Category Archives: Life

Sunday Best!

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John 13:15, 34-35
15 For I have given you an 
example, that ye should do
 as I have done to you.
34 A new commandment 
I give unto you, That ye love 
one another; as I have loved you, 
that ye also love one another. 
35 By this shall all men know that 
ye are my disciples, 
if ye have love one to another. 
—————————
The dictionary says 
that a disciple
 is a follower of Christ. 
We can all be disciples- 
by following Christ and His example. 
When I was serving as a missionary in Texas, I had many great experiences with being a disciple of Christ. One in particular was with a man that my missionary companion, and I, were teaching. He was an older man, kind of set in his ways. As we taught him, he said he knew that the things we were teaching him were true. We asked him if he prayed about them. He said, “Yes.” But the thing that stood out the most, was how we acted, how we loved him. And also how we loved each other. This, to him, was the icing on the cake. He knew what we were teaching him was true, because we had the love that Christ is talking about in John 13:35. What a blessing in my life to help someone to know they have a Savior who loves them. 
Hope your Sunday was the Best! Love, Joy
***********

Determination!

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Are you determined? 
I’ve been known to be 
determined 
on occasion.
 I’ve never seen such 
determination 
in a plant. 
This little plant was growing 
out of the carpet at my work. 
I absolutely love stuff like this. 
This little seed had so much 
determination
 that he didn’t let a little concrete 
and carpet stop him from doing 
what he’s supposed to!
When I see something like this, I think, 
“I can do more than I think I can!”
———————–

Failure will never overtake me 
if my determination to succeed 
is strong enough. 
-Og Mandino

Shelter is good!

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We recently had the most amazingly “windy” storm pass through our neighborhood. I don’t mind a breeze, but this was a wind! As Winnie the Pooh would say, it was “a blustery day!” Rain is good and I usually don’t mind it. Everything smells clean and fresh after the rain. I love a good snow storm, especially if I don’t have to go anywhere. But the wind scares me a little bit. Maybe because we have 11 really tall pine trees around our home. I don’t know, maybe it’s because sometimes I feel like I’m in “The Wizard of Oz”, and the house is going to lift right up and blow away. It’s a scary time to me. Some time during the middle of this windy storm, I was thinking how blessed we are to have a home. Our home has protected us from all kinds of weather. It has kept us warm in the winter, cool in the summer, and dry when there’s rain or snow. We can lock the door and feel safe. We can put on our pj’s, and wander around, and no one cares. While I was thinking about how blessed we are to have a home, it hit me that our home has sheltered us from other storms too. These storms that are not always visible, but can be every bit as devastating.  These storms come along unexpectedly. If we were to think of our home and the structure of it, different things go together to make it. There are beams, 2X4’s, sheet rock, tile, brick, siding, a roof, and windows, etc. All of these things, and more, are what makes the home solid and strong, but not indestructible. In the same way, there are different things that make our home solid and strong. Things we can’t see. The first would be desire. To desire a strong and solid home would motivate anyone to do whatever it takes to make it that way. Love, maybe even charity, would be very important. Patience, and compassion. Kindness, sharing what we have. Even selflessness. Hard work. No one wants to work alone. I believe that a family, to be solid and strong, must believe in God. If we believe in God, we want to live a life of devotion to Him. To give glory to Him by the way we live, and act, as a family, and a people. If we build a solid and strong home in this way, it can protect us from the storms that will come. Storms like: loss of a job, wayward children, substance abuse, etc. Some of the storms we may deal with are huge! Some are just the daily struggles that we all have. They can wear you down too. That doesn’t mean we won’t be a little scared from time to time, when we hear or see the storms around us. We will know that we have done what it takes to have a strong home. We will believe, and know we are safe. 

My darlin’s Birthday!

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My darlin!
(getting a little salt and pepper in that beard!)
Today is my sweetheart’s birthday!
Happy Birthday! 
We had a fun day in Salt Lake City. 
We rode the Front Runner down, and had a big adventure. 
The Gilgal Garden was pretty neat. 
This guy was pretty busy for a long time 
doing all of this to his yard. It’s now open to the public. 

There were scriptures and thoughts and 
songs written on a lot of the rocks.

