I’ve always held this theory about our church. That sometimes when we try so hard and nobly to stay positive, we often let a very tender and shared moment pass—the opportunity to grow closer to one another through our stories. We know that behind each face that smiles on the outside are usually quiet hearts [...]

My man and I are in the throes of deciding whether we should have another child. At three kids we’re hardly even considered a brood, but my husband is adamant that we’ve reached our emotional and physical capacity in the area of parenting.
And I’m just baby hungry.

Over lunch last week with some of my really smart friends, a question came up… Although I can’t quite articulate the question without a rapid-fire series of questions in these:

Last testimony meeting, one of my favorite people in our ward got up to talk. She cuts a bold figure into the crowd, statuesque, funny, lovely, an actress. When she got up to speak into the microphone, there was a palpable shift in the energy of the congregation as everyone sat up taller, eager to [...]

I remember the first time I put on a bathing suit after Chloe was born.
It was not pretty.

I have a hankering for Red Mango with a granola mix in. All the time. The kids go back and forth from filthy to clean but only because they’re wet from the garden hose, which I’m not socially, morally or eco-ly conscious enough to say no to. Boxes of popsicles are dusted off as soon [...]

I remember when my first was born and the foreign utterance that crossed my lips to my dad, while I was still in the hospital with my new baby.
“Now I know what joy is,” I told him. And he said, that’s right, that’s exactly right.
In Darlene’s beautiful poem, in the latest issue of Segullah (out [...]

A few winters ago, a few of my siblings and I met for a few hours in Palm desert. We lay on chaise lounges poolside, a hyper-green golf course stretched for acres to our right, a gondola splashed through a manmade canal, and hundreds of palm trees soared above us. It was so lush. Only [...]

I loved Elder Ballard’s talk on Sunday afternoon. Indeed it was the cherry on top of an already amazing conference weekend. I found myself tearful and grateful, turning to my husband to see his reaction, turning to my kids with a half-holler: “are you guys listening to this?!”
I was feeling very virtuous and appreciated till [...]

It’s the first weekend in April. (General Conference! General Conference!) And every first weekend in April, I have the greatest expectations that this will be the weekend that will finally usher in the compliance of spring’s glory, and that—if we wanted too—we would be warm enough to sit outside on Temple Square and listen to [...]

This is a guest post by Chelle, who lives in Salt Lake City with her handsome husband and four children, ages 10, 8, 6 and 4. They consider this stage of life the parenting “sweet spot” and plan to enjoy every second of this “Our Parents Are Really Cool” phase of their children’s lives. [...]

My oldest child is a girl, and she just recently turned seven.
Ahem. I guess what I want to say is this: What happened?
Sometimes she comes to me with issues that I have no encyclopedic (or logic, or base, or silly) answer for. Sometimes she still sobs as she climbs into my lap, the [...]

I’m all about the love stories.
As a youth I would pester my “elders” for recitations of their first encounter, of how they fell in love. I would ask for pictures, for endless details, I wanted to know these things. I didn’t need these stories to draw selected bits from, to collage my own fantasy; I [...]

On a typical weekday, there is always a craft, usually felt or buttons, paper and glue. There is the stacking and restacking of framed photographs as I try to furnish my walls. Yesterday there was the strategic placement of hearts. Everywhere.
Always I sweep after breakfast. And always, some cartoons, watched while flopped lazily on pillows [...]

As one who oft’ complains about her calling, and made her #1 new year’s resolution to “stop being antagonistic at presidency meetings,” I felt humbled when I read Gold to Give, an essay from the latest issue of Segullah.
To hit the pillow on Sunday night, exhausted and still in your stockings, having had to economize [...]