Sorry for the lousy picture but this is the book I read last week.  A friend of mine picked it for our book group for March.  I really enjoyed it a lot and recommend it to anyone.  This book was put together after Marjorie Hinckley died, by her family.  The book is entirely composed of letters that she wrote to family members.  The first section was letters to her parents in 1945 when she lived in Denver while her husband worked for the railroad.  She lived in Utah for almost her entire life and I think this was the only time when she lived away.  I enjoyed this section the most.  It would have been great to read more about this time in her life when she had two small children and was pregnant with her third and how she coped with the challenges of war-time rationing, living away from home, etc. The other sections were letters from later in her life when her children moved away (particularly her oldest daughter) and she was writing to them.  Letters from her trips to Asia with her

Last night was a milestone in our family:  our last Pinewood Derby.  My youngest son is 10 years old so he is graduating from Cub Scouts in a few months.  We've been doing Pinewood Derbies for a long time--since 1998 or 1999 (I can't remember if we did one when we lived in Maryland or not).  With six boys, we've made a lot of Pinewood Derby cars. Scott has let our boys be the chief engineers and he has just been the support staff.  They haven't been beautiful cars and they haven't usually won.  But the boys have had fun making them.  I'm not so sure about the actual races.  I asked my son last night how he felt about his last Pinewood Derby and he said, "Terrible.  Because I didn't win."  He wasn't moping around but clearly he wasn't feeling that cheerful about it.  I'm not worried about my son--he'll be fine.  But I do worry a little about the other boys who didn't win. My first question is, what is the goal of the Pinewoo

Members of my church are encouraged to become self-reliant which includes having a 3-month supply of food on hand, https://www.lds.org/topics/food-storage?lang=eng.   I had focused on a year's supply for a long time so I wasn't really thinking about this.  But then I read this blog post by a woman who decided to take this counsel very seriously.  Her idea was good but she used a lot of processed food that would store well without refrigeration and I'm not a big fan of processed food. She also seemed to be storing food that she didn't necessarily use on a regular basis. I wanted to store food that I use regularly and like to eat!, so I decided to come up with my own method.  Since I have 2 refrigerators as well as a big freezer, I had more flexibility in my storage plan.  I realize this is a luxury that a lot of people don't have.  However, it might be easier than you think, especially if you have the space.  We bought our freezer gently used back in 1991 for about

Remember this picture?  This is the feeding pump I talked about before .  We've been having major problems with it lately.  It likes to wake us up in the middle of the night with a high-pitched alarm that indicates an error message.  It has been doing this more and more often for the last month or so and I've been trying to put off doing anything about it.  We tried cleaning it with the air compressor and my husband even took it apart and cleaned the motor--he's good at that kind of stuff.  And it worked most of the time.  And to be fair, it's had a hard life living at our house, getting dropped and being used basically 24/7 every day of the year. But last week it happened again in the middle of the night and it was really disruptive to our sleep--especially since we couldn't get it to start working again.  In the morning I prayed about it and got a clear impression that I needed to do something about it.  I called my insurance and found out that they weren'

This last weekend I attended a parenting conference and I would like to share some of the ideas I learned.  This parenting conference was specifically targeted to parents of children with disabilities; however, the concepts are applicable to parents of any child.  The conference was long--about 9-10 hours of instruction not counting the breaks so I am going to break down the concepts into a few different posts.  The presenter for the whole conference was a woman named Jo Mascorro who has a masters of education and is a consultant for education based in San Antonio, Texas.  She is quite entertaining and had us laughing many times throughout.  I believe she specializes in working with families who have children in special education.  Some children in special education have huge behavioral issues and it sounds like she has seen it all. Her message on the first day was to focus on ourselves and our behavior as parents.  The reality is that we can only control ourselves.  If we think abou

Ever since I donated my kidney in May, 2011, I have been much more aware of the need to drink more water.  Water is so good for your kidneys and when you're down to only one, you feel more protective of that kidney. I've known for a long time that I don't drink enough water and other fluids.  For years, I've seen plenty of recommendations to drink 8-10 cups of water every day.  There's some debate about those numbers but I have found that my body works well on that amount. I have lots of motivation to drink more water:  it helps with digestion, urinary tract infections, kidney stones, and blood pressure.  When I have a cold, it seems like extra fluids help me feel better.  In addition, every month we do blood work for my daughter's kidney and if the creatinine in her blood goes up, which shows kidney function, they want to know if she's getting enough fluids. If I'm concerned about my kidney, I'm even more concerned (read: paranoid) about my d

I made a goal for 2013 to read a book every week.  This seemed like an ambitious goal at the time but so far, I think I've done it.  It helps that I'm a fast reader and frequently skim.  To help me keep track of some of the books I read this year, I'm going to do book reviews on this blog. My husband gave me a book for Valentine's Day called Refuge and Reality:  The Blessings of the Temple by John H. Groberg.  This book is about his time as the president of the Idaho Falls Idaho LDS temple from  2005-2008.  He tells stories about the temple patrons that he meets and shares insights that he gained.  For insights on why Mormons build temples, go here: http://www.lds.org/church/temples/why-we-build-temples?lang=eng . I enjoyed reading this book.  I read it the week my husband was out of town.  I would take a few quiet minutes at the end of the day and this was a nice book to read before I went to bed.  I'm good at forgetting books shortly after I read them, b