It’s been fascinating this year to study The Book of Mormon that I am SO familiar with… and find out that there is SO much that I’ve never seen it in before. How is it that I’ve read these stories so many times and there’s still more to unpack? I’m so grateful for the Come Follow Me program and how it helps me to dive into the scriptures in more meaningful ways.
This last week we studied about Nephi’s family preparing to leave Bountiful. If you’re unfamiliar with the story I’ll give a brief recap (or you can read 1 Nephi 1-18 for all the details). Nephi’s family was called to leave Jerusalem, their home filled with comforts and riches prior to the Babylonian captivity (as recorded in the Old Testament books of Daniel, Jeremiah and others). Despite the challenges, they obediently followed the Lord’s command, embarking on a journey into the wilderness that lasted eight long years. Finally, they reached the land Bountiful, a place of abundance and prosperity.
At first glance, Bountiful seemed like the promised land they had longed for—a place flowing with milk and honey, where their family could thrive. FINALLY, they had made it! They had escaped the perils of remaining in Jerusalem and being subject to captivity, and they had survived the long years in the desert where they had suffered hunger and privations. I can only imagine their gratitude to reach this beautiful place as their reward for enduring through nearly a decade of trials. Yet, even in this seemingly idyllic setting, they were not meant to stay. The Lord had greater things in store for them, beyond the comforts of Bountiful.
As part of my Come Follow Me study last week I listened to the Follow Him podcast where they had Dr. Tyler Griffin on the show. This part of their conversation keeps replaying in my head –
Hank Smith: We’ve made it through the wilderness. We’re to Bountiful and you would think we made it. We could stay here forever, yet there’s a lot more to come. Dr. Tyler Griffin: This is a beautiful reminder to us that if we’re not careful, we will mistake these byways or these incredible locations like Bountiful. It’s oceanfront property. It’s got all the fruits we could want. Why not just set up our civilization here? […] From an earthly perspective you could say, “Hey, it’s Bountiful. This is the perfect place,” but the reality is God has so much more in store to give this group. They don’t even know the extent of the lands and the fruit and the flowers and all of the amazing things that they’re going to get to experience in the promised land after having given up all of their gold, silver, precious things in their house and their land of inheritance in Jerusalem. It’s like what they sacrificed is nothing compared to what he has in store for them and what he has in store for them is not Bountiful. It’s just a staging area for that next phase which involves crossing the ocean. […] John Bytheway: I’ve never thought of that before, but we all understand what the Lord means when he says, “Leave Babylon,” but leaving your Bountiful. Ooh, that’s tough. And it was as Michael Wilcox who talks about the Lord sometimes calls us when the nets are full. That’s when it’s tough. I know people in my own ward, they just bought a house and got called on a mission, and asking you to leave when the nets are full. Maybe they got comfortable here in Bountiful and, nope, you’ve got to leave your Bountifuls too.
Leaving behind Jerusalem would have been very difficult. Lehi’s family seems to have been in a position of wealth and comfort. They knew that there were bad influences around them though. That sacrifice would have been hard but it feels like the kind of sacrifice you expect to make as someone trying to follow God. Leaving behind something that looks and feels good but is bad for you. Like when you’re comfy binging Netflix but you know it’s time to get your lazy butt off the couch and start exercising. You might be happy on the couch, but you know you could do better.
Going through the wilderness was obviously difficult. Lack of food, broken bows, living in tents – none of that sounds fun. But it was necessary. If they were to leave behind Jerusalem and escape the judgements that were coming there was a desert standing in their way. It feels acceptable to have challenges that come after making a sacrifice of something that is bad for us. It’s like the daily grind of waking up each morning to go to the gym after leaving the couch. it’s not fun, but the results are worth it. Plus, on the other end of it you can justify eating chocolate cake!
When they reached Bountiful – they had made it! All of that misery in the desert was over and now they were being rewarded. It might have been so hard, but looking around them I would imagine they thought it was worth it. They didn’t have to worry about being captured by Babylonians, they weren’t starving in the desert – clearly this is what the Lord had in mind for them. They had gotten in shape and THIS was the chocolate cake that they had earned by putting in all that time at the gym.
But instead they were told to leave that beautiful, rewarding place as well. In order to get into the really amazing shape that you want to get into, you also have to give up that chocolate cake that you feel like you’ve earned. For Lehi’s family to get to America – a land that was teeming with natural resources, space and so much more than they could have ever dreamed of – they had to give up Bountiful. It was the best they had seen so far – but they had no idea what was in store.
Nephi’s story must have been very comforting to Latter-day Saint Pioneers. As they were driven from Palmyra to Kirtland to Missouri to Nauvoo and ultimately to Utah. How hard it must have been to give up homes, businesses and lands in Illinois for the deserts of the Mountain West. But what would they have given up if they had stayed? Would the church have had the space it needed to grow and thrive if they hadn’t been willing to give up what they already had?
I keep asking myself, what about me? Would I be willing to give up Bountiful for the Promised Land? What are the good things that I might have to give up for something that would be even better?
One example that came to mind from my own life happened about a year and a half ago. I had 4 children and my youngest had just made it into preschool. Things were clicking along with my business and my kids were starting to be able to handle their schooling on their own – I was actually getting to a point where I had something resembling free time in my day! We were getting out of diapers and carseats, no one needed to be back at home for naptime. My oldest had finally reached 13 too so I had a legitimate babysitter built in when I wanted to leave the house. I had done the baby/toddler/little kid thing for so long and I’d finally made it to having big kids. This was the life!
Then… the prompting came. It was time to have another baby. What?! Didn’t the Lord know? I already had 4 kids – which is maybe not a LOT of kids – but it is certainly still a lot of kids. I was past 35, which meant that I now qualify as a “geriatric pregnancy” (lots of feelings about that terminology, but that’s another topic). Plus, my 4th pregnancy had been ROUGH – gestational diabetes, kidney stones, back problems – and when it was over I got a difficult baby who was always mad, didn’t sleep and required a lot of attention. Was I really being sent back to the wilderness of newborns and toddlers? Hadn’t I earned my Bountiful?
I would be lying if I said that I jumped right in with Nephi’s “I will go, I will do!” personality. It took some time for me to warm up to the idea, to discuss it with my husband, and to clear it with my midwife. But eventually I allowed myself to be “led by the Spirit, not knowing beforehand the things which I should do.” (1 Nephi 4:6) Within a few months I was pregnant again – being tossed about on the seas of morning sickness, kidney stones and tachycardia. It was a pretty rough go of things, and there was a lot of misery through those nine months of pregnancy. But at the end of it…
I got this sweet baby! He is sweet tempered, loving and adorable. He even sleeps through the night! He only sleeps in my bed next to me – but to be honest, that’s par for the course and he actually *sleeps* so he’s ahead of his siblings. The word most often used to describe him is “delightful” and it is certainly fitting.
Before his arrival our kids had pretty well decided that babies were ROUGH. They weren’t really sure about having a baby again after how much their youngest brother had cried and been miserable to be around. But this baby has completely changed their tune. They carry him around like he is their own. He has been so good for the big kids to learn some responsibility, and he’s even helped the youngest learn to regulate himself a little better. In all he has been the most wonderful blessing that we had no idea we needed in our family.
There was nothing wrong with our family before. But now that we know how wonderful our family is with this new baby – how sad it is to think how easily we could have stayed in a place of contentment and complacency and missed out on him! How sad it would have been knowing all the vastness and bounties of the Americas were given up for a few miles of oasis on the Arabian peninsula.
I don’t think that leaving Bountiful is a one time thing in our life. I’m pretty sure it’s a pattern that will happen again and again and again. Because we have no idea the treasures and blessings that God has in store for us. He will continue to lead us from good to better and better and better until He can finally lead us into Kingdoms of Glory. But we have to be willing to let go of the good that we have now, and cross the raging seas before we can get what He has in store for us.
A few years back our family was studying the Tree of Life story from 1 Nephi 8. As part of our study we watched a video representation of the story. We got to the part of the video where the people who have pressed forward to make it to the tree of life finally get a chance to partake of the fruit. My 8-year-old son suddenly asked, “If the fruit is so good, why do they only take one bite? Why don’t they eat the whole thing?”
I hadn’t been paying attention to that particular detail, but he was right. In the video it shows that the people are excited to get to the tree, they take a bite of the fruit and then just stand there with the rest of the fruit still sitting there in their hands. Although it was a brief scene that I initially overlooked, my son’s observation was astute.
Usually if you’ve eaten something that’s delicious the first thing you want to do is take another bite, and another, and another! If it’s so good, why is it not smeared all over their faces and dripping from their hands? You should be able to tell from looking at someone that they had been eating the fruit. Their hands should be so sticky that no one can touch them without getting some of the juice on them as well. You should be able to smell it on them from several feet away. You should get a contact high from the fruit just by being in their vicinity.
If the fruit of the tree of life represents the Love of God, then how would this apply to me? Am I ever guilty of just taking a single bite of that love and then leaving the rest behind? Many of us can remember the moment when we found the gospel or gained a testimony that it was true. But as Alma asks us in Alma 5:26 – “can ye feel so now?” It doesn’t do us any good to find the gospel and feel that love one time. We should take that love and apply it to every aspect of our lives until people can tell just by looking at us that we’ve felt that love.
But how do we keep partaking of the fruit? Won’t we get bored just eating the same thing over and over again? I think apples are delicious, but if I sit around just eating apples I’ll get tired of them pretty quickly. Fortunately, I don’t think that this fruit is only good one way. I’m sure it tastes great as jam or pie or in a fruit salad. If my experiences with the Love of God are any representation, it has so many different flavors that you can make it part of ANY dish – pasta, soup, ice cream, steak. Don’t think that God has any limits! I have felt His love at births, and funerals – it can be felt both in times that are joyous and those that are filled with sorrow. His love is present at the grandest of occasions and the most mundane. His love can give a better flavor to anything that you’re going through.
Maybe we just take one bite because we want to leave more for others. However, there’s no shortage or limit to the fruit – the Love of God is infinite. Limiting our consumption does not leave more for someone else, there is plenty for everyone. In fact, as we eat more of it the supply only grows and becomes more available and easier to find for others. We also learn how to prepare it better and can share those recipes with others so that they can enjoy the fruit more fully. We are all strengthened when another person is able to apply the Love of God in their life.
Have you ever listened to a talk or lesson as someone has shared how they felt God’s love in their life – either through an act of service, or a prayer, or a scripture, or any number of other ways – and then recognized that you’ve felt God’s love in that way as well, even if you hadn’t recognized it at the time? Or taken their “recipe” and tried someone else’s way of living the gospel which gave you access to God’s love in a completely different way than you’d had before? The more experience we have with the love of God, the more we can share that love with others.
I posted a few years back about a time when I was able to bless a few people in a small way through a prompting I received at stake conference. I had listened as one of the speakers had shared the way she had felt impressed to serve. When I went out and served in a similar way I was able to see how the Lord was able to bless several people through that service. I was so grateful for access to someone else’s “recipe” for sharing and feeling God’s love.
Maybe we’re really familiar with eating one part of the fruit, but there are other parts that we don’t want to eat. Do I take parts of the gospel and enjoy their sweetness while neglecting other parts – denying myself the blessings and sweetness they could also add to my life? The seeds, the skin, the flesh, the stem – all of it is delicious and can be used in so many different ways. It is THE superfood – the more of it you eat the better it is for you. It’s all there, it’s mine for the taking, why would I not eat as much of it as I can? Whether it is family history, temple attendance, scripture study, personal prayer, church meetings, ministering assignments – I’m sure there is an aspect of the gospel that we can each work on adding into our lives more fully that would give us greater experience with the love of God.
So my challenge to you is – DIG IN! Take more than one bite. Let’s all feast on the fruit of the Tree of Life and bring the Love of God more fully into our lives. Let us not merely nibble at the edges of divine love; instead, may we devour it, savoring its fullness. In doing so, we can become beacons of that love in a world that hungers for its taste.
Sometimes, great lessons arise from the unexpected chaos of our daily routines. Last week, as I navigated the whirlwind of home renovations, a seemingly small decision at church presented a unique challenge. Little did I know, this experience would not only test my limits but also offer a lesson in faith, family, and the joys of hospitality.
Embracing the Chaos
Last Sunday they passed around a sign up sheet in Relief Society to feed the missionaries. I knew that I was dead in the middle of renovations in our home. My house was a mad disaster and there was no way that I would be ready to have it cleaned up and guest ready by Sunday. But a little nudge told me to sign up.
The week before in our presidency meeting one of the counselors had shared an experience where she had put too many things on her schedule but felt like she should add one more thing to her schedule. She had borne her testimony of how she’s found that when she has too many things to do but she’s doing it on the Lord’s behalf somehow her time seems to lengthen and things work out.
