I had another birthday this week! It was a good day and I felt so much gratitude. Here are 10 things I'm thankful for: 1.  Being alive! Many people in the world's history have not had the privilege to live to be 57. I have been able to almost completely raise my children and enjoy many life experiences in my 57 years. Me as a baby 2.  My abundant life. I have a comfortable house to live in and a reliable car to drive. 3.  My dear husband.  Scott is a wonderful husband in many ways and I am truly blessed to be married to him. 4.  My children, children-in-law, and grandchildren. I am greatly blessed to have the large family I always wanted.  5.  All my musical opportunities.  I have had the opportunity to learn and frequently play the piano, the violin, and the organ. I could always practice more but it enriches my life in many ways. 6.  My garden! It's a lot of work but very rewarding. Just this morning I picked a tomato that weighs 1 lb...

This book is an older book, published in 2006 and written by Arthur C. Brooks. Arthur Brooks is a prolific author and I have read several of his books and enjoyed them. He used to be the head of American Enterprise Institute, a think tank in Washington, D.C. and now teaches classes in the Harvard Kennedy School and the Harvard Business School. He focuses on happiness research currently and has a blog called The Art of Happiness.  He's a pretty interesting guy. He gave a good talk at ARC last winter called The Science of Happiness in 15 minutes:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8a0T5XLrXc I recently read about his current schedule which he created to maximize health and happiness. He's 61 years old and has bad genes for longevity. So, every day, he gets up at 4:30am and exercises for an hour before attending Mass (he's a devout Catholic). Then after breakfast, he works with no interruptions from 8-12noon for maximal writing and creative productivity. In the afternoon he tea...

 Recently we took a short trip to visit our daughter and son-in-law in Colorado. We enjoyed seeing the Rocky Mountain National Park including a herd of elk with a bugling bull! We speculated that he was warning off the bull sitting about 1/4 mile away eying his cows. And it turns out that the weather is a lot colder at 12,000 feet! They put logs on the roof of the visitors' center to keep the roof on in hurricane-force winds. We went to the visitors' center cafe after going to the high point. Here was the view from our table--pretty amazing. After we got in the car again, we saw the elk. The bull is near the bottom middle of this picture with all his cows above him. You can see how well they blend into their background. The competing bull is not shown but the bull in the picture is facing him. We went into Estes Park which was very busy with it being Labor Day weekend and having a big craft fair. Parking was a little hard to find. We did a little window shopping and went into a...

The picture used on my missionary plaque Last Sunday was the last day of my service mission for BYU-Pathway! I served students in Nigeria, hosting a gathering each week, helping students hopefully be more successful in their educational journey. My missionary service was only a few hours a week so I could do it along with all my other responsibilities. Here is my report: Challenges 1. Students in Nigeria have many obstacles in their educational journeys with technology problems being near the top. Many of them do not have access to computers. Doing all the classwork on a phone seems very difficult but that was what they had to do. Another challenge is internet connectivity and infrastructure. Getting online for our gatherings was difficult for many students. Some of the students would do their classwork in the middle of the night because that's when the internet worked the best. Rainstorms would disrupt the internet so the rainy season was especially difficult. Electricity is also ...

 A month ago, we were able to visit the church historical sites in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York. This post will cover the last part of our trip. After visiting the Kirtland, Ohio sites and the Pittsburgh temple, we drove to the Aaronic Priesthood Restoration site in Harmony, Pennsylvania, near the Susquehanna River. There's a visitor's center there and two restored homes:  the Isaac and Sally Hale home and the Joseph and Emma Smith home. Isaac and Sally Hale first built a log cabin on their large property when they bought it. They lived there while having many children before this very nice house was built. Isaac was a hunter and used his large property for hunting. When their daughter Emma was 7, she went to church and the minister asked them to pray. So Emma went into the woods and prayed for her father to have his heart softened that he might start going to church with the rest of the family. Her father heard that prayer as he was going through the woods and started att...