super enjoyable as we have to constantly referee the 2.  Many days I am grateful I can spread the kids out into different areas of the house so I can have a break from the bickering.

Hopefully, you have somewhat of a picture of what life is like with my 2 youngest kids.  It’s not all happily ever after in this family.  However, yesterday was heavenly.  J asked A if she wanted to shoot his BB gun {actually his dad’s} with him.  I thought to myself, “Oh no. Do I really want to allow this?”  Yesterday I was super tired.  We had gotten in from our trip to visit my Mom from the weekend at about 1 AM.  I was just grateful they wanted to be outside and hoped I had about 2 minutes of respite before one of them came in and told me of how the other had done this or that to them.  Next thing I know, several minutes had passed and J came in asking if I would take a photo of how they set up their shooting range in the back yard.  I immediately grabbed my camera and said a prayer of thanks in my mind to God.

BB loading familybringsjoy.com

BB shooting range2 familybringsjoy.com

Even though J is not pictured here, these photos represent true love on his part.  The fact that he shared the gun and let his sister shoot it is a miracle.  Not only did they do this together, they also played on the plasma cars and we all played catch with the baseball together.  The other reason it was a red letter day is because the TV was not turned on ALL DAY!  Oh how I love that!  I am very grateful for this special day.

Unfortunately, today it’s back to normal.  Lord, help me.

Happy First Day of Spring,

Filed Under: Home Brings Joy, MY Family Brings Joy, Other Emotions, Photography Brings Joy, Values Bring Joy