I have a tendency to over commit myself. It’s been a huge problem and in recent years I’ve tried to be better about not saying yes to absolutely every request. I don’t have to run the book club, and a homeschool co-op, and fulfill my calling, and plan fun adventures for my kids, and make healthy dinners, and… and… and. At some point I need to decide which things are the most important to me and which are not and choose my time accordingly.
But this time… I decided to say yes. I knew it was crazy. I knew there were a dozen other families in the ward who could have hosted the missionaries. I knew it was totally ok if someone else got to have them over. But I took that ballpoint pen and wrote my name and number on the line for Sunday night.
Renovation Navigation
I knew the week would be crazy, but it was even more so than I’d expected. We were supposed to be done Tuesday or Wednesday, but the last baseboards weren’t installed until Saturday afternoon. At which point our house was an incredible disaster. We were halfway moved into the rooms upstairs but we needed to move the rest of us in. Our house hadn’t been properly cleaned in about two months since the flooding happened, and there were boxes and detritus EVERYWHERE.
On Saturday night I looked around and wanted to cry. There was no way that we’d be anywhere close to guest ready by Sunday evening. I didn’t even know what I was going to make! I’d spent every last second all week just trying to get us moved back into our own space. But, I’d said yes and I’d have to figure out the rest of it the next day.
Sunday morning rolled around and despite the continued chaos of our house we all made it to church on time for the sacrament (just barely). On the way I had given marching orders to the family that when we got home it would be all hands on deck to try and get our main floor to a vaguely presentable state before the missionaries came. I still didn’t know what I was going to make for dinner though and I knew I didn’t have ingredients on hand to make most of the things that I wanted to.
I thought there was a good chance that I had ingredients to make my tomato basil soup and if I made some homemade bread to go with that it would be pretty good. Unfortunately bread baking is the specialty of my mom, sister and brothers… not me. So while I nursed my baby in the mother’s lounge I texted my mom and sister for recipes and suggestions for how to make homemade bread as simply as possible in the few hours after we got home.
Race against the clock
Our ward meets at noon so we don’t get home until nearly 2:30 – which meant a pretty quick turnaround when we got home to be fully ready for the missionaries. Of course, since it was fast Sunday my boys had to go collect fast offerings which meant I lost my two biggest helpers right off the bat. Plus our ward choir decided to start back up that week too so my husband headed off in another direction – leaving me with my 9 year old, 6 year old and 7 month old. Not exactly the A team.
Luckily I discovered that I had all the ingredients for my enchiladas – which I’m way better at making than homemade bread. So I was able to quickly get that going while I started to clean up the house as best as I could. Of course, the baby objected part way through and insisted on being fed and put to sleep. By the time all my boys got back it was about 4pm – the ingredients were assembled to make enchiladas but they weren’t yet made, and I was stuck on the rocking chair keeping the baby asleep.
I handed the baby off to snuggle with my husband. In the next hour we managed to get two pans of enchiladas made, a pan of brownies mixed up, the floor mostly swept, the family room and entry halls picked up, the bathroom lightly cleaned, a salad made, the table set, the dishwasher started, the counters cleared and an egg borrowed from the neighbors.
I cannot adequately express how improbable it was that we would be able to get all the things done before the missionaries arrived. There was more than once that I looked at the clock and thought, “those numbers should have changed more than that since I last looked at the clock”. But somehow, miraculously, the Lord gave me the time I needed to accomplish what He needed me to do.
A Meeting of Faith and Fellowship
Having the missionaries over was great. One of them was named Elder Anderson from Perth, Australia – an exciting combination as my maiden name is Anderson and my mom’s family is from Australia as well. We made some fun connections and were able to reminisce about our family’s trip Down Under last year.
It was so good for my kids to get a chance to talk to the missionaries. We had a good takeaway challenge that I think is going to really strengthen our family, and my 14 year old had a chance to really dive into some of the deeper doctrinal questions with them.
After they left I realized that the work that I really needed my family to complete before the weekend was over – was mostly done in that 2.5 hour time span after church… in addition to all the preparations we made for the meal. There’s no way that if we’d come home from church and hadn’t had the motivation of the missionaries coming over that we would have gotten that done. Somehow the Lord really had figured out how to make it so that I added one more thing to my schedule and actually added more time to my day. It’s loaves and fishes math, not regular math.
Lessons Learned: Faith in the Frenzy
As I’d been talking to my mom while I was trying to figure out what I was even going to make for dinner I told her – “When the sign ups came around last week I felt like, ‘there’s no way we can host the missionaries, everything is too much in chaos’ but I also felt like I needed to have some faith and just do the thing…. So we’re in more chaos still than I even thought we would be. So I’m trying to muster up even more faith to do the thing that I felt like I should do. Faith is stressful.”
I think that might be a new motto for me – “Faith is stressful.” Stress seems like the opposite of faith, but I’m starting to realize that without the difficulties that make things stressful – there’s no faith. You don’t need any faith to do easy things – faith only comes in when things are difficult. I still want to be careful about how I manage my time and what things I allow to come into my schedule – but I also hope that I allow myself to be stretched. I want to say yes to the opportunities that the Lord is ready to give me if I’m willing to go outside my comfort zone. I hope I can be mindful of where I can use my own abilities to their limits and let the Lord step in to turn my tiny loaves and fish into a feast. I’m willing to be stressed for the Lord because I know He won’t leave me hanging. “I can do ALL things through Christ” – even feed the missionaries on a day when there’s really no way that is going to work out. If the Lord can do that with me, why would I limit Him on anything else that He wants to do with me?
(P.S. – I hope you enjoy the picture that I had ChatGPT help me make for this post, the process was hilarious. I asked for a woman who looked frazzled but faith filled. Each iteration either looked like she was going to DIE or completely serene 50’s style perfection. – there was no in between. This one came closest to what I was looking for – but I love that there are 3x as many kids as I have in the picture. You can’t see them, but there are also babies flying around behind the headline. I thought you might enjoy seeing some of the other images that were generated for this that I didn’t end up using.)
For the last 7 years my book club has hosted a “Favorite Things Party”. It’s basically a white elephant gift exchange, with the caveat that each person should bring something that’s one of their “favorite things” that fits within our budget. It’s so much fun because as we go around each person gets to explain what their favorite thing is that they brought and why they like it so much. Every time I leave not only with someone’s favorite thing but also some awesome ideas for other things that might make me happy too.
I always struggle though with what to bring for my favorite thing. Most of my favorite things are either above the price point that we’ve set, or too far below the price point that we’ve set (i.e. free), or require knowing the recipient’s size or hair color (difficult with white elephant style exchange), or I just don’t know if it will fit into someone else’s lifestyle like it does mine. But I have lots of favorite things that I really want to be able to share with people! So I decided to put together a blog post with some of my favorite things so I could share them with all of you. If you’re looking for something to add to your Christmas wish list maybe you’ll find something you’ll love here too. My real favorite things are my family and the gospel, but these are some favorites that might be able to go under the Christmas tree. I started working on this and found I had too many favorite things so I’ve split this into a few different posts. This post has some that didn’t fit well into some of the other general categories – but stay tuned! I have recommendations for tech, beauty, kids, board games, books, babies, pregnancy and more still to come!
Alright, without any further ado, here are some of *my* favorite things:
This was the only picture I have of our wrapped presents under the tree, I will have to get a better picture when we get our tree up this year
Fabric Christmas Bags – My mom was an environmental reporter when I was younger and she has always had her eye on how to make choices that were more environmentally friendly. One of the things she decided to do was to switch to making fabric gift bags to put our Christmas presents in. When I got married she gave me a few starter bags and I was hooked. I LOVE our fabric Christmas bags because they make everything really easy to wrap – open a bag, put the present in, tie the bow. Even if the present is something awkward shaped it can fit in a bag nicely without worrying about angles. There’s no waste because everything is reused from year to year, and I don’t spend any money on wrapping paper, ribbons and tape! It’s also nice so that if a sneaky toddler gets into a present before Christmas day, I can just put the present back in the bag without having to re-wrap it (not that that’s ever happened in our house). Some people have asked me if I’m concerned that it makes it too easy for my kids to peek at their presents – but I figure if they’re motivated they’ll figure out how to do that with or without easy access, and really they only ruin Christmas for themselves so that’s a lesson they would only need to learn once 🤷♀️ I’ve made most of mine, and one of these days I’m going to post a tutorial for how to make them yourselves… I just can’t completely remember how I did it and I’m not a seamstress by any stretch of the imagination so it’s been tricky to reverse engineer what I already did. I usually raid the remnants section of the craft store around November and get lots of different Christmas fabrics – I use all different sized bags so I can use whatever pieces are leftover. I use little hanging tags like these ones to label the bags – and because I’m extra cheap I save the tags and just reuse them every year. I store my bags in a storage bin like this one and the tags in a storage bin like this one. It makes clean up on Christmas morning super easy because we just fold up the bags and collect the tags into their boxes! No huge trash can run! (at least, not from wrapping paper 😜)
The Chosen – Ok, I know, you already know – I love the Chosen. But seriously, especially at Christmas time, could there be a much more appropriate favorite than a high quality, free show about Christ? It’s available on Netflix now as well as at thechosen.tv.
Paired – This is a great app for married couples to have an excuse to connect on a daily basis. Each day they have a new question that you and your spouse can answer and then discuss your answers together. I splurged for the premium account, which opened up all of the content on their platform for us to discuss, but even just the free account is a pretty great way to discuss things that you might not think to discuss otherwise. I will note though, that I really would limit this recommendation to married couples. A decent amount of the questions are in regards to physical intimacy, so not for anyone casually dating. It’s a lot cheaper and more convenient than couples counseling – whether you think you might need that or not!
Honey – This is a browser extension that will check the internet for coupon codes for websites where you’re already shopping. I particularly appreciate that they do price tracking for items on Amazon and will tell you if something you’re purchasing is priced higher or lower than usual. It has been invaluable on Black Friday and Prime Day. More than once I have found out that the item that I thought I was getting a good deal on – was actually priced lower the day before! Plus, Honey will give you cash back on a number of websites that you might have been shopping anyways. I will note that Honey makes their money by using the affiliate programs for the sites that you’re shopping on. If you are shopping based on someone else’s affiliate link (a site that does reviews or something similar) using Honey will negate their affiliate link a lot of the time. Which isn’t to say not to use Honey! I just try to be aware that if I was coming from Wirecutter because they saved me a lot of research, I try to not use Honey so I don’t negate their commission.
Plan to Eat – This is a virtual recipe box but it does SO much more than I expected to find in a recipe box app. It can easily import recipes from any website so all your favorites are right at your fingertips. Plus you have the capability to plan out your meals on a calendar and have that meal plan automatically generate your grocery list for you. The list is even organized by store sections to make grocery runs easier. One of these days I’m going to post a full review of why I love this app so much, but you should really just try it for yourself! It’s free for 30 days and then $39/year after that. My link will give you 20% off of your first year if you decide to sign up past the free trial 🙂
Lindor Dark Chocolate Truffles – These were my very favorite treat… until last year at our favorite things party. (I told you it was a good place to find new favorites!) Our hostess shared with us Lindor Peppermint Cookie Milk Chocolate Truffles… and they are delicious, but also impossible to find almost anywhere because they are limited edition and only come out at Christmas-time 😭. SO, I will say that generally the plain dark chocolate truffles are my favorites – I love how smooth, delicious and simple they are. However… you can bet that I’ve been scouting the stores this Christmas season on to find the peppermint cookie ones! They’re kind of like a regular Lindor truffle with bits of Thin Mint cookie inside. Thin mints were already another favorite of mine. So put them together… 🤯 I’m building up my stash to get me through the next year.
Ruby Ribbon – Bras are the worst. A couple years back I made the switch from wearing underwire bras to wearing wire free camis and it has been life changing! I cannot say enough how much more comfortable I am, and (if I’m allowed to say so myself) I look better in them too! The pictures above are all me – I took them because I wanted to be able to show the side by side results with images that I knew weren’t doctored or faked. That’s my actual body and my own results with what had been my previous favorite bra vs my favorite cami. My personal favorite cami when I want to look my best is our Siren cami. However, our Lace cami is my daily go to (it is our bestseller for a reason). When I was pregnant I switched away from our full coverage camis in favor of our demiettes, but either way I’m just grateful to not have to wear a bra! I sell Ruby Ribbon directly so please let me know if I can help you break up with your bra for good! I actually built my own application for sizing and recommendations – you can get custom recommendations here.