Fun and interesting!
Then we went to Trolly Square. 
We ate lunch, and decided to go to see this antique car collection. 
We had seen information about it on the internet.
We rode Trax as far as we could, then walked and walked, for blocks and blocks.  
We saw this on the way! 
Good idea!!!! I will. 
Notice the raindrops on the Trust Jesus sidewalk sign? 
Yes, it rained too. 
So we walked and walked, I know I said that, 
and we got to the building and guess what.

 It was closed! 
What the..! 
No way, did we just walk and walk 
to get here, and have it be closed!!! 

Are these some of the antique cars? 
My little darlin ran over to the front door to see if anything was on the door. 
There was a sign that said, “Running errands!” with a phone #. 
So we called the number, (remember we walked and walked), 
and they said they will be back tomorrow. 
Sorry, we won’t!
We headed up to the Trax station. (More walking.) 
I need it to be clear, 
I had no intention of burning the massive 
amount of calories that I burned today. 


-Sorry-
We stopped at the 
Hope Gallery and Museum. 
We both loved it!
We made a quick pass through the Gateway. 
My darlin loves Dick’s Sporting Goods. 
He is always looking at racquet’s.
 I can’t believe he doesn’t get tired of looking at them. 
I went into the Brighton store.
 He can’t believe I never get tired of looking at the Brighton store. 
It’s a great relationship we have.
 I’m just grateful the stores are right across from each other. 
After that we headed for home. It was a fun day, 
mostly because we were together.
 I think my sweetheart had fun too. 
Happy Birthday, Sweetie!

24

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Not 24 hours, but 24 years!
That’s how long Riley has been alive! I was just thinking about the age of 24, and it hit me that I was 24 when I had Riley! wow!
Happy Birthday, my first born!
I’m very proud of you. I am so pleased you are serving our country. I am also grateful for the things you are learning that will help you be the best you can be.
I’m glad you were born!

Our Home!

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We have lived in our wonderful home for 13 1/2 years. It is a great house with a great back yard. I have loved raising my family here. With that said, it is amazing how much work goes into this house. Some people remodel every other year like clockwork. I wish we could, but we usually are just trying to keep up with the maintenance of our home. Nevermind remodeling! One day, my hubby came up the stairs, sweat dripping off his brow, and said,”We live in the project.” I laughed and laughed. What he meant was the whole thing is one big project. I’ve heard it said, that it takes a whole year to paint the Golden Gate Bridge. After a year they start all over. It is never done. That story made me feel a little better. I did a google search and found out, they don’t paint it every year. It is in a constant state of maintenance, just like our house. They do have 17 ironworkers and 38 painters, who do the job. At our home, people keep leaving. Me and my darlin and the girls are all that’s left. We will probably always live in the project.

ON PETS – by Daddy

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On Pets

My adult daughter called her mother the other day,
crying, to tell her that her family dog, Taz, had passed away. Later that day I was with my wife and she told me of the sad event. Taz had not been feeling well for several days and that night they had put him in his bed and the next morning they found him dead. We, too, had known Taz for some 12 years, since he was a puppy. As we talked about the event and how bad our daughter’s family felt about it, we, too, commenced to shed tears. Our family has always had pets and with only one or two exceptions they all died of old age. They have been, and are, important members of our family. They each have their own individual personalities, whether the pet be a cat or a dog. Dogs are always affectionate and cats are when they feel like it. They say a family owns a dog but a cat owns a family. I well remember my first dog, I brought a stray mongrel home when I was about eleven years old. I started feeding it scraps from our table and he stayed with me. He was about half grown at the time. It was during my fifth year in school and I remember that the war was still going on. Every once in a while a military convoy would be seen going through the streets of our city. I had a fascination with the Army jeep. I spent a great deal of time in class drawing pictures of jeeps and airplanes. Maybe at this point you can guess what I named my first and very own pet. You are right, his name became ‘Jeep’. Jeep slept on
my bed, ate my food (I don’t believe they even sold dogfood in 1945) and he went every where I went. When school was out Jeep would be waiting for me at the school house door. He would run alongside my bike as I rode all over the neighborhood. He provided a certain amount of humor for me and my friends. One time we were riding our bikes along a tree lined avenue in Spokane, Washington with jeep running along side. It so happened that two men were standing on the side walk talking and Jeep ran up on the sidewalk and stopped where the two men were and lifted his leg on one of the men. We talked and laughed about that for years. Wherever I was, there was Jeep, my constant companion. Jeep had one bad habit that I could never break him of, he loved to chase cars and sometimes bite at their tires if they were going slow enough. I mentally rationalized one time thinking that Jeep may have thought that cars coming toward us on the street may possibly be a threat to me. One day a car came along and true to form Jeep took out
after it, only this time, the thing that I was always afraid of
happened. Jeep was run over and killed. I remember running to the street and picking him up in my arms and with tears streaming down my face I carried him home. I was actually mad at him and I cursed him with every swear word that I could bring to mind. All that I could think of was that he did a stupid thing, now he was dead and he wouldn’t be with me any more. My sorrow could not have been more deep if the dead body in my arms had been my little brother. After all,they were both members of my family. I missed Jeep so much, I missed his licking my face, jumping up on me with muddy paws and being there for me 24-7, as they say today. I missed his being curled up in the bend of my knees as we slept through the night. We were pals, he loved me as only a dog can love and I loved him as only a boy could love. I don’t believe I feel much different about every pet that we have had as a family since that time. When our kids have brought home a new pet I have hesitated letting them keep them. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to start a new relationship with a new pet because I knew how much it hurt when they go away. I don’t believe that our children ever
understood my hesitancy, a hesitancy that was rooted in the loss of a little dog named Jeep.
-Emil

