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Live Life * Tell the Story

You are here: Home / Archives for family

family

Family Tree TuesdayZ | Count Your Blessings


In my church, there is a song in the hymnbook called “Count Your Blessings“. I love this hymn because it sings the truth of living a life full of gratitude. Whenever my life feels too tough to bear, I can count my blessings and be thankful and when I do, help and comfort come from my Heavenly Father. I hope that you can take the lyrics of this hymn into your heart and then truly count your blessings, because I know you will find that you have many. I’m going to take this opportunity to write down my blessings in my journal today and I hope you do too!

Count Your Blessings

Text: Johnson Oatman Jr., 1856–1922
Music: Edwin O. Excell, 1851–1921

  1. When upon life’s billows you are tempest-tossed,
    When you are discouraged, thinking all is lost,
    Count your many blessings; name them one by one,
    And it will surprise you what the Lord has done.
  2. Are you ever burdened with a load of care?
    Does the cross seem heavy you are called to bear?
    Count your many blessings; ev’ry doubt will fly,
    And you will be singing as the days go by.
  3. When you look at others with their lands and gold,
    Think that Christ has promised you his wealth untold.
    Count your many blessings; money cannot buy
    Your reward in heaven nor your home on high.
  4. So amid the conflict, whether great or small,
    Do not be discouraged; God is over all.
    Count your many blessings; angels will attend,
    Help and comfort give you to your journey’s end.
Chorus:
Count your blessings;
Name them one by one.
Count your blessings;
See what God hath done.
Count your blessings;
Name them one by one.
Count your many blessings;
See what God hath done.


Journal prompts, Journal CardZ, and other ideas
to help you tell YOUR story and discover your family history!

Tuesdays

Filed Under: Blog Series, Family Tree TuesdayZ Tagged With: appreciate, appreciation, blessing, blessings, count, family, grateful, Gratitude, journal, journal prompt, prompt, reflect, thank, thankful, thanks, thanksgiving

Book ClubZ | Intro

INTRODUCTION

I’m excited about this new blog series! Reading is another favorite thing of mine and I love it when I can share that love with my family and/or friends. Each month, I’ll choose a book to read, then I’ll plan out a fun night for my family/friends, and then share that night with all of you! I hope that you will be able to use the ideas to have a great night with your book clubs!

Each month will include:
  • a book review with questions
  • themed dinner or treat ideas
  • themed activity ideas
  • some new products, inspired by the book
So this blog series will be on the 4th Saturdays of each month – starting in January! I hope you will join me in this new adventure filled with books and fun!


What do you think?

Join me in January for the book: Mary Poppins
and feel free to send in your ideas for what we should read next!



Ideas for a great book club night!

Fourth Saturdays

Filed Under: Blog Series, Book ClubZ Tagged With: book, books, club, family, friends, reading

Movie NightZ | Intro

INTRODUCTION

I’m excited about this new blog series! Movie nights with my family are one of my very favorite things and what makes them better is when I take the time to really plan them out! So that is what this is going to be. Each month, I’ll choose a movie to watch, then I’ll plan out a fun night for my family, and then share that night with all of you! I hope that you will be able to use the ideas to have a great night with your own families!

Each month will include:
  • a short review with likes/dislikes
  • themed dinner/dessert ideas
  • themed craft/project/activity ideas
  • photos/info about my own family movie night
  • some new products with quotes from the movie
So this blog series will be on the 3rd Saturdays of each month – starting in January! I hope you will join me in this new adventure filled with movies and family fun!


What do you think?

Join me in January for the movie: The Princess Bride
and feel free to send in your ideas for what we should watch next!



Ideas for a great movie night

Third Saturdays

Filed Under: Blog Series, Movie NightZ Tagged With: family, ideas, movie, movie night, movies

Family Tree TuesdayZ |Passion


My Journaling:

My passion lies in my tagline. Live Life. Tell the Story. I am passionate about telling our stories and leaving them as our legacy.  I also truly am passionate about using your talents to serve others and I try to do that everyday. I feel like this passion came from loving to create and the talents that I have developed came from my Heavenly Father. He gave them to me and it is only right that I use that talent to bless the lives of others. I 110% believe that and I have strived to live it.