Labelmaker – Funny story about my labelmaker. A few years ago after Christmas there was a sale on labelmakers. After a little bit of deliberation I decided to get one for myself and I told my husband about it. He was annoyed – but not for the reason you would think. He had considered purchasing one for me for Christmas but had decided it was a lame gift and so he didn’t. He was annoyed that he *had* picked out something that I would really enjoy but then talked himself out of it 😛 I decided to credit him with the purchase as a Christmas present anyways (it came out of the same checking account either way 🤷♀️) and we joke about it sometimes. Sorry, that’s off topic, but I purchased this labelmaker thinking that I would probably think it was cool for about 24 hours and then never use it again. I was wrong! I use it ALL the time and it is SO much more useful than I expected it to be! I have bins all over the house with these labels on them. It is so easy to use this little printer and have clean labels to stick on things. I feel like things stay a little better organized too with boxes being labeled so that we know what *really* belongs in a box rather than trying to reinvent our organization every time. It’s been a great purchase!
Enso Rings – A few years back my husband made the switch from the tungsten band that I gave him at our wedding to a silicone band. He’s a violinist and after getting his original band stuck on his finger and being told that he would be more likely to lose his finger than the band… he wasn’t inclined to go back to wearing tungsten on a daily basis. Most of the silicone bands out there look cheapy and very utilitarian. I bought him the Enso Rings Elements Contour Silicone Ring in Platinum and it is virtually indistinguishable from his original wedding band. Honestly if you didn’t take it off and hold it in your hand you would think it was the real deal. Much more comfortable, safe and a fraction of the cost! I purchased myself a Unicorn band as well after being jealous of Eric’s comfortable ring. I don’t need to be wearing a diamond while I scrub the dishes but I do like to have the constant visual reminder of our covenants
Everything in my 72 Hour Kit – I spent a few months in 2020 putting together our 72 hour kits and at the time I thought that it was going to prove to be a waste of money. I couldn’t have been more wrong! I have used nearly every single item in my 72 hour kit since putting it together and I’ve been SO grateful for the time I took to put them together. It’s never been for a serious emergency where I’ve needed the whole kit all at once, but I’ve been so grateful to have all of those things easily accessible when I’m out and about. One of my surprise favorite things have been my tactical sporks. You’d be surprised how often it comes in handy to have eating utensils handy! I actually like them better than the cheap silverware that I’ve used in the past, and I am surprised at how *not* awkward the design is to eat from. They don’t feel janky to eat with at all, which I really expected them to. My other favorite utility item has been these little fleece sleeping bags. They are NOT a full sleeping bag, or what you’d want on a really cold night, but they zip out into a handy little picnic blanket and roll up into a small stuff sack. If you’re at a chilly soccer game they’re a lifesaver! I’ve also taken mine on a flight and I really loved that I was all the way covered while I slept (as best as it’s possible to sleep on planes). There are certainly better blankets out there, but I haven’t found something that beats these for the price and utility. That year I made most of the items for our 72 hour kits stocking stuffers for our kids. Can you imagine how excited my kids were to get headlamps and multitools in their stockings? They were ready for an adventure!
There you have it. I may not be Julie Andrews but there are a few of my favorite things! What are some of your favorite things?
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If you know my 6 year old you know that he’s… neurologically diverse. We don’t have an actual diagnosis for him (we’re working on it but it’s *really* hard to get in to places that do neurological testing right now), but if you’ve been around him you know he’s a little different from your typical 6 year old. I would probably put him somewhere on the high functioning/savant side of the autistic spectrum? He taught himself how to read when he was 2, he knows how to troubleshoot technology better than most adults, and he’s just really… intense. He gets hyperfocused on a particular thing and will want to do everything with that thing over and over and over again forever.
One of the things that he gets focused on easily is different types of music. It has seemed very fitting that we unintentionally (but probably with inspiration) gave him the initials DJ because he is in fact a little DJ 😂 He really loved Cocomelon and Super Simple Songs for awhile, but he’s also gone through phases of being obsessed with Marshmello, Panic! at the Disco, Parry Gripp, Noisestorm, Martin Garrix – it hasn’t all been one thing, and it hasn’t always been age appropriate.
For about the last year though his fixation has been on The Laurie Berkner Band. It’s been the perfect thing for him. Her music is age appropriate but high quality unlike a lot of the drivel that is put out on YouTube for kids. I’m fairly sure we have heard every single song she has ever put out on YouTube a zillion times over. My sister (who doesn’t even live near by) has had to learn Laurie Berkner songs to sing with him and can sing them enough that a few bars will make my brother (who also doesn’t live near either of us) cover his ears and run from the room (jokingly) because *he’s* heard it so much. Her songs truly are well done – but any song on repeat 24/7 will get old (unless you’re David). So yeah… he’s a fan.
A little over a week ago it was David’s birthday. We’d come home after a fun night at the Chick-fil-a play place to get ready for cake. While we were gathering as a family I did a quick perusal of my Facebook notifications. On one of the boards that I manage someone was giving away free tickets to a Laurie Berkner concert nearby. My jaw dropped – it had to be too good to be true!. I read through it a few times because I couldn’t believe that I had actually read correctly that on my son’s actual birthday his favorite artist had tickets at a venue not far from our house and we could get them for free?!? I mean, the odds of that are beyond miniscule, I really can only chalk that up to being miraculous.
I quickly contacted the person who had posted to see if he still had tickets left. I was sure there was no way he still had free tickets, but even if I had to buy them it would be the most epic birthday present. Amazingly, he did still have tickets and before we sat down for cake he responded that had reserved two for us! It was the best surprise to be able to tell him that he’d be able to go and see Laurie Berkner live! I can’t even tell you how excited he was, I wish I had thought to record his reaction. I don’t think he even knew how to process how cool that was.
David with his cake, just before we gave him the amazing news!
The concert was unfortunately at the same time as the annular solar eclipse that our family had been planning to attend together for over a year, but we knew how much this would mean to him so we changed plans. My husband took the three older kids out to see the eclipse and I stayed home with the younger two for the concert. I’m sad that we missed out on the eclipse, but we’ve already made plans to go see the total eclipse in April and after seeing a total eclipse 6 years ago I knew that what they would witness with the annular eclipse would be cool… but *nothing* compared to the total eclipse.
(Side note: if you have any way to make it out for the total eclipse I cannot recommend highly enough that you make the effort. My brother-in-law’s write up from 2017 says it way better than I could. Seriously, nothing can compare to what it’s like to actually be there – it is worth it!)
The concert was called Toniepalooza and was sponsored by Tonies, a company that makes a smart speaker system designed especially for little kids. I’d never heard of them before but after seeing them in action I decided I had to pick one up for my son. What’s really cool about them is they use little action figures to control what book or set of songs the child is listening to. They have figures for so many of your kids’ favorite characters – Buzz Lightyear, Daniel Tiger, Disney Princesses, Wild Kratts – quite literally too many to list here. His favorite one (of course) has been the Laurie Berkner Tonie.
The speaker is a lot easier to control for kids who don’t yet have the verbal clarity to give voice commands, plus you don’t have to worry about your kid making purchases that weren’t exactly in your budget (not that that’s ever happened in our house 🙄). The little figures are so cute and fun for the kids to play with. They give a fun visual element and you can easily trade them when your child wants to move on to different content, unlike other digital content that you purchase. The speaker has a 7 hour battery life so it can be carried around the house without needing a charger. It’s even squishy so you aren’t worried about it being dropped or thrown at a sibling. I’m impressed with how well thought out it was to be easy and fun for kids without a screen!
David played with his nearly nonstop over the weekend since I let him unbox it – and then he tried to convince me that his teacher said he needed to bring it to kindergarten 😂. I wish I’d gotten him one of their Creative Tonies – they’re little figures that you can record your own audio or import audio from their free library on their app! I didn’t understand how they worked when I was at the concert but in retrospect that should have been the first one I picked up because my kid would have LOVED that! It will probably be the first thing he gets for Christmas this year (shhh! Don’t tell him!) He insisted on making an unboxing video. We will see if I can get that edited and posted soon. It was about 45 minutes long because he had to try out each individual Tonie and was in heaven making the video – but I don’t think anyone wants to watch him playing with his new speaker for 45 minutes 😂
The concert was awesome. When Laurie came out she started playing her song “When I Woke Up Today” and I may or may not have cried. I felt like the biggest sap to be crying at an upbeat kids’ song! But the song goes, “When I woke up today, I shouted out ‘Hooray!’ Because I knew I’d see you and we could sing together…” and it goes on talking about how happy she is to be singing and dancing with these little kids. I knew that being at that concert meant the world to my son and hearing someone that he loves so much telling him that she loved being with him too (even if it was part of the act) meant the world to me.
One of the unusual things about a Laurie Berkner concert is that everyone in attendance is encouraged to bring a stuffed animal to put on their head when she performs “Pig on Her Head“. David had brought his dinosaur named Ollo which we gave him when his baby brother was born (he’d been telling us there was a dinosaur in his tummy ever since we’d told him there was a baby in mine, so it seemed fitting that the dinosaur could be born when his brother was 😂) and I happened to have a stuffed penguin in our diaper bag which I figured I could put on his brother’s head during the song. I knew David would be absolutely insistent that his brother had a stuffed animal for that too so that was fortuitous. I hadn’t actually planned a stuffed animal it just happened to be in our diaper bag.
Well, when the song came up I noticed that our neighbors who were at the concert as well didn’t have a stuffed animal for their little girls and I figured they would enjoy the penguin more than my 6 month old so I let them borrow it. I wasn’t going to put a penguin on my baby’s head who would think that was weird when someone else could enjoy it so much more. I hoped that David wouldn’t notice but… of course he did. He was on the verge of a meltdown and I had to think quickly.
At home my kids *love* to put the baby on their shoulders and he spends a considerable amount of time traipsing around the house on top of their heads. It scares people when they watch it at first but it really makes him so happy and the kids love it too – I’ve watched them do it enough to know that he really is safe up there, but I understand why it would make people nervous! I decided that it would be a good way to appease David that I could put the *baby* on my head instead of the baby having a stuffie on top of his head. I was right and that tickled David’s sense of humor just right 😂
I was out there dancing with him like that and from the stage Laurie interjected, “if you have a child on your head, please be careful!” Eep! I think I was the only one crazy enough to put a kid on their shoulders, so I’m pretty sure that was directed at me. Sorry Laurie! I laughed to be called out on having him up there from stage!
As the concert went on a lot of the kids went up by the stage and started dancing in front. I wasn’t sure if it was a good idea to let David go up and join them. With the baby in tow I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to wrangle him back in if things got out of hand. He’s just such a wild card, I could envision a meltdown if the words to a song were changed up, or he might get it into his head that he should be on the stage, or any number of things. But I decided to let him join the other kids in the front while I monitored him from the sides.
Luckily it seemed like he joined into the fun without getting out of hand. He was in HEAVEN! He spent the rest of the concert front and center, dancing with Ollo and singing along. I’m sure he was also trying to talk with and ask Laurie a million questions, but I didn’t fully realize it until after the show was over. She did a great job of just carrying on with her show regardless of what he was telling her from the ground – I didn’t even realize he was talking to her until we were going home and he kept telling me that he had *more* things to tell/ask her🤦♀️ He was sad until I told him we could write her a note later. So be on the lookout Laurie, there might be a note coming your way soon! 😂
You can see David in the red shirt right next to the stage. My favorite part is when he turns to the other kids to get them involved with the show – what a ham! 😂
Overall it was an amazing experience. Thank you SO much to Tonies for sponsoring the event, and to Laurie Berkner for putting on such an awesome show. It really was so great for my kiddo, and he’s continuing to enjoy the experience with his own Tonie now!
My husband and I were asked to speak in our ward’s sacrament meeting for Easter Sunday. If you aren’t familiar with our church that meant that we were in charge of giving the Easter sermon for our congregation – a pretty daunting task! I thought I would share the transcript of my talk here. If you have followed my blog for awhile and/or follow me on Facebook a lot of what is here will likely seem familiar – I combined the content from several past posts to get the base of the talk and then added and changed things from there. If you would like to see Eric’s talk he posted it here – it was fantastic and absolutely worth your time to go and read.
In our family it is a running joke that I cannot get through a single episode of the Chosen without dissolving into tears. Part of the joke though is that I pretend with my kids that it’s not the Chosen that makes me cry (although it totally is, it’s my favorite show and I cannot recommend it highly enough. It’s completely free to watch through their app. The first couple episodes are a little slow but it’s worth sticking through them). I’ll play it off like, “oh no, I wasn’t crying, I think there are just a lot of allergens in this show. Man, why are you guys chopping ALL the onions in the theater room?” While I joke about it, the truth is that there is nothing that pierces my heart like the love of our Savior, which is portrayed powerfully and relatably in that show. I’ll admit, I’m a little nervous about giving this talk because with it being Easter Sunday the love of our Savior is exactly what I’ll be talking about. I’m not sure I can do this without ugly crying. If anyone wants to pray that I can share my message without being a sobbing mess, I would appreciate it.