The Box of Crayons!!!

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I will never forget it!!
I was about 6 years old when I first saw it. I was in love!!! I know, that seems kinda materialistic, but I really loved it and wanted it. Every time I saw it in the store, I would take the box off the shelf, open the lid that folds down inside the top, and just look! All those colors, they were so beautiful. Then I would smell. Mmmmmmmmm! Even weirder, huh? I think my favorite thing of all was the sharpener built-in. Crayons AND a sharpener built-in?
What more could a 6 year
 old ask for?
Well, the thing is, I never asked for them. I thought they were too expensive. I finally told my mom one day, long after I was a grown up. In passing, I said, “Oh yeah, I always wanted that box of Crayola Crayons.” She was surprised!! “Really? Why didn’t you ask  for it?” I told her how I thought they were too expensive, and that I didn’t want to be a burden. It made her feel sad. It was a revelation to her that I wanted something and never asked, and it was a revelation to me that I could have asked.
The lesson is, even if we felt, a little like we went without as children, we survived.
In fact, I would say I flourished and am a better person for it. It doesn’t hurt us to go without. It builds character, gives us empathy, and helps us to understand each other better.
FYI-
I now have a box of
 Crayola Crayons,
a 64 box with a sharpener built in, and I still love them!!!

the joyful nest!

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I don’t know if you remember, but one of my first posts was about “choosing joy”.
It is what I do.
I have come to a time in my life,
when the chicks are mostly grown.
Time flies when you’re having fun, and
I know that in just a few years the nest will be empty.
OUCH!
I feel a pain in my heart. I’m OK, it’s just so hard to have my childers growing up and leaving. What’s weird is, I have been looking forward to this for quite sometime. I just didn’t know it would come quite so quickly. Being a mom has been the greatest, hardest, most amazing experience. When they were tiny, I would give anything (pretty much) for a break. Just 20 minutes! You know, run to the store by myself, take a shower, eat MY food by myself. I think all I did was feel overwhelmed and worry. Come to think of it, I still worry. But now they’re gone alot and doing so much, I worry when they don’t come home at the designated time. Did the car break down? Have they even looked at the clock? These days, I miss having them all safely tucked in bed by 8:30 pm.
After all is said and done, life is wonderful. It is a challange, and I love it. I choose to love it, all of it.
————————————
I sent my oldest son off to boot camp on Tuesday, he has chosen to serve his country. It’s going to be a great thing! I will miss seeing him for a while. Then my second son will be leaving on his mission in July. Oldest daughter is at a crossroads, as well. Bonus baby just turned sixteen on the 19th and had her first date all in the same week. Wow! I  know that I’m still their mom and hopefully they will always come home to the nest for visits, bringing lots of grandbabies and sharing love and  togetherness.
When I first heard Eva Cassidy sing the song, “Who Knows Where The Time Goes” I cried….I sobbed. I thought of my darling children flying away. It’s hard, but when it’s time for them to go, I know it. I have to have faith in them and in God. I know I have taught them, and loved them, and they are amazing!!
I had a friend tell me once, “Joy, you’re not the only one who loves them.” Father in Heaven loves them even more than I do. They will be just fine!!!