Days of my life - the past week

My daughter her family came for a quick visit.  My daughter and her youngest flew in, then the next day, they were joined by her husband and oldest three children who drove down from Utah.  They spent the week in Tucson with her husband's parents and family.  His parents just returned home from a two-year LDS mission to New Jersey, so it was a week-long reunion for his family.

The oldest three grandchildren were hungry after their long drive to Arizona and they enjoyed a little lunch at our house before going on to Tucson.

 The youngest of the bunch was smiling and happy to have everyone together.

 I love being with this group, no matter what we are doing.

 This one is so much like her mom was, when she was little - a true joy!

Ready to go out and have some fun at the play ground.

Checking out some of grandpa's stuff. 

My daughter and I got to spend one evening at the Mesa Temple.  I love being able to attend the temple with my children.

The temple was beautiful in the early evening light when we went in...

...and just as lovely lit up in the night when we came out.

Grandpa tended while we were at the temple.  They enjoyed watching a movie together until baby fell asleep on his lap.

The next morning we were up early for breakfast at a fun new restaurant before heading to the airport.

It was great to be able to spend some time together and I am excited that we will get to be together again soon.

After one daughter and her family left, I went to the mail box and was happy to see these sweet pictures from another daughter who just had a baby in January.  I sure miss seeing these people in person, but enjoyed the pictures.

We had these two fine young men over to share a meal with us Saturday night. This is a picture I took to email to their moms.  Sharing a meal with our local missionaries always makes me happy and makes me feel closer to my son Josh, serving in Mexico.

Right now, I am reading a couple of books on my kindle, Living with Less by Brian Night and Simple by Beth Jones.  Both books are about simplifying life and "adopting the minimalist mindset."  Both are interesting and are providing with inspiration and motivation to continue with getting rid of things we don't really need.

Going right along with that, my oldest grandson, who visited last week, is collecting shoes as part of a school project. The shoes will be donated to the needy in Africa, so my grandson was very excited when I was able to find two bags of shoes around our house, that are still in pretty good shape, but no longer worn.  I was happy to clear these shoes out and share with others in need, but the thought came to mind that it is pretty embarrassing that I had that many shoes that were never worn.  I know that I need to think more carefully about purchases and pass on things I don't absolutely love.  Most of the shoes I donated were impulse buys, or "super deals" that never really worked out, so avoiding such purchases is something I need to work on, especially since we are trying to purge and downsize for a possible move in a couple of years. 

Finally, the Presidential Primary, or "Presidential Preference Election" as it is called here in Arizona, is coming up on March 22.  We received our mail-in ballots last week.

Who did I vote for?  See for yourself.  I should say that I haven't been very pleased with any of the candidates from either party so far, but some candidates I truly could never vote for, so after reading, listening and studying it out, I made my selection.  Now we will have to wait and see what happens, in this wild and wacky presidential election year.

My thought for this week goes along with something I have struggling with a bit this weekend. Without going into details, let me just say that a thoughtless word led to a case of hurt feelings, that evolved into a full-blow pity-party.  It wasn't enjoyable and nothing was achieved, so this is the way I need to deal things like this in the future.  After all, we always have the choice on how we react to others (something some of our presidential candidates have not yet learned).

Have a good week!

The Entitlement Cure - Book Review

The Entitlement Cure - Finding Success in Doing Hard Things the Right Way, by psychologist and leadership expert, Dr. John Townsend, is a book that probably everyone would benefit from reading since it deals with how to recognize and remedy entitlement "take the easy way out" attitudes in others and ourselves.  

As a parent of young adults and a high school teacher, I thought I knew all about entitlement attitudes. What I wanted was ideas on how to prevent and deal with them. This book offered a cure for entitlement right in the title, so when I was offered the opportunity to review it, I jumped at the chance. 

As I began reading the book, I was surprised to learn that it wasn't just about how to cure entitlement in others, but also how to recognize and remedy it within ourselves. Further, I began to see that I had more entitlement attitudes than I had ever imagined. After all, I was a hard-working adult who knew that life could be tough - why would I feel entitled?  Yet, the evidence presented by Dr. Townsend helped me to see that I take too many short cuts and too often try to do things the easy way, or expect that things should turn out a certain way because I "deserve it."  I thought I was just being "efficient" and saving time and effort, and being good to myself, when in reality, I was short changing myself and those I care about. 

As I read on, I learned more about myself and my relationships with others and how to take responsibility for myself and my actions, resolve obstacles, and minimize regret in my own life so that I could help those I care about also find success in doing hard things the right way.  

As Dr. Townsend explains, taking responsibility, facing pain, keeping commitments - even tough and inconvenient ones - and rising above the current "take the easy way out" culture in our society is the only way to the real and lasting success and happiness that God wants for us, and that we should want for ourselves.

I gave this book four stars **** out of five. There is an abundance of excellent information, although it did seem redundant and drug out in places, especially near the end. I did like the author's Christian perspective.  He referenced scriptures where appropriate to give weight to concepts, but he was not overly preachy or judgmental in tone. In the end, this is a book worth being read by virtually everyone. Book Look Bloggers provided me with a copy of the book, but the honest opinion and review is my own. 

