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Yesterday, I had a few minutes to chat with John.  It's probably one of my favorite things to do--talk to John--because he's been my constant sounding board over the past 31 years of marriage.  And something I've learned about myself of late is that I need  a sounding board.  Plus, talking to people keeps my emotions above board--I tend to focus on the fun and goodness in my life when talking to others. I was trying to explain to him how poorly I was feeling emotionally, and how I haven't been able to pull myself out of the hole this past week.  (A shout out to myself and to what being an abused child has taught me--I am a survivor and never wallow in the pool of self-pity for very long.) He then pointed out that this hasn't exactly been the easiest week for me, and he then praised me for the champion I have been.  With that in mind, I thought that maybe I should write it all down.  I like looking back on "strength memories" when I'm not feeling so str...

 Something that's been floating around in my head recently is that I've been thinking a lot about video games. And not just necessarily about the games I'm currently playing, although that's definitely part of it(:  I think in our family at least, I've gotten the moniker of the most frequent and/or most knowledgable source for current events in the video game industry. I think it stems from a mix of just interest in how creative industries run their particular business model (since it is SO unique from any other business model out there), my interest in actually becoming an EMPLOYEE of one of these companies and hoping all that random knowledge can one day pay off in that huge way, and just generally liking the medium. Like many millenials (and probably more so than many others), I'm the traditional child of the media (cue my zombie like face at restaurants if I'm facing any kind of TV), but I think video games kind of transcend traditional media in a few wa...

 It isn't a wonderful moment at the end of a movie or tv show that you really enjoyed when you realize it's not actually completely over, you've got some bloopers. Maybe movies don't do this anymore, and it's just one more thing to relish from my childhood, but I love bloopers. They are just so funny. What's not to like about getting just a little bit more of that movie you loved! Wouldn't it be nice in life we could have bloopers? If we could say, "I did that wrong, I made a fool of myself. Let's take it again from the top." Sadly, in most cases, that's not a possibility. I hate those cringey moments, but they happen to everyone, right? (I'm going to tell myself they do because it gives me a little bit of comfort) One such moment for me happened when I was in college. I was asked out by this guy who was definitely cooler than me. I was honestly so surprised when he asked me out because I could tell he was "out of my league" i...

  A while back, Rebecca and I were talking about Michael Phelps. We all remember him as maybe the greatest Olympian of all time, with 23 gold medals and 28 medals overall. Rebecca remembered having a SERIOUS crush on him in 2008 during the Beijing Olympics, which, between her love of Heat-era Lebron and Beijing Michael Phelps, I can’t fault her in her taste in men. ;-) I remember watching Michael Phelps even earlier though, during the 2004 Olympics in Athens, and that made me go down a memory lane. In 2004, my mom, siblings, and I all took a several-week trip back to the US from Germany. This was a whirlwind tour of all over the US: we went to Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Florida, and I think up to Michigan? I think the trip had something to do with the fact that we were now going to stay in Germany for another three years, but I didn’t know much about that as a 13-year old. All I knew is that we were going on a trip and it was going to be fun! And it was! We did a lot of hiking all...

Happy Birthday mama! Since I know you like no gift better than a good blog post, I thought I’d write down a few of my favorite memories of you! Although this is no where close to all the stories we've shared together - even as I look for pictures to include, memories come flooding back of our shenanigans together - like that idiot dude at Arches "Um I think you dropped this" ;) - But without further ado, here we go. For some reason, I was the only child of the Kennedy family to take the bus to school for a large portion of my life. It helped that Ethan and Mark and closer in age, so they always drove to school together, and my older sibling all had seminary or chamber singers and things that made them have to get a ride earlier than just the bus. Unlike my siblings, till high school, I took the bus to and from school every day.  My favorite bus driver had to be my Elementary School Bus driver – Barb. We gave Bard banana bread at the end of every school year, and unlike al...

I love Meg.  She and I don't do particularly well in person, but we are seriously the best of friends on the phone.  To be fair, she's a total extrovert, and while I think our relationship is unique, I think she has several relationships like mine with other people.   *deep breath* I'm not threatened by that, or jealous.  I reach out to a lot of people over the course of living, hoping that some lasting relationship will form, but I never could've known what my reaching out to Meg would become. The other day she asked me about my "enneagram".  My what?  Did I get my annual mammogram?  Did I eat my Golden Grahams?  No, my enneagram number.  I had never heard of it.  I asked her if it was the Myers-Briggs test, and she told me it was so much more.  In fact, she had a lot to say about it, most of which I couldn't comprehend.  So in true Meg form (turns out, she's an 8 who "persuades others to follow her into all kinds of endeavors...

I was very worried going into Valentine's Day entirely because of Hannie.  She's never had a boyfriend on Valentine's, and while that was a cause for sadness when she was younger, she embraced it as a young single adult by throwing Galentine's parties for her and her friends.  But with the breakup only six weeks old, and no real friendship here in Michigan yet, I was worried that the pain and sadness of the breakup would rear its ugly head on February 14.  I decided to include her in any plans we had, but I needn't have worried. Hannah has a clear vision now of her relationship with Zach, and she can see the red flags now that were kinda obvious to the rest of us then.  I have honestly never seen her so happy.  She loves her job, she loves her ward, she loves living in Michigan, and as she says, she has no regrets. Hannie and I had so much fun visiting the Valentine card section at Target a few days before and picking out Valentine's for friends and family....