I have a journal card for you today. I want you to just write about your PASSION!

DOWNLOAD LINK



Journal prompts, Journal CardZ, and other ideas
to help you tell YOUR story and discover your family history!

Tuesdays

Filed Under: Blog Series, Family Tree TuesdayZ, Freebies, Journal CardZ, Personal Tagged With: family, family history, journal, journal prompt, passion, prompt

Family Tree TuesdayZ | Times of Struggle


My Journaling:

I’m going to be very vulnerable today and share a particular hard time in my life, a definite time of struggle. I’ve talked about this with others, but I don’t believe that I have ever written it down, so maybe its time. This memory is definitely a time when I didn’t know if I would make it through, but I did and I’m still here and I’m so grateful that I am.

The teen years are tough for everyone. It’s a time where you are trying to figure out who you are and what you want out of life. Unfortunately, when you mix that with everyone else’s emotions and feelings, it becomes a mess. When I was in seventh and eighth grades, I experienced an extreme amount of bullying and torment from my classmates. It was everyday and as I didn’t grow up with great communication in my home, I didn’t know how to talk about it and I kept most of it inside. I felt very trapped and very, very lonely. I definitely became a “victim” and I had that total mentality. It took a toll on my self-esteem that has lasted my whole life (I’m working on it, but its still hard to get past and I still struggle with it).

In seventh grade, I got a perm and my hair was big and curly and it was a mess and I think that is why I became known as “the rat” to my classmates. I come from a very small town where there was no middle school/jr. high and so our high school hosted 7th-12th grades. Coming into a new school is never easy, but when you come into the school and your first week you are made fun of not only by students of your own age, but all ages, including the seniors at the school, it is very devastating to your confidence and self-esteem. It felt like I could never have any relief at all, from school and extra-curricular activities, I was tormented constantly. I would go home and just go into my room and shut the door and cry. I didn’t talk to anyone for the longest time. I shut myself off from the world. I would do my homework and go to church and church activities and if I was at home, I was in my room reading and getting lost in someone else’s problems rather than my own. I know that I became more and more depressed everyday. I don’t know the date or even an approximate time but somewhere in that time period, I started thinking of killing myself. I just wanted some kind of relief and I began to think that since no one would even be sad that I was gone, that maybe it was the right thing to do. I’m sure that I was really oblivious to people who reached out to me at this time but I had completely shut myself off. I know that I had people who loved me – friends and family and I’m sure some of them knew what was going on, but I didn’t talk about it, so I’m not sure who actually knew. I’m pretty sure that my own parents had no idea. I do know that some people who I thought were my friends, were a part of the bullying (or at least didn’t stop it). But there were a couple of friends (my lifelong friends) that I’m sure were there the whole time, but for a long time I didn’t share my burden.

Anyways, I remember a particular night, where I was home alone (I actually have no idea where my family was) and I began thinking about suicide. It was definitely my all time low moment. I didn’t really even know what I was going to do, but I remember feeling like it was time. And then the phone rang and it was good friend, Beverly. I don’t remember what she said or anything, but I remember leaving the house and going to her home. I remember sitting outside on her driveway and just basically exploding on her, everything that I had been feeling and just everything came out. We cried and I remember just feelings so blessed that Bev just listened and hugged me and cried WITH ME. Things were so much better after that. She stood up for me lots of times and it was just so nice to be able to just talk to her about how I was feeling. The bullying didn’t stop and it was still difficult everyday, but just knowing that I had someone to talk to, helped me get past the suicidal thoughts, I didn’t think about that at all anymore. That was definitely a turning point for me. I still struggled, but a little self-worth came back to me that night – enough to get me through.

It is still so hard for me to get away from playing “the victim” and having self-confidence in my life, but I do feel like I am getting closer as I work towards healing myself. A lot of this time period, is such a blur to me – I remember some moments, but there was a lot that I have completely blocked out. But I do remember how it felt and I hope my children never have to feel that way. I know that I have been able to talk about this experience with my kids when they were struggling and it just is such a blessing to have someone care about you. I hope that we can all look out for people who could use a friend, because it truly means everything to someone who is in need of that – actually, it is everything to everyone, because we all need friends in our lives.

