Like all of you, I have plenty of serious things on my mind right now and a whole list of important things needing to be done. What I don’t have enough of is lighthearted playtime. So this summer, instead of a bucket list, I decided to create a play list…not the kind you download on…
Five things to make you smile Transcript Good morning and happy Monday! If you aren’t feeling so happy today, I hope this video will help. I am about to share with you five simple activities that always make me smile. I almost didn’t record a video this week. With all the turmoil across the United…
Another month has flown by, and it’s time to check in on our Winter Bucket Lists. Health & fitness Choose a 10K to run…perhaps one in Southern Utah, near our home construction site. Once I choose the race and get registered, I will lay out a training schedule. In the meantime, I will work my…
Ask any handyperson what their favorite tools are, and you’ll probably hear about some fancy gadgets you never knew existed, but ask which are the most useful, and you’ll get down to basics: things like a hammer, screwdriver, and pliers. When Candi invited me to share my favorite tools for midlife, as part of her…
We’re down to the final days of the official “holiday season.” I hope yours has been full of joy, love, and laughter…lot’s of laughter. This week’s Friday favorites is a sampling of the Hawkes Family holiday shenanigans. Dogzilla decimated the Christmas village, leaving one lone snowman survivor to tell the tale. Destroying and plundering is…
If you are reading this, you survived the madness that is Christmas. I hope you enjoyed it. I typically take the week between Christmas and New Year’s to look back over the year—the experiences, the accomplishments, the lessons learned, and the things I hope to improve in the coming year. For me, this is usually…
Several of you have asked how I came up with my blog name and what the significance is. So today I answer the question, “Why So What? Now What?” At the time I started my blog almost two years ago, I was going through a transition of sorts—from a lifelong go-getter with her eye on…
I am not a morning person. The alarm clock and I are not friends. This Irving Berlin song that my mom used to sing to us children in the mornings just about sums it up: Oh! how I hate to get up in the morning, Oh! how I’d love to remain in bed; For the…
If you ask me (and let’s pretend you did), Utah actually has five seasons: Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter Wonderland, and Winter Blahs. We are now deep in the heart of Winter Blahs—the time of year when it’s easy to get the blues and difficult to get motivated. After years of scientific research (or possibly just…
Hope and despondency, pleasure and pain, Are mingled together in sun-shine and rain. -Abraham Lincoln About three months ago, I blogged about the vulnerability of embracing joy due to the fear that it will be more painful later when things inevitably go wrong. I believe we all agreed 🙂 that practicing joy and gratitude actually…