A few years ago I heard a bishop tell a story from when he was a young father. It was getting close to Easter and he and his wife had decided to read through the New Testament about the days leading up to Jesus’s crucifixion with their children. On Good Friday his wife had to work and he was trying to wrangle the kids while reading. The reading had been chaos and he didn’t think anyone had been paying attention (I’m sure scripture study never goes like this in anyone else’s household). As he was getting to the part about the crucifixion he looked up and saw his 5 year old daughter crying. Assuming her brother had hit her, the father asked what was wrong. She surprised him by responding, “Daddy, why did they kill Jesus?” The father paused for a moment trying to come up with an answer that a young child would understand. He thought about the political situation in Jerusalem at the time. He considered the Pharisees and the Romans, the different power struggles, the controversial teachings Jesus had shared. Not being able to come up with an on level answer for a child he asked his daughter, “What do you think?” After a moment she responded, “They must not have known how much He loved them.”
This story is personal for me because the bishop of that ward was my dad and the little girl was me. The question is one I have pondered for more years than I realized. How could anyone kill our Savior? I struggle to understand how people could treat ANYONE the way that Christ was treated, let alone our Savior. Only hours before He had suffered for every pain, sin and sorrow that they would endure in their lives. Still they took Him, beat Him and nailed Him to a cross. Truly, they must not have known how much He loved them.
Despite their incredible ignorance of who He was, as they gathered around to mock Him, flog Him and kill Him Christ’s response was, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Not only did he forgive the very people who were killing Him, but He forgave them while they were in the very act of taking His life. He didn’t wait for them to realize what they’d done wrong, or feel any remorse, or even stop doing it. They had beaten and humiliated Him, cast lots on His clothes and nailed Him to a cross, and while they were yet reviling Him and watching Him suffer and die – He forgave them.
Last month my 8-year-old daughter was baptized. As we were getting ready I remembered my own baptism day. My 8 year old self thought, “Ok, you’re all clean so it’s easy now, just don’t sin and you’ve made it!” I’m sure you will be shocked to know that… I didn’t manage to do that… not even close. I can’t remember what particular thing I did that made me feel like I’d blown it but I do know that it happened and much sooner than I would have ever hoped. I remember feeling so disappointed that I’d had a perfectly clean slate and I’d messed it up.
As I was remembering that experience I remembered a storyline from The Chosen. (I told you I love the show, it shouldn’t be a surprise that it came up) In the first few episodes we meet Mary Magdalene who is possessed by an evil spirit. Jesus cures her, forgives her and she joins his followers. Throughout the following episodes Mary is THE model follower of Christ. She tells someone who is surprised to see her change that, “I was one way, and now I am completely different, and the thing that happened in between was Him.” She testifies, she brings others to Christ, she is always helpful – truly the kind of follower we would all wish to be. Until one day she is triggered by some remembrances of her past. In a moment of weakness she leaves Christ’s disciples and returns to her previous ways – discarding everything she knows. The disciples search for her, find her in a really low place and drag her back to Jesus.
When she returns she doesn’t even want to face Christ, but she is given a moment to talk with Him. She says “I’m so ashamed. You redeemed me and I just threw it all away. away.” I think this reflects so perfectly how we all feel when we can see that we’ve done things that we knew better than to do. We feel so guilty to have given up what we KNEW was right. He replies, “It’s not much of a redemption if it can be lost in a day, is it?” Mary responds, “I owe You everything, but I just don’t think I can do it.” He tells her, “I just want your heart. The Father just wants your heart. Give Us that, which you already have, and the rest will come in time. Did you really think you’d never struggle or sin again?” After more dialogue back and forth with Mary beating herself up and the Savior soothing her He says, “I forgive you. It’s over.”
I think what I most appreciated about this scene was that Jesus doesn’t roll his eyes saying, “Yup, you really messed up huh? Alright, I guess I’ll forgive you this one time, but you’re really pushing your luck. Don’t you remember, we already went through this once? How do I know you really mean it this time? You better not mess up again.” Instead what he says is, “Did you really think you’d never struggle or sin again?” His forgiveness was not conditional on her never slipping up. Jesus wasn’t even surprised that Mary didn’t overcome everything in an instant.
In the Women’s session of this last General Conference Elder Renlund shared, “Even after sincere repentance, however, we may stumble. Stumbling does not mean that the repentance was inadequate but may simply reflect human weakness.” He then shared this statement from Elder Scott, “The joyful news for anyone who desires to be rid of the consequences of past poor choices is that the Lord sees weaknesses differently than He does rebellion. […] when the Lord speaks of weaknesses, it is always with mercy.”
I think often we expect once we repent we are now miraculously going to be perfect from here on out. In the show Christ points out how unrealistic this is. He KNOWS we’re going to mess things up – in fact He is expecting us to mess up. I’m going to go so far as to say that if we’re not messing things up we probably aren’t learning and growing in which case we’re defeating the purpose of our lives here.
Two weeks ago Elder Ochoa shared – “Heavenly Father’s plan of happiness has another name—the plan of redemption. The plan was not for us to glide easily through life, never stumbling, never sinking, with a smile always on our face. Heavenly Father knew that we would need to be redeemed. This is why He prepared the plan of redemption. This is why He sent a Redeemer. When we struggle—for any reason—that does not mean the plan isn’t working. That is when we need the plan the most!”
If you’ve done much study on the topic of growth mindset this makes sense – we can only grow when we are allowed a safe space in which to make mistakes. Through His Atonement Jesus has given us that safe space. That’s what this earth life is for. Christ tells us, “I’ve got this. You keep trying, and go ahead, mess it up a bit. I’ve already got you covered. All I ask is that you don’t give up. We’re going to get you to perfection TOGETHER.”
We get a chance to renew our covenants each week when we take the sacrament – but the Atonement has already covered our mistakes before we even make them. Of course that means we still need to try to do right and make amends when we do wrong – but in the eyes of our Heavenly Father we don’t have to wait to “measure up” again – He loves us in the middle of the messes we make. We need to stop beating ourselves up and accept Him telling us, “I forgive you. It’s over.” Even when we slip up, even when we go back and do the very thing that we’ve said we wouldn’t allow ourselves to do again – we are not past forgiveness just because we didn’t overcome in an instant. The author Lisa Bevere tweeted, “If you think you’ve blown God’s plan for your life, rest in this: YOU, my beautiful friend, are not that powerful.” So what should we do when we slip up? Elder Holland put it beautifully when he said, “Don’t you quit. You keep walking. You keep trying. There is help and happiness ahead. Some blessings come soon, some come late, and some don’t come until heaven; but for those who embrace the gospel of Jesus Christ, they come. It will be all right in the end. Trust God and believe in good things to come.”
Do you believe in those good things to come? Do you believe that Christ’s atonement can work – even for you? Will you let it? Do YOU realize how much your Savior loves you? I wonder, if more people understood the love of their Savior would we have the violence and hatred and wars that plague our world today? We read in 4 Nephi about the people who live in absolute peace for 300 years. While usually I feel disheartened that this peace lasts for less than a single page of the over 500 page book, do you realize that the period of time it describes is about a quarter of the time period of the whole record? Could it be that once the people had met Christ and understood fully how He loved them that nothing else was as important? If you can understand how much your Savior loves YOU, it will change your life.
I want to bear my testimony, that I know that our Savior loves each of us, deeply, and personally. His greatest desire is for our happiness and we can achieve that happiness by following the gospel He preached. Please, if you haven’t felt the love of our Savior pray to feel it. Ask for the opportunity to catch a glimpse of that love and hold on to it tightly.
I know that through Christ’s Atonement we won’t be chained to our mistakes forever – when we turn to Him and He forgives us, it’s over. Please don’t waste His gift by holding onto a grudge against yourself. Accept His forgiveness and let it propel you to do better and be better. I am forever grateful for this knowledge and love our Savior. I share this message, and Christ’s love for each and every one of you in His name, Jesus Christ, Amen.
Today in our Relief Society lesson we were discussing Dallin H. Oaks’ talk “Be of Good Cheer” I read through the talk yesterday and then I came across this quote from Elder Jeffrey R. Holland –
“We should honor the Savior’s declaration to “be of good cheer.” (Matthew 14:27) Indeed, it seems to me we may be more guilty of breaking that commandment than almost any other!”
I was somewhat distressed by the notion of being of good cheer being a commandment. I am in no ways pessimistic by nature, but I have long held the belief that it’s very important that we acknowledge hard experiences as being hard. I don’t believe we would have been given the commandment to mourn with those who mourn to just brush off trials as no big deal. Obviously it’s not helpful to wallow in misery and sadness, but there’s a huge range of things to experience between wallowing and just pretending everything is sunshiney while a hurricane rages. The two notions had been battling themselves out in my head when I arrived at Relief Society this afternoon.
Our teacher started her lesson by talking about how being of good cheer didn’t necessarily mean being happy all the time. I started listening in hard. Wait, it doesn’t? Isn’t that what it means to be of good cheer? If you think of someone who is “cheery” isn’t that someone who is always sort of naively smiley and happy? I felt like both a giant idiot and a huge nerd but I decided to stop and pull up the dictionary to get the definition of “cheer”. Obviously I knew what the word meant, I can use it in a sentence, but I felt like I needed some perspective. Here’s what I read –
cheer /CHir/
verb 1. shout for joy or in praise or encouragement. 2. give comfort or support to.
noun 1. a shout of encouragement, praise, or joy. 2. cheerfulness, optimism, or confidence.
I don’t know why but in the context of “Be of Good Cheer” those definitions hadn’t even crossed my mind. You know what I didn’t read in that definition? Happy shiney Pollyanna naivete – which was everything I had always heard in the commandment to “be of good cheer.” In fact, happy didn’t even factor into the definition. I was most struck by the fact that cheer was first a verb – it’s the act of giving encouragement. Of course I knew that, I come from a sports family. Do you know how many Saturdays I have spent sitting in bleachers cheering for my siblings as they played baseball, basketball or soccer?
When you are cheering for someone you’re not celebrating an accomplished victory, you’re in the midst of the struggle. You may give a final triumphant cheer at the end of the game, but most of the cheering happens long before the contest is decided – in fact cheering is a thing because the contest isn’t decided. It wouldn’t do you any good to tell a pitcher after the game “hey, we believe in you, you’re going to do great!” – it’s a little late at that point.
That completely changed my perspective on what it means to “be of good cheer”. The purpose of being of good cheer is optimism and hope. I can recognize that things are hard and hope that things will get better. In fact isn’t that exactly what Jesus said when giving his commandment?
These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.
Jesus is not saying everything is going to be great and sunshiney and perfect. In fact, quite the opposite. He doesn’t tell us that we might have tribulation, he tells us we shall have tribulation. How can he then tell us to “be of good cheer”, aren’t tribulation and cheer mutually exclusive?? No! Even though we have tribulations – we can have hope, we can have confidence, we can have optimism. Yes, the things we are facing now are hard – but Jesus has overcome them. What could be more hopeful than that?
We’re still in the middle of the game. We might even be down in points. The other team might look bigger, scarier and stronger than we are. They may have even roughed us up a little bit and we’re hurting bad. But with Christ we will prevail. As we turn to Him and put our trust in Him we have every reason to “be of good cheer” because He is the giver of perfect confidence. He has already won the game, we just need to stick through to the end to join him in victory. I can think of no greater encouragement than that.
“When the time for decision arrives, the time for preparation is past.”
― Thomas S. Monson
This quote hit home for me literally this past June when a huge wildfire raged near our family’s home. The picture in my header was taken by my husband from our front porch at 1am as we were scrambling to evacuate. Within a couple of hours we went from heading to bed to hauling our kids down the mountain to an emergency shelter. Fortunately the story ended well – firefighters were able to contain the flames before they got any closer to our neighborhood and no properties were lost. Aside from a night of almost zero sleep we were no worse for the wear.
However, that night highlighted for me how inadequately prepared we were for an emergency. We had a great evacuation list for our valuable items (I’ll write about that in another post) but our 72 hour kits were so inadequate as to be virtually non-existant. Even though our evacuation lasted less than 12 hours – and half of those were spent in a local Holiday Inn – I was acutely aware of how much better off we could have been.
As I’ve watched other events unfold in our world in the last year I decided it was time to really get my act together. I’ve researched several different blogs and sites to come up with what exactly I needed to have in my kits and spent a couple months assembling them. I wanted to share all of my research so you can be better prepared too.