Favorite things about last week...

After being away from Friday Fave Five for too long, I was bound and determined to participate this week. I am simply too much to be grateful for.

• Springtime!

Spring has returned to Arizona.  It feels far too early to be back up into the 90s, but nevertheless, we had several days of upper 80s and low 90s this week.

You can see that the weeds have started popping through the rocks in our front yard.

Another sign of warmer temperatures - our pool turns green! We usually turn the pump off during the cool winter months, and if things warm up before we turn the pump (and cleaning system) back on, we have a pool that is a not so lovely shade of green. Charly has been spending some time trying to remedy that situation.

• Help!

A few weeks ago when my husband asked a couple of contractors from our church if they could refer us to someone who could replace some rotting wood on our patio cover, we never expected that these two fine men would be out working on our patio cover themselves at 6:30 a.m. Saturday morning.

We actually had the wood and roof on the patio recover replaced about eight years ago, but the contractor we paid to do it then, did it incorrectly and water got into all the wrong places and rotted the wood.

Our contractor friends from church spend six hours removing and replacing the bad wood and fixing the roof correctly. It was so nice of them. We surely do appreciate their help and service to our family.

• Date!

Charly and I had our annual Valentines Day date to the huge used book sale at the Arizona State Fairgrounds in Phoenix.  We try to go to this event every year and it is usually the weekend closest to Valentines Day so it is the perfect date for a couple of book lovers.

The book sale, sponsored by the Volunteer Non-profit Service Organization of Phoenix, is held in a huge exhibition hall and has thousands and thousands of all kinds of books for sale.

We spent the afternoon perusing books, then stopped for a pizza on the way home.  It was fun.

• Books and Puzzles!

Of course no book lover can go to a book sale and not come home with a few books!

Here is my haul from the book sale. There were also have puzzles at the sale and I got some good ones. I know that I will enjoy all these things!

Speaking of books, this one that I am currently reading is excellent. 

I have been marking some of the important points in this book and you can see that there are many.  I will be finishing this book up soon and will be posting a review.

I finished this puzzle, mostly while watching "Downton Abby" and "Mercy Street."  It's a nice picture, but it was a challenging puzzle because many of the colors run together and it was hard to tell where the different pieces went. We are having our daughter and her family visit this weekend, so I won't start another puzzle immediately, but when our family is gone, I plan to do one of the new puzzles I got at the book sale. 

• Cookies!

I had Monday off for President's Day, and decided to do a little baking. 

These oatmeal cookies were a late Valentines treat for Charly. These are his favorite kind of cookie.

I also wanted to give our local missionaries (Elder Merritt and Elder Bartlett - both about Joshua's age) a Valentines Treat, so I baked these chocolate chip cookies.  The smile on the faces of these two young men, when I gave them a heaping plate of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies, was priceless!

• Visit!

No pictures yet, but I am super excited that we get to see one of my daughters and half of my grand children this weekend.  My daughter and her youngest are flying down here today and then her husband and rest of the children are coming in the car tomorrow.  We are looking forward, as we always do, to seeing them and having some happy family time this weekend!

Joining with Susanne at Living to Tell the Story for...

With Love from Mexico

We received a wonderful surprise in the mail yesterday - pictures from Mexico!

Josh had told us early in January that he was mailing an SD card home, but it has taken this long to reach us - about six weeks.  It arrived in good shape however and had some fun pictures of our son and his friends and activities.

Here are a few pictures of our son and his missionary buddies.  I love the huge smile on Josh's face. He looks so happy!

Apparently there was some kind of competition (Josh didn't explain - he is a man of few words)...

 ...and these two smiling Elders won!

This is Josh and his friend and companion from Sinaloa, Mexico. These two got along great!

Here are some pictures of the street Josh lived on and the house he lived in, inside and out (he has moved to another area since these pictures were taken):

 A typical street in the city where Josh is serving.

Another view of the street. Josh told us that this area is more affluent than the one where he is now, however, the homes don't really look that affluent to me.

 I think these little houses look like rows of boxes. Again, this is pretty typical for the city Josh is in.

The inside of almost every Mormon missionary apartment has a picture of Christ somewhere prominent. I see that Josh has a picture of Jesus on the door.

The furnishing are spartan and sparse, and the clutter is pretty typical of an apartment shared by a couple of young men. They do have standards of cleanliness though, and I suspect they have inspections just to be sure the standards are being adhered to.

I was pretty impressed that the beds are made, even if the blankets on top aren't folded.

Here are some scenes from a hike Josh and his missionary group went on in the mountains surrounding his area:

 This part of Mexico gets a lot of rain, so it is very green.

 Hiking in the mountains is a favorite activity for the missionaries on their day off (P-day).

 Here is the trail they hiked.

A view of Josh's area off in the distance. 

Some pictures from a December trip to the Temple:

That's Josh at the far left of the happy group - Josh's mission zone - eight young men (Elders) and four young women (Hermanas).

This happy and hard-working missionary is a great blessing to his family!