 

This prompt could mean many things, it wouldn’t have to be suicide, just times of struggle. So I hope you will take a moment today to stop and reflect and share your experience in your journal. You never know when someone in your family might need your strength and guidance through the experiences that you have.


I have a journal card for you today. I want you to just write about a time in your life when you struggled, you didn’t know if you would make it, but you won! You are here and you did make it through it – how amazing is that!

DOWNLOAD LINK



Journal prompts, Journal CardZ, and other ideas
to help you tell YOUR story and discover your family history!

Tuesdays

Filed Under: Blog Series, Family Tree TuesdayZ, Personal Tagged With: experience, family, family tree, journal, journal prompt, life, memories, memory, prompt, story, struggle, struggles, time

Family Tree TuesdayZ | BYU Family History Technology Apps

My daughter has been getting into family history lately and that excites me because that is about the age that I began being interested too. She’s started a project of collecting family stories and I think its going to be great fun to collaborate together and discover more about our genealogy! In this newly-found quest, my daughter found out about a local Family History Fair a few weeks ago and so we went and had a great time learning through some classes. One of the classes that I attended talked about some great family history apps from BYU, that make family history come alive for families! I’m so excited to share these with you today and I hope you will try them out with your families!

The Family History Technology Lab, sponsored by the Department of Computer Science at Brigham Young University, is the gateway to a variety of Family History Web Apps that are free and open to the public and used by hundreds of thousands of people around the world to help them with their family history. To use these apps you will need a username and password from **FamilySearch.org, (so you will need to signup and bring in your genealogy through the site) and then you can dig right in! 

    • RelativeFinder | an app developed by BYU professors and students that connects individuals with famous historical figures, as well as friends and neighbors. It works through the FamilySearch API to identify common ancestors and show how two people are related. It also allows you to create your own groups so you can see how you might be related to a friend or a deceased person or even with people standing next to you by allowing RelativeFinder to use your location!

 

    • Virtual Pedigree | an app that quickly and dynamically navigates your family tree with both expandable and collapsible ancestry as well as descendancy. It uses BYU’s patented Elastic Paper technology to expand the entire tree with a simple single click and drag, whether exploring ancestors or descendants. It works especially well on tablets and smart phones by simply touching and dragging over the tree. You can view and navigate through hundreds of names, up and down the tree in a matter of seconds.

 

    • One Page Genealogy | an app that allows you to construct large pedigree charts with user-defined color and other attributes. It can create a custom tree, allowing 14-16 generations to be placed on a 2-3 foot wide format, something that is not possible with standard tree-charting applications. You can make charts from a tree in FamilySearch or from a Gedcom file.

 

    • Pedigree Pie | an app that provides a graphical pie-shaped representation of ancestors based on countries of origin and allows a user to quickly see what percent English, German, Swedish, etc, they are.

 

    • Descendancy Explorer | an app that members of the LDS church can use to quickly and easily find names of their ancestors that are ready to take to the temple.

 

    • Geneopardy | a game app that is based on the well-known game of Jeopardy. It is great for family gatherings and a fun way for children and adults to get to know their ancestors better!

 

    • Wheel of Family Fortune | a game app that is based on the well-known game of Wheel of Fortune, but with hints and names drawn from your own family tree. A great way to engage family members, old and young, in family history!

 

    • And more to come! So check back to see what other apps are being developed!

 

Aren’t these so much fun! I’m so excited to explore these apps and get my family excited about learning about where they came from and why they are, who they are! So try them out and come back and tell me what you think!

 

** I am a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS or Mormon), which has created FamilySearch. But even if you aren’t a member of my church, please check it out – it is an amazing site that helps families connect with all generations!

 



 

Tuesdays

Filed Under: Blog Series, Family Tree TuesdayZ, Personal Tagged With: apps, family, family history, family tree, game, games, genealogy, names, pedigree, relative, stories, story, tree

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I'm a wife, a mom, a blogger, a lover of crafting, and a graphic designer. I believe in living life to the fullest, sharing your heart and talents to enrich the lives of others, and then telling your story to leave as a legacy for those that come after you.



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