Resources Used
First I should say that I am NOT an expert in this area. I’ve simply taken the information that I gleaned from several awesome sources and paired it with my own experiences and knowledge. So to give credit where credit is due – here are some of the resources that I most appreciated –
I’ve broken this guide into sections to make it a little easier to digest with a full list in a google document at the end of this post. I tried to start with what I felt was most important both for categories, and then prioritized again for items within each category. Here’s how I would recommend using this guide –
Read through this post to get an understanding for what the items are and why you would need them. Sorry, I know it’s long, but it helped me to understand why I needed the different things in my pack as I put mine together. Feel free to click here if you just want to see my supply list.
Make a copy of my google sheet for yourself and edit it to fit the things you want in your kits.
Go through your house and collect any items you already have on hand – you will be surprised by how much you can round up without spending any more money!
Go to the dollar store! SO many of the things on this list are cheapest at the dollar store. I put together our kits almost completely and then went to the dollar store to round out a few items and kicked myself because there were a lot of items that I had paid more for elsewhere.
Go to the thrift store and see what else you can get there. I picked up most of my clothing there, and even got a couple of soft blankets for just $2 each!
Prioritize the rest of the list and assemble the pieces as you can. I tried to put my list in priority order but your priorities will likely be different from mine. Each section can reasonably be done from scratch for <$25 with the exception of the section I labeled “Emergency Gear”.
Take one section at a time and build it in chunks as your finances permit until you have the whole thing together to your liking. Don’t get hung up over not having everything at once or not having the best things. If all you have is a backpack with food and water in it you’re 100% better off than you would be without it!
Another tip, if you can work with a group to purchase some of the items you can get them much cheaper in bulk. I’ve included links both in this post and on the Google doc to where you can purchase nearly every item on my list. Most are the items that I purchased myself, and if not I tried to find items that had good ratings and were well priced. Most of these links are affiliate links which means I get a small commission if you purchase your items through those links. I really appreciate those sales as they help me justify all the time I spend writing these blog posts and pay for my hosting, so I greatly appreciate you using my links.
Without any further ado, let’s dive into the guide –
Storage
You don’t have much of a kit without some way to contain all the gear together. There are many different opinions on the best methods but I decided to go with a tactical backpack. I had a hard time making this purchase because we have oodles of backpacks around our house, but as I went to pack up our gear I found I couldn’t fit everything I wanted in a normal backpack. So I purchased these bags from Stealth Angel. I was able to get them for less than $22.50 each when they were on sale and using a discount code that I got from Honey. They’re HUGE but mine are already stuffed to the brim. I got plain black ones that I felt were inconspicuous if we needed the packs to go through an airport or were in an emergency where we were still in a city. (While I was working on our kits our neighborhood book club was reading The Beekeeper of Aleppo about a refugee family which changed some of my perspective on the things I would want in my kits if we had to flee our home… I wouldn’t thought of things like having items that would be inconspicuous in public before.) I also liked that they had a molle system so that if needed we could attach sleeping bags or whatnot to the outside of the bags to get a even more mileage out of them.
As I mentioned though, the bags are gigantic, and right now I have kids who are still tiny. I feel like the most likely situation that I would use these kits in would be evacuating in a vehicle. However, for my birthday I got a folding wagon that I could throw a couple of the bags (and probably a couple of the kids) into if we ended up on foot. This wagon is a great price at Costco but it’s also available on Amazon if you don’t have a Costco membership. I think I will get a lot of mileage out of it just hauling gear to the beach or around the neighborhood. I love that it folds up so it’s easy to take places without taking up a ton of space.
For storage within the bag I like these makeup bags from Amazon. I like that they’re clear so it’s easy to see what’s inside, but they also have a lot of space. I put the food inside gallon size Ziploc bags. I also ended up using some snack size Ziploc bags to package things like q-tips, cotton balls and sterile gloves.
Finally, someday I would really like to get one or two compression sacks to better contain the clothing and bedding within the bag. I think that they would help free up a little more space in the bag and make things feel a bit more organized.
Ok, you now have something to put your stuff in, let’s figure out what stuff we need!
Food
I’m starting with food because it’s obviously the most important. Even in our brief 12 hour evacuation to the Holiday Inn I wished I’d had some food packed with us. Why? We happened to be evacuated on a Sunday. So even though we were within yards of a Walmart and a McDonalds, I didn’t really want to be breaking the sabbath to feed my family breakfast. Obviously being evacuated from your house due to a fire would qualify as an “ox in the mire” situation, but I still wished I’d had something on hand to feed them. None of the rest of your gear matters much if you starve to death so let’s start there.
There are a lot of different ideas for what food should go into a 72 hour kit and you should do whatever works best for you. But here’s what I came up with. My priorities were –
2,000+ calories per person per day – Even though I have smaller kids I wanted to make that even if we were in a situation that required a lot of exertion no one would be hungry. Some people pack more for an adult man than for a small child to save weight, but I figured if there was food leftover then we could share or last for more days.
Food my kids would eat – I think that’s pretty self-explanatory. There’s no point in packing food that my kids would turn their noses up at.
Food that wouldn’t crush, squish or leak – I see lot of recommendations for packing things like crackers, cookies or soft granola bars. However I avoided them as I felt like they were too likely to get mashed in a backpack.
No utensils, heating or preparation –Adding a mess kit and fuel to your bag adds a LOT of weight and takes up a ton of space. Plus you don’t know if you’ll end up somewhere that food preparation will be feasible. I was originally looking at freeze dried meals but I found that it was easily twice the amount of weight when you considered bringing enough water to prepare those foods – before you even accounted for a way to boil the water. Everything here literally only requires unwrapping and putting into your mouth.
Same food in every kit – I guarantee you that if we were stuck in the wilderness and my 9yo had a blue Jolly Rancher and my 6yo had a red Jolly Rancher there would be a fight. So every kit not only has the same general foods but I went so far as to make sure that they have the same exact flavors in each kit. I felt like the world’s most OCD person but I decided I had more patience to do that now than I would in the midst of an emergency.
Variety of flavors – This was difficult to do while fitting in with my other criteria but I did try to make sure that each day had a variety of sweet, salty, fruity, meaty as well as a combination of textures.
Separate packs for each day – I put each day’s rations into a separate bag to maintain that variety of flavors in a day. Otherwise I envisioned my kids eating all of the beef jerky sticks gone on day 1 and having only oats & honey granola bars left on day 3. Also, hopefully by having it divided and labeled by day my kids won’t pilfer snacks.
This is what my rations looked like for my family of 6
I made a plan for a day’s rations that fit my above criteria and then I made 3 packs for each person’s kit and labelled them by day. Each day’s rations basically consisted of the following –
Like I said, not very exciting, but it will keep you alive and I tried to work in as much variety as I could. The water is definitely sparing but water is HEAVY! If we were evacuating in a vehicle I would grab our water storage and have the kids fill up their water bottles on the way out. You wouldn’t have any water in this pack for washing but you wouldn’t die of dehydration. The mini jerky sticks are a HUGE add as far as calories and flavor variety so I highly recommend them. The 10 granola bars is actually 2 each of 5 different granola bars. I figure you could have 3 granola bars for each meal and 1 extra for a snack or added into one of your meals. You would be really tired of granola bars after 3 days but at least with 5 different types you’d have some variety. Also I recognize that I have 5 beverage additions with only 3 water pouches. I bought the crystal light at Costco and there were 4 flavors in the box, so it seemed easier to put all 4 flavors in for each day than try to pick which ones went on each day – and as I already mentioned we’re hoping that the water in the pack isn’t ALL you have. The hot chocolate was totally frivolous, especially without a way to boil water or extra water. But I figured it added such a negligible amount of weight and if there was a way to make it up in a crisis, that could go a long way to lifting spirits (at least it would for me!). Also it was already in my pantry so I thought I would put it in.
I do want to add that after I finished putting together my packs I found that you can get peanut butter in squeeze pouches for about 25 cents each on Amazon and they fit all of my criteria that I listed above. My only concern is finding something non-perishable that wouldn’t crush to eat with it. Tuna pouches are also a great way to add variety to your ration bags but again, I’m not sure that they sound all that appetizing without a cracker or something to eat it with.
I unpacked my 72 hour kit to take pictures for this post and I could tell that already if I had picked food items that would crush… they would be crushed. So the non-crushing thing is definitely a deal breaker for me. But I’m all ears if anyone has a solution! Leave a comment and I will be sure to update this post with other alternatives!
Clothing
The clothing I suggest packing is –
2 sets of thermals
3 pairs of socks
2 pairs hiking pants
2 t-shirts
3 sets of underwear
1 pair waterproof gloves/mittens
1 beanie
Yes I realize that I forgot to pull out the socks and underwear for this picture, just imagine they’re in the picture ;P
Let’s start by pointing out the things that aren’t in my list that seem necessary. Most importantly – a sturdy pair of shoes. I know that these are super critical, but even with my super huge packs there’s only so much space. I haven’t found a way to justify adding a bulky pair of sneakers to the pack without sacrificing so much other necessary gear. I figure that if I’m leaving the house, I have shoes on and that’s going to be what I have. I also have the problem with my children that they’re constantly changing shoe sizes – I don’t have an old pair of sneakers that they won’t miss from their closets just lying around. If you can find a way to fit them though it would be a good idea to add some sneakers.
The other major thing that seems to be missing is a jacket or coat of some sort. I live where it gets COLD and a coat would be absolutely critical for much of the year. However, just like with the sneakers, a coat takes up an inordinate amount of space. If it’s the time of year when I need a coat I’m not likely to leave home without one. Also I picked layers that would keep me warm and packed a few extra emergency blankets. In a pinch I can wrap up in the blankets to keep warm if I ended up without my coat, and the emergency blankets take up almost zero space in my bag.
Ok, so on to the things that I DO have in my pack. The reason I went with thermals is that they provide a lot of warmth for very little weight/space. You can also pick them up for fairly inexpensively.
I will note that the thermals I linked to are a little bit sheer, so you can’t plan on wearing them on their own, but as a base layer under a shirt and some pants they will do great. Which is why I have suggested hiking pants and t-shirts as well.
Hiking pants are great because they’re durable, not too heavy for the summer, and will dry out quickly if they get wet. They’re also lightweight and pack nicely into a bag like this. However, I don’t actually have hiking pants in my pack because I couldn’t justify the cost. My pack has two pairs of sweatpants that I picked up at Deseret Industries for $2 each. If you can’t supply the “ideal” item, find whatever you can that will fit and pack that. Remember, done is better than perfect! You can always go back and swap in the “ideal” item later.
This seems like a really long list, but a lot of it can easily be sourced if you’ve brought home mini shampoos, soaps and lotions from a hotel. Otherwise you can get nearly everything on the list for a dollar or less. I packed my own little snack bags with Q Tips and cotton balls so I didn’t have a bajillion in my pack. The one thing on there that probably seems totally frivolous is the dry shampoo. It just seemed like a nice thing to have on hand if I were in a situation where I couldn’t take an actual shower but needed to freshen up a little bit.
First Aid
If you want to make putting a first aid kit together really easy then I recommend picking up this first aid kit from Amazon. It is well stocked and organized and in one click you’re basically done. However, as of this writing the kit is about $47 – which was a little more than I was willing to pay for first aid kits for my kids. So I built my own using another clear plastic makeup bag. In each bag I put the following –
You may notice that I didn’t put quantities next to each item. Most of the things I bought for my kits were purchased in bulk and I didn’t see any good reason to let good items go to waste. So I just took whatever I had and divided it by the people in our family. So I have an unreasonable amount of some of the medications in our packs, but I figure that – as the weight they add is negligible – I would rather have too much and be able to last longer or help other people than leave things behind. I also tried to think through if I needed those medications for the full 72 hours how many doses would I actually need? That didn’t convince me to bring 72 tums (which I think would be a bad idea to take anyways) but it did help me think through having enough pain killers to get through the full time period.
Emergency Gear
It probably seems odd to have a section labeled “Emergency Gear” in a post about emergency packs – technically everything in the pack is emergency gear. This section I reserved for more of wilderness survival gear.
To start I would make sure your pack has the first 6 items and then slowly add the rest. I chose a headlamp in lieu of any other flashlight because I think they’re the most versatile. In an emergency having your light always shining where you’re looking is really helpful, especially if you can do it without tying up your hands. One year for Christmas I gave my kids their 72 hour kit headlamps in their stockings. It was one of the best Christmas presents! They were SO excited about them – although it took awhile for me to get them wrangled back into the actual 72 hour kits. I currently have the one that I have labeled as the “best reviewed” and I pull it out all the time when I need a flashlight. My kids have the inexpensive ones and we’ve been really happy with them – but I included a link to the more upgraded pick that’s more similar to my own headlamp. The last one I haven’t tested myself but the reviews look good and the price is awesome so I would probably recommend grabbing those if you’re on a budget.
