Joshua Tree

I am so blessed to have such wonderful friends.  Today I saw my good friend Shaela and we went for a hike at Joshua Tree.

It was really a great day.  I'm so glad I got to take a photo for them.

This happy family is truly kind, and absolutely amazing.

Girls Girls Girls

Look what I got to do last week!

My favorite gaggle of girls came to visit.  Life doesn't get better than spending time with these sweeties.

Love love love you all!

Smiles & Scissors

Today I got my teeth cleaned...

and my hair cut.

These are two of my most favorite ladies in my life.  I love their work.

(I think the light over the dentist's chair was still on.)

Dear Brooke...

I went to the mailbox and I was surprised to find a letter addressed to me from you.  I thought there would be lollipops, cupcakes, or thingamiboos, but instead there was a "stone arch", ...yahoo!  

Thank you for this beautiful drawing.  I can tell you are a talented artist, but I have no idea what it means.

Will you please tell me why you drew this "stone arch" and sent it to me?

I'm looking forward to seeing you soon.  

Love,
Aunt Charlynn

Happy Birthday Chandler!

Tonight I had the pleasure of celebrating my brother Chandler's 26th birthday at the Golden Horseshoe.  Disneyland is putting on a shorter version of the old can-can show we grew up on.  They stopped performing it in 1986 and it was cool to see it again.

Chandler is full of energy and always fun to be around.  He is super talented, overly generous with sharing his talents and patiently helping/teaching the rest of us.  I am so blessed to have him as my brother.  Looking good birthday boy :)

Happiness

Teaching in Primary has to be among the top five things I currently love about my life.  I owe that to my mom.  Teaching children is probably her greatest talent.  

Our Sharing Time Lesson was on the plan of happiness.  I used Skittles as "drops of awesome" to fill Gavin's "bowl of awesome".  Brooke put a "drop of awesome" into the bowl for every good thing Gavin has done.  Even though Gavin is an awesome kid, the bowl wasn't anywhere near full.  

Gage is a holding a large vase labeled "atonement".  It was filled with Skittles at the beginning of the lesson and after Gavin listed every good thing he had done, Gage poured the vase of Skittles into and overflowing over Gavin's bowl to demonstrate how the atonement makes us happier than we could ever be on our own.  These are fantastic kids.

This wasn't my own idea.  I got it from here  http://www.daringyoungmom.com/2012/12/19/drops-of-awesome/

Happy New Year!

I’m sorry I haven’t posted anything in months.  I went through my second divorce last year and I just wanted to hide-out for a bit.   I could see that you kept checking in on my blog.  Thanks. :)

With my new single status comes changes including, this blog is now public. Yay!

So, I want to start off the new year on the right foot and share this Christmas morning photo of me showing off the new shoes my brother gave me.  They are fantastic.  I’m sure you will see them again as I use them throughout the year.  It's great to be back. :)