We have all three of the multitools that are listed. The Leatherman Wave is definitely the best – but you pay for the quality. The Gerber is a really great tool as well and you won’t be disappointed by it. The off-brand tool we just picked up for our kids’ packs and we were able to get them for $13 each! We were actually surprisingly impressed with the sturdiness of them and how much functionality they packed into them. They don’t measure up to the Leatherman or the Gerber, but I expect they would serve our kids quite well for the price we paid.
Emergency blankets might be one of the most important items in your kit for the price. You can pick them up for <$1 a piece and they have SO many functions. Obviously you can use them to keep warm, but you can also build a shelter out of them, or a solar oven, or catch rainwater, keep your gear dry etc. You might notice that I don’t have any sort of tent in my kits. I plan that we would use the paracord, emergency blankets and duct tape to create our own shelter if the need arose. Hopefully we would bring our real tent or have our vehicles for shelter, but in a pinch the emergency blankets would do. I have 5 or more in each pack since they’re so inexpensive and lightweight – that gives enough that you can wrap yourself up in one, have some cover from the ground, build a tent, collect rainwater and still have one to spare.
The rain ponchos I included aren’t fancy but they would be helpful to round out the clothing selections as a waterproof layer. You could also make one out of the emergency blankets or the trash bags in a pinch. I would really like to upgrade ours to the reusable kind as I think they’ll work much better, but I couldn’t justify the cost just now so that will have to be a down the road upgrade.
I always thought that the FRS and HAM radios were a little bit silly. I mean, I have a cell phone with me at all times, when would I ever need a radio instead? However, a couple years ago my husband was in Southern California when major wildfires were raging. The internet went out and the cell towers went down. Despite being a licensed HAM radio operator he hadn’t brought his radio with him. He didn’t know what was happening with the fires or if they needed to prepare to evacuate. The only way he could get any information was through me. I would watch the news in Utah then send him a text messages and if we were lucky – he would get my text messages. It was nerve wracking for everyone! Having an FRS or HAM radio can help you to get critical information in that sort of situation. Don’t underestimate how important it is!
If you can swing it I would recommend getting a portable solar panel so you can charge your batteries if necessary. I didn’t include that in the main list though since it’s definitely a stretch goal.
Trash bags are useful for a number of things besides just packing out your garbage. They can be used as a tarp or to help create a shelter. They can also be used to create a pit toilet. I’ve also read that in really dire situations they can be used as a body bag. I’m going to pray now that no one who uses this list will ever have to use those bags for that purpose though.
A paper map might seem so antiquated. However, just like the radios they can be immeasurably helpful if things are going really wrong. If you needed to leave the state without the internet you would definitely need a map. The chance of needing one is pretty low and I will admit that I haven’t yet made that investment myself (they aren’t expensive but once you multiply the cost by the 6 people in my family… it’s a little much), but your kit isn’t complete without it.
Cash is good to have in case card readers go out or for bartering with other people. This is also something that I haven’t actually put in our kits yet because I haven’t decided how much should go in each pack. Make sure you have small bills so you’re not forced to pay more for supplies if someone can’t (or won’t) make change. I’ve also read the suggestion to separate the cash into different parts of your pack so you don’t have to pull out a whole wad in the middle of negotiations. Alternatively I’ve been told that silver coins can be good for bartering if the money system has also failed – they’re small enough to be portable, retain their value regardless of inflation and a small enough denomination to use for more basic bartering. I haven’t looked into doing that myself but I think it’s an interesting suggestion.
You may notice that I don’t have a link to a survival guide yet. I haven’t found quite what I’m looking for yet (please send me suggestions if you have them!). I want to find a book that is compact and has a lot of basic survival information – first aid, building a shelter, building a fire, foraging for food etc. Most of the guides I’ve found are too specialized or overly advanced. For now I’ve put my old Young Women’s camp manual in my pack.
Comfort
Comfort items might seem frivolous but it’s likely that you will find yourself just waiting around somewhere and having something to do will be priceless. I tried to pick a few items that would be useful and could keep you occupied for awhile. Here’s my list –
A notebook and pen can come in useful for a lot of things. It would give you a place to record some of your experience so you can remember things later. You can also use the paper as a way to leave a note for someone as might be needed (if you keep this in your car it would be a good way to leave your information in case of an accident in a parking lot). It can also be used for drawing paper.
I chose colored pencils rather than crayons or markers for my packs because they won’t melt or dry out. The pencils I linked to are great because they’re small and come with their own sharpener.
A blanket takes up a LOT of space in the pack which makes it a little hard to justify. However I know that, especially for my kids, having something soft to snuggle up in would be worth its weight in gold in an emergency! I recommend getting a full twin sized blanket that you could actually sleep under rather than just a throw sized blanket. If you pair this with your emergency blanket you’re in nearly as good of shape as having a legit sleeping bag! I found a couple at the thrift store for only $2 and they often go on sale for Black Friday. The ones that I linked to are just over $10 each and were what we had in our kits. After I showed my mom what I was putting in my packs she showed me these fleece sleeping bag liners and she bought us each one for Christmas (thanks mom!) to go in our 72 hour kits. They’re surprisingly inexpensive (we got ours at just over $11 each) and are really multifunctional. They unzip completely to make a big picnic blanket, or can zip together to make a double sized sleeping bag. Plus to have yourself fully covered would be really nice. They aren’t as soft or as thick as the other blankets I recommended, but they’re a great size and I think the trade off for the functionality is worth it.
A set of playing cards can give you a lot of different activities for a small footprint – go fish with little kids, solitaire, or any number of card games with friends. I would really like to find a compact book that I could add in with instructions for lots of different card games and maybe some magic tricks, but I haven’t found exactly what I want yet.
I picked up our activity and coloring books at the Dollar Store. They had a few that were mini sized there. However there are some awesome looking ones on Amazon too – I included links to more of the ones that I thought looked the best on the Google document.
I know that an eye mask and ear plugs seem like weird things to put in a 72 hour kit, but if you were stuck in an evacuation center overnight having a way to block out the lights and sounds would be priceless.
I don’t have inflatable pillows or sleeping pads in our kits yet. I do think though that they would be so nice to have if you had to sleep away from home. I know I don’t love sleeping on the ground anymore so those definitely are high on my upgrades priority list!
Conclusion
Hopefully this is helpful to you as you put together your own 72 hour kits. Remember – done is better than perfect! Do what you can for now and be happy to have something! You can add the rest as you go. Without further ado here is the link to my Google sheet –
Before you start checking things off on the list MAKE A COPY FOR YOURSELF! To do this go to File> Make a Copy and it will allow you to make changes – I will not grant you editing access so don’t bother requesting it (then everyone would see your list, which isn’t really what you want anyways). As you check things off the list you’ll notice that the items will go from having a red background to having a white background. I felt like this was helpful for me to easily see what I had left to gather.
All of the links that I included above are in the google sheet so hopefully you won’t have to keep going back and forth. Good luck with putting your kits together and stay safe!
For the last 6 months my church congregation has not met traditionally because of the lockdowns stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic. In the coming weeks and months we are anticipating starting to hold more regular meetings – even if it still looks different than it had been. Before we go back to these more normal settings I wanted to record some of my thoughts and feelings on what I’ve learned about the Sabbath and church over the last six months.
I will start with a description of what our Sundays looked like pre-lockdown and post-lockdown. I have a feeling that even after all of these lockdowns finish church might never go back to being the same as it was before. I’m hoping that there are things that we’ve learned from this experience that will help us to make our church attendance even more meaningful in the future, so I want to record now what it has been so I can remember in the future.
Pre-Lockdown Sabbath
Ok, so this picture is from my brother’s wedding and outside the temple rather than outside a church building, but you get the idea 😛
This year our ward met at 10:30am (which is my favorite time for church, I’m really ticked that COVID has robbed us of so many months of that meeting time). Each Sunday morning I would need to get all 6 of us showered, dressed, hair done, fed, diaper bag packed, lessons prepared, shoes on and everyone in the car by about 10:20am.
Since my husband rarely gets up before 9am (and I try to avoid traipsing the kids in and out of our bathroom while he sleeps) the whole rigamorole had to happen in less than an hour and a half. I would try frequently to get as much organized on Saturday night to avoid the scramble, but most Sundays still found us sliding in a little late and a lot frazzled just before the sacrament if we were lucky… just after it if we weren’t.
Sacrament meeting was frequently spent trying to keep our 2 year old reasonably reverent and the kids quietly occupied with coloring or snacks in the hope that my husband or I could glean a little bit from the 3+ talks in the meeting. I have the rule that no distractions come out until after the sacrament, and that if I have to take a child into the hall they don’t get any freedom to move around. I try to be careful not to reward misbehaving in sacrament meeting with the freedom to play in the halls. Although a lot of what I’ve written about deals more with discipline, I really did enjoy those sacrament meetings. Even when I couldn’t pay full attention to every second of the talks I pretty much always walked away with a few moments that touched my heart and had a message for me personally. Attending sacrament meeting always was a boost for my week and well worth the hassle of bringing my circus to it.
For second hour my husband would head off to Sunday School (he’s our ward’s Sunday School president), my older 3 would head off to primary, and I would go to nursery with our youngest (my current calling is as a nursery leader). I have the younger class of nursery kids so our main goal was to minimize crying for the full hour 😛 We would squeeze in a super brief lesson and have some fun with singing time, but primarily the kids played with toys and I would chat with my partner and the other parents that were trying to acclimate their kids to nursery.
I love little kids so I don’t totally mind being in the nursery but I really miss attending Relief Society. I like Sunday School well enough, but I miss Relief Society. Having the opportunity to connect with the other women in my ward is something my soul needs more than the discussions in Sunday School. It has helped at least to have another teacher that I enjoy visiting with and that we have lots of parents that end up staying around to help their kids acclimate to nursery – but it’s not the same. When I was growing up I probably would have thought that was crazy but I cannot adequately express how grateful I am for the organization of the Relief Society. Not just for the Sunday meetings but just for the unity of sisters and the support system we have. I love being a member of the Relief Society.
Having been in nursery since my oldest was in nursery (my youngest is the only one who has been good at going to nursery on his own… so of course he’s the one that I was called to be a nursery leader for :P) I have to say that I super appreciated the change from the 3 hour block to the 2 hour block for nursery kids. It’s SO much easier to keep nursery kids happy for 1 hour than 2 – not just half as easy, like 100x easier. I’ve been grateful for the opportunity to serve and I’m really grateful for the friends that I’ve made connections with as a nursery leader.
After church we would gather everyone back up, drive home, and eat lunch. By the time lunch was over I was typically EXHAUSTED and as much as I would try to stay awake I almost always would fall asleep for most of the afternoon while my husband took care of the kids. Then it was time to make dinner and feed everyone. In the evenings we would sometimes do games as a family, or go outside, or just leave everyone to their own devices. Then bedtime as usual and that’s our Sabbath.
Lockdown Sabbath
When the lockdowns started we began doing virtual “church” with my family. We would meet for about an hour on Zoom with my parents, grandparents, some of my siblings, and a rotating selection of friends from my parents’ ward that could use a group to meet with. For the first couple of months we assigned out talks and tried to make it like a sacrament meeting. About halfway through we switched to making it more of a Sunday School lesson and had a less structured Come Follow Me discussion with a song and a prayer on either side. The Come Follow Me style was much more successful and we wish we had done that from the beginning, but you live and learn 🙂
My bunch all dressed up for church at home, with the 2yo holding our speaker phone 😛
Our virtual “church” meetings have had different start times but mostly between 11am and 1pm. I have still insisted that my kids get dressed nicely for church – however shoes have not been required. It was actually funny the first time we were able to attend a sacrament meeting with our ward again because I hadn’t realized that my kids had all grown out of their church shoes – oops! It has been much more leisurely getting ready for these meetings – particularly knowing that if someone still has wet hair, no shoes, is still eating some toast etc. they can still participate in church. With the extra time/reduced stress I’ve found that I’ve been better able to do some personal Come Follow Me study before church. I’ve gotten SO much more out of our meetings and my scripture study in general with just that little bit of study time before church. After our services ended our family would hang out on Zoom for a little while showing off whatever we were working on – gardening projects, my brother’s chickens & puppy, my dad’s woodworking, my nephews’ new squishamellows etc. It’s been fun to have a few minutes to just connect with family since we all live far apart.
We’ve had permission from our church leaders to administer the sacrament in our home. So after we finished socializing with family we would gather the kids back up on the couches and my husband would bless the bread and water and distribute it to each of us. It’s my 2yo’s favorite thing, he’s always asking us to do “prayers on bread? prayers on water?”. Even though he refuses to eat the bread, he gets SO excited to drink the water.
We found that our little multicolored Ikea cups fit nicely in our little muffin tins and so we’ve had the sacrament cups in muffin tins and the bread on a plate. I will say that I will have a hard time getting used to tiny pieces of bread and tiny cups for the sacrament again after having a 1/6th of a slice of bread and a decent drink of water each week! Distributing the sacrament to just 6 people doesn’t take very long so I instituted that after the sacrament we would do 2 minutes of meditation. That sounds fancier than it is, I just required my kids to sit quietly and take deep breaths for 2 minutes. I just wanted to still maintain a sense of reverence and pondering with our sacrament even though we didn’t have to wait for anyone else.
I found that without the anchor of church my kids had made Sunday just a play day so I instituted a new rule for our family. No friends or electronics (besides Veggie Tales/Animated Scripture videos) until 3pm. Yes, it was a super arbitrary rule but my kids needed a line of demarcation to make Sunday feel different from any other day besides the Sunday dress and the <1 hour of Zoom church. To be honest it was more of a limitation on quantity of electronics time than anything else – my kids could easily play on electronics ALL DAY and I wanted them to stop and find other things that were positive that they could do.
I’ve actually really liked this rule for our family. I like that I’m not saying NO electronics or friends, just that they need to first focus on church things. We’ve also for a long time had the rule that they can play with friends if those friends are already outside on Sunday but they cannot knock on doors and lure friends out. I didn’t want my kids interfering with other families’ sabbath day observation. I’d always felt like this was a really dumb rule until I was sitting with a group of moms in my neighborhood and discovered that most of them had a similar rule in place- great mom minds think alike!
I still will frequently nap after church but I don’t have the same level of exhaustion that I would come home from church with. I don’t know how much of that was just a Pavlovian response to coming home from church. However, my Sunday naps are really just a tool for me to catch up on sleep from the week so you wouldn’t think that attending church would affect it either way. I like going to bed at the same time as my husband even though he stays up later than I should and gets to sleep in at least an extra hour every morning than I do and I’m the one who is up with the 2yo in the middle of the night. The cumulative sleep deficit between us by Sunday is at least 7 hours – so that nap is a good way to reset to be ready for the week. However my favorite thing to do is to institute “Early Bedtime Sunday” where in lieu of taking a nap I go to bed at like 9pm (instead of 12am-2am) and consider that my “nap”… and let it roll into a full night’s sleep. For awhile I’d convinced my kids that Early Bedtime Sunday was an exciting thing but they don’t buy it anymore 😛
Sunday evenings and dinners haven’t really changed that much. However we have more frequently done virtual family activities like JackBox games with our extended family.
Things I’ve Learned
Obviously in a lot of ways our Sundays haven’t been all that different either before or after the lockdowns. Our desire to avoid commercial activity has remained the same, trying to make it a family day has been the same and our focus on the Savior has been the same. However the ways it has been different has been enlightening to me and I thought I would share some of the things that have stuck in my mind.
Sabbath Attire
The most interesting thing to me has been to see how I personally have treated getting dressed for Sunday services. Since I was a little girl General Conference has been my FAVORITE because we could wear our pajamas to church! I’m not one for loving to get dressed up all the time so you would think that home church during lockdown would have been the perfect opportunity to just stay happy in my PJs while feasting on the word of God. However, I have put on a dress for church every single Sunday of the lockdown. Before lockdown I would probably have told you that I dress up for church mostly because of societal expectations, wanting to conform etc. However I recognized that just that small shift of what I was wearing changed my mindset towards feelings of reverence and respect. My attire may just be an outward symbol but it means something to me about the respect with which I approach the day.
My kids watching conference together, aren’t they the cutest?
However I also realized that this won’t change how I approach General Conference. Even though by all accounts General Conference should inspire even greater reverence, I approach General Conference the way that I would approach a movie marathon. Ten hours of soaking up the words of the apostles and prophets calls for stretchy pants and snacks! I know it sounds backwards, but attending those meetings in my pajamas is part of how I show respect for them. The pajamas are part of the feeling of conference for me – cozy, at home, wrapped in the word of God – when I get dressed up it feels like any other Sunday. Obviously for the times I’ve been able to attend conference in person I’ve done everything to be dressed appropriately for the venue. However, at home I need to be in pajamas, with my laptop, a blanket and something yummy to munch on so that I can be fully engrossed in the learning at hand.
Reverence
It’s also been interesting to see that my focus during church time for my kids shifted from reverence via silence to reverence via participation. In sacrament meeting with so many people meeting together it was most important that my kids weren’t distracting others. Bring on the fruit snacks and coloring books! In a virtual meeting I can mute our family easily so that I’m less concerned about their volume and more concerned that they’re getting something out of the meeting. It’s caused me to reflect on what things I bring to church for my kids – are they meant to help them focus or keep them distracted? And how can I balance the two needs? Obviously my kids need to not disrupt the quiet of the meetings, but how can I instill in them a desire to be attentive and not just tuned out?
The Individual Nature of the Sacrament & Atonement
In a typical sacrament meeting the ordinance is performed for the masses – a whole congregation with probably 200+ people in attendance. While I still take the sacrament individually the prayers are said just once and the distribution happens on a large scale. However one week while we were in lockdown my husband and I were on a getaway by ourselves in a hotel room. We partook of the sacrament and when he said the blessing on the bread and on the water it was just for the two of us. It really felt like the sacrament was being done just for me. The sacrifice of our Savior felt so intimate and personal. Yes, He died for everyone, but He also died for ME. He took upon Himself the pains and sins and struggles of ME. He cares about our whole ward, but He also cares about my little 6 person family. The production value of our at home sacrament service with muffin tins and Ikea cups might not be the highest, but the personal connection between the Atonement and me has never been stronger.
Gratitude for the Priesthood
On the topic of partaking the sacrament at home – I have never been more grateful to be married to a faithful priesthood holder. As the lockdowns started I watched several of my friends of other Christian faiths lament the loss of the opportunity to receive communion. I don’t think there has been a single week since the beginning of the lockdown that I haven’t been able to renew my baptismal covenants with my Heavenly Father. In fact, I have probably missed the sacrament LESS during lockdown than before because it was impossible to be late for the sacrament when my family would wait for me to start. I am so grateful to be a member of the Church where priesthood power is not reserved only for a few but is shared freely with every worthy man who is willing to live righteously and serve others.
It has also made me very grateful for a church with no paid clergy. Certainly ministers in other churches do not go into the profession for the money, but I’ve been especially grateful that my church leaders weren’t motivated to push boundaries and pressure people to come to meetings because their livelihood was jeopardized otherwise. This has given me great confidence as things have slowly been restarted that the decisions are being made solely for the interest of the congregants and not influenced by the amount of money in the collection tray. That’s not meant as a jab at ministers and priests in other churches – goodness knows I’ve watched so much of the pro bono service in my own congregations and thought “so-and-so deserves a salary!” It’s just been interesting to see other churches scramble to find ways to get back together while watching members of my own church take a step back and a deep breath, then redirect their efforts towards personal ministries rather than pushing to get back to the church building.
Church as a Social Activity
The final thing that has been an interesting discovery for me is how much attending church – with the exception of the actual ordinance of the sacrament – for me is really a social activity more than anything else. A few months into the lockdowns our ward began sacrament meetings again that are shorter, physically spaced out within the chapel and require masks. We were permitted to attend every other week based on which half of the alphabet our last name was in. Our family attended the first week we were able to go but after that decided that we were better fulfilled by partaking of the sacrament in our home. The value for us of being IN church is the other people! It’s the opportunity to talk with other people about their struggles and share our burdens and work together. It’s the chance to smile at someone, give them a hug, and see how they’re doing. The talks in sacrament meeting are great, but I have every general conference talk for 40+ years that I can listen to online in addition to podcasts, scriptures, books… I don’t need to attend sacrament meeting to enhance my gospel study. But I need church for the support and structure that it gives to me and my family.
I think before this experience I would have been totally affronted by someone suggesting that church was a social experience rather than a spiritual one. However now I understand it differently. The social aspect IS the spiritual aspect. We attend church to renew our covenants, but that can happen in 10 minutes. We could administer the sacrament through a drive-thru and it would have the same effect. But church gives us the opportunity to LIVE those covenants. We can mourn with those that mourn and comfort those who stand in need of comfort. Church is where we are given the chance to lift the hands that hang down and strengthen the feeble knees. Church lets us not only hear the word of God but help teach it to one another in our classes. Plus, it gives other people the opportunity to do the same for us. I read a quote once that said that the people around us are the portion of humanity God has given us to love. While certainly we ought to reach our circle of love beyond those who share our faith, I do believe that God gives us these church organizations to assign us some particular people who are especially in need of the love we have to offer.
Conclusion
In the end I’m grateful for the opportunity that I’ve had these last few months to reexamine how I approach the Sabbath. I will really miss our lockdown church services and avoiding the Sunday scramble. I hope that there’s some way to preserve some of what we’ve had while church hasn’t been in session. I will definitely miss this special experience that we’ve had in the midst of all of the turmoil in the world right now. It’s neat to see the blessings and the ways the Lord reaches out to us, even in the darkest of times.
A few years back my mom was in some sort of regional church meeting with one of our worldwide church leaders (neither she or I can remember what the meeting was exactly or who the leader was – sorry for the vaguest context ever). The leader was taking questions from the audience and one woman asked him something to the effect of was it ok to delay having children until they had financial stability. The leader told the congregation – “You don’t have babies with money, you have babies with faith.”
That quote has stuck with me a long time. I think there are a lot of times when we feel as parents and in so many other situations that we don’t meet the basic qualifications. Whether from a standpoint of finances, spirituality, emotional wellness, education, age, time or any number of other factors in our life – it’s easy to feel like we should be more prepared before diving in. But the truth is, we are never fully prepared for the things we face in life.
We weren’t meant to have all of the answers before we start out – we’re meant to show up with faith and willingness to work and find the answers along the way. No one is ever really ready to have kids, or get married, or go off to school on their own, or go on a mission, or make a change in their career. You can’t have enough money, experience, education etc to be ready to take on any of these major challenges. Certainly none of these things ought to be taken on recklessly, but there will never be a time when you’re truly ready. Not being perfectly prepared should not stop us from doing the things we were meant to do. The Lord will help us as we have faith. If we show up with our woefully inadequate loaves and fishes He will work miracles with us to accomplish whatever we have before us.
My original tracker is still up and running and updated to reflect current budget amounts as of 06 June 2024, if you’d prefer to use that one, or want to understand more about My Tech High and the history of this tracker click here.I also have created a version that works with the Utah Education Fits All Scholarships which you can find here.
UPDATE 11-11-2020: I’ve added support to select the full year program or half year program which will adjust all of your budgets based on whether you’re starting in August or January. By default it will assume the full year program but make sure you select the half year program if you’re starting in January so that you don’t have your budgets doubled in the spreadsheet!
UPDATE 06-06-2024: I updated the budget amounts for kindergarteners to reflect that they will now receive full funding :)
UPDATE 06-08-2024: I’ve finally duplicated the spreadsheet to work for the Oregon program! Colorado is hopefully coming soon
UPDATE 06-10-2024: I have updated the Utah sheet to reflect the amounts and periods that combine to reflect the newly increased custom built budgets and adding tech class to the periods that can combine 🎉🎉🎉 I don’t know about anyone else, but that made my budgeting a bit easier! I still need to go back and see if Oregon had similar changes or not, and I’m still working on Colorado.
I have been maintaining this tracker for a couple years now and I’ve been so happy to see it help so many people! This year as My Tech High announced funding increases for their students I decided it was time to update my reimbursement tracker too. I started by just updating the formulas to reflect the new amounts. I tried to convince myself I was done then… but then I spent a week totally revamping the whole process and basically rebuilding the whole thing. So let me tell you what’s new and how to use it 🙂
New Features
Multiple Students in One Workbook: This was by far and away the biggest add. You can now manage the schedules and budgets for all of your students in one workbook (assuming you have less than 20 students, if you have more than 20 students then I really hope you have better organization skills than I do and heaven bless you!)
Budgets Categorized by Class instead of Budget Block: Maybe no one else ran into this but it would bother me all the time. In my old workbook all expenses were matched up with their budget block. So if you had a combined custom core for Math/English/Science that was one category. This was fine unless you changed your Science class from being custom built to being 3rd party. Then you’d have to go in and change all of your expenses to be associated either with this new 3rd party science class or with the new “Custom Core – Math, English” category. Now you simply select the subject the expense is associated with and it will follow that subject into whatever bucket you have it in at the time.
Custom Formatting: This may not have been the most important, but it was the most satisfying part of the process! I’ve changed the font to be a little prettier, added lots of color coding and generally made the whole thing more visually pleasing.
So let’s jump in to how to use it. If you don’t want to read through all of this I’ve made a little video tutorial that you can watch that shows you all of the steps.
The first thing you need to do is make a COPY of my spreadsheet. I was able to update the link to make a copy for you automatically, so no more worrying about accidentally trying to edit the master workbook 😂 I currently have versions for both Utah and Oregon – I’m working on Colorado and hopefully that will be up soon. Be sure to get the right one!
You will get a screen that looks like the screenshot below –
Don’t be nervous about the attached script file – it’s code that I had to use to make all the calculations work. But feel free to look through it if you’re concerned (I’ll never tell someone they’re being too cautious with security on the internet). It’s not strictly necessary, but the first thing I would do is rename your spreadsheet something like “MTH [school year] so that you don’t get your workbooks mixed up in future years.
Now you’re ready to begin filling it out. I’ve tried to lock as many of the ranges that you shouldn’t be changing as possible, so if you get a warning box saying not to change something – please try to heed it! The first thing you will need to do is select if your children are participating in the full year or half year program. If you’re starting (or already started) in September pick full year, if you’re starting in January pick half year. This will adjust your budget amounts to be either the full amounts or halved amounts depending on when you started the program.
The first thing you will do is enter your students’ names and grades in the Students sheet. You can also pick a color for each student which will just make the rest of the workbook prettier – and making it pretty is what’s most important right? Once you’ve done that go to the bottom of the page and click the “Schedules” worksheet.
You will see that your students’ names have already been populated and options corresponding to your students’ grades will show up. I like to go to the bottom and hide all of the schedules that are for non-existent students – just to make the experience a little bit cleaner for myself. To do this simply select the first row of empty schedules and then select all the way down to the last row. Then right click and you will see the option to “hide rows”, click that and all the extra schedules to disappear.
In the first column the only selection you need to make is whether your student is doing History or Science this year. DO NOT CHANGE THE SUBJECT NAMES! I get that it’s annoying seeing it pop up as “Elective 1” and you would rather have it say “Gymnastics” or “Orchestra” or “Speech & Debate”, but if you change how the subjects read here it will mess up the very delicate formulas that keep the spreadsheet ticking. Feel free to put those names in as the description instead 🙂 Don’t change anything in the 2nd column. In the 3rd column you will select whether the classes are going to be custom built, 3rd party or My Tech High Direct. You will notice that as you change these selections that the funds in the second column change to correspond with the budgets you will receive from My Tech High. The 4th column is optional but it gives you a space to write out your course descriptions. You can use this as a place to take notes of things you want to do or to write out your official course descriptions that you will submit to My Tech High. If you use it for writing your official descriptions you might notice that in the last column there is a character counter. It will tell you how many characters you have left before you exceed the course description character limit in InfoCenter. You’re welcome to write more characters in the worksheet, no one will see this other than you. Ok you’ve finished the hard part now on to where the magic happens! Open up the budgets worksheet and we’ll continue on 🙂
On the left it shows a budget breakdown for each of your students. At the top it tells you how much money you have remaining to spend. You will not need to make any changes to these columns because everything will be calculated automatically. Here’s what my kids’ budgets look like right now. You can see that I’m over budget for Sam in a couple of categories but it doesn’t take those negative amounts away from the total available to spend because you can’t spend over the limit for any particular category.
Let’s go on to the purchase list. Here you will simply enter in the items you have purchased, the price paid and then select the student and subject the purchase is associated with. As you do that you will notice that all of the “remaining” balances will update to show you how much is left in each category. If you select a subject with a student that doesn’t have that subject on their schedule the item will turn red and you’ll get an error message off to the side so that you can make sure to put that expense with a valid student/subject combination. Ok one last worksheet to go! Go ahead and click on the “Reimbursement Cover Sheet”
You won’t need the reimbursement cover sheet until it’s time to submit your receipts but I find this to be really handy. At the top of the page you can select a student and a budget and then the rest of the workbook populates with all of the purchases for that period. I will print this page to a PDF and then use it to help me make sure I have all of my receipts together before submitting them at reimbursement time. (EDITED: I used to use the free program PDFBinder to put the cover sheet first and then add all of the receipts in the order they’re listed on my cover sheet. However with their new submission system the cover sheet is redundant – but I still use it to help me make sure that I gather all the right receipts for each submission.) Once you’ve already made one submission and you need to make another then if you go back to the Budgets worksheet and check off the “Submitted?” boxes on the expenses that you’ve already been reimbursed for, then when you go back to the Cover Sheet worksheet you’ll see that it only displays the receipts that you haven’t yet been reimbursed for. So that can be handy for helping you keep organized.
One last tip for anyone who considers themselves lightly advanced. If you want to sort your purchases – Select all of the purchase list cells by clicking on the “Item Purchased” cell and dragging your mouse until you are down to the submitted column on your last row. Then go to the “Data” menu and select “Sort range”.
Check the “Data has a header row” box and then you can sort things however you like. I usually like to sort by student, then by subject and then by cost high to low. The sorting won’t stay as you enter in more items, but I find this to be handy as I’m trying to keep organized – especially when I’m getting ready to submit.
And that’s it! Hopefully this helps you to better keep track of your MyTechHigh expenses and budget in the coming years! If you notice anything that I’ve missed please comment below so that I can get it fixed!
How to Say Thank You
I can’t say enough how much it means just to read comments of people who have been helped by my tracker. Leave a comment here or tag me on Facebook – you have no idea how much that makes my day! These trackers have taken a lot of work and it really just makes me happy to know that they are helpful to others ❤️
If you really want to be helpful, if you would consider following my page on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter it would really help me as I try to grow this website into a thriving community. I try to post things that are interesting and I have lot of other great resources – homeschooling, tech, that I’d love to get out to everyone.
You can also consider making a purchase through my affiliate shop (I’m trying to update it with all of my favorite homeschooling resources) to help me keep this site going or making a donation to my site. If you’re looking for more ideas on what curriculum you want to use check out my curriculum recommendations post or if you’re looking for ideas on how to schedule your day check out my homeschool scheduling post. Happy Homeschooling 🙂
Side note: Everything above shows actual items I’ve been reimbursed for and course descriptions I’ve had approved. Feel free to use the descriptions and purchase list for inspiration for your own child’s schedule. Just a quick plug for a couple of things we’ve especially loved –
Kiwi Crates – these have been SO much fun for all of my kids and they’ve learned a ton from them. I’ve gotten 1 subscription and made my three kids share it and it’s been great. I thought I was going to like the Kiwi Crate but it’s been so much better than I’d expected. We’ve tried nearly every single type of crate they offer and they’re all fantastic! If you use my referral link you get $10 off of your subscription 🙂
Tuttle Twins these books are AMAZING at teaching your kids about the role of government and how laws work. They are definitely from a libertarian perspective and they’re very engaging – I’ve even had lots to think about and discuss after reading them!
Audible subscription– This is one of my favorite things to get reimbursed every year. We have had a subscription since 2009 and have over 1000 audiobooks. My kids are able to listen to books that might be well above their actual reading level and digest ideas that otherwise might seem beyond them.
Touch, Type, Read and Spell– I have a couple of dyslexic kids and this program has been awesome in helping them learn how to not only type but also giving them the basic building blocks for reading.
Homeschool Planet – I have loved this program to keep our homeschool days organized and to know what everyone needs to get done each day. The rescheduling features work great when you inevitably have to take a day off, and they have tools for creating your own transcripts and much more. I haven’t tried getting it reimbursed in the past but it’s well worth the subscription fee!
Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with My Tech High other than as a parent to students within the program. This tracker is provided free of charge and without warranty. I intend to keep all formulas and information current and accurate however I accept no liability for any faults in the program. Use at your own risk.
Sorry this isn’t going to be a happy post but I needed somewhere to put these feelings. I’m just feeling really sad right now. We got accepted today back into the homeschool charter we’ve been with for the last 4 years – yay! But now that I got that official acceptance I had to officially withdraw from the school my kids were planning to go to this year. We were all SO excited about this school year because this new school had so many really awesome programs. They would let us keep homeschooling using pretty much whatever curriculum we wanted, but with 1 day a week with the kids going to school and getting to be with friends, another half day a week of a real world adventures and planned field trips. I was going to have 1 day a week at home with just my 2 year old! The kids have been so excited, especially my 11 year old who has really struggled since the start of COVID as his friends have outgrown him a little bit and he doesn’t have great outlets to go make new ones. This school year was going to be awesome!
… But then the new plans came out for the year. The half day adventures and the field trips have been cancelled for the year. The on campus days were all going to be totally socially distanced (wearing masks, 6 feet apart from the other kids all day long – the right call for the situation at hand, but it sounded like the most miserable way to spend a day). While we were considering all of that our previous charter school announced changes to their funding that basically opened up an extra $1200 in reimbursement for educational supplies for our family… which pushed us over the edge. It wasn’t necessarily that extra amount in and of itself, but it gave us enough pause to *really* look at the two options side by side and see what the trade offs were with circumstances as they are. When we really considered it we knew we had to withdraw from the new school and go back to our old school.
I feel like it’s a little hard to be sad about something like this though. We are SO blessed! I’m not being pushed into homeschooling against my will. I actually feel so comfortable homeschooling and have been able to help some other families get their bearings in unfamiliar territory. We’ve all been healthy. We have a safe place to live, steady employment, family that we love. We have amazing technology to keep us connected and great support systems that we can reach out to. I’ve been grateful to live in a state that has allowed us quite a bit of freedom while giving strong guidelines and leadership to curb the spread of this disease. (I know I have friends who will disagree with this on both sides, but I’m still grateful and that disagreement isn’t the point of this post, pick another post for that battle 😉 ) I have a great yard, a house with lots of diversions, friends to connect with, family to visit with, technology savvy to get through all this… but I’m still sad.
In a parenting book I read recently it emphasized the importance of recognizing your child’s feelings and not brushing them off or putting them down. The guidance was to accept them, name them and validate them. I think it’s important for us to do this with ourselves too even as adults. I’m not saying to dwell on negatives and put yourself in a downward spiral. However, I think there’s importance in recognizing and saying “I’m sad and this is hard.”
It’s been almost funny the things through this pandemic that have gotten me to small breaking points. Back in April I was putting together snack bags for my kids for general conference. I wasn’t able to go out to the store and as I was putting their bags together I realized I didn’t have Capri Suns. I never have Capri Suns, but it’s something that I usually will get special just for General Conference. It was the dumbest thing to be upset about, but in the moment that was super hard for me. It wasn’t really about the Capri Suns, but it represented that I didn’t have the ability to give my kids the things I wanted to be able to give them. Stability, safety, fun – it was a mark of my lack of control in the world and it was a really hard realization. (Don’t worry, we had a miracle of the loaves and fishes and I was able to cobble together snack bags from things I didn’t even know I had and some random drink mixes took the place of the Capri Suns in the end – my kids didn’t even know they were missing)
That’s sort of how I’m feeling now. What I wanted to be able to give to my kids – and thought I *would* be able to give to my kids – has been taken away. It’s not anyone’s fault, it’s lots of things out of anyone’s control. It’s just hard. We have other great options, but I’m still sad about it. I will be ok. I can see all the bright sides of what we can do instead and it really is going to be fine. But I’m still sad, and it’s ok to be sad. It doesn’t have to be the biggest thing to be sad about. Being sad is not a contest. It’s ok if you’re sad over something big and I’m sad over something small. We’re still both allowed to be sad and my sadness doesn’t diminish your sadness, nor does your sadness negate mine. They’re just the feelings we have and we’re allowed to have them.
I just thought I should post this because I’m sure I’m not the only one feeling this way. This is hard. It is ALL hard. Regardless of who you are or where you’re at I’m sure there are things that you’ve lost in this pandemic – whether it’s loved ones, or trips, or school choices, or a feeling of safety, or even just some Capri Suns. It’s hard. It’s ok to feel like it’s hard. It’s ok to be sad about those things that you’ve lost – whether they’re big things or little things. It’s ok to be sad about the little things too. We will get through this, and I believe we will all be better and stronger for it. But right now, it’s ok to recognize your sadness, your sense of loss, and give it its proper place before you let it go. {Hugs} to all of you out there in whatever hard things you’re facing. I believe in you, you can make it ?
