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What We've Learned So Far...

 Well folks, we have been through quite the journey these past few months! We’ve learned about everything from dating to communication to parenting and marriage and so much more! I know that I have learned so much from what I’ve learned these last few months, and it has made me appreciate everything my family does for me more and more. I never really appreciated growing up in a home with parents who were strong and stuck to their values. I never appreciated growing up in a community that is safe from much of the world’s outside influences. We all still had our problems, as any family or community would, but I knew who to trust and where to go. And I think that influences me more than anything. I have learned the power of having a father and mother in a home working together to rear their children in righteousness and in a way that would set their kids up for success. There is power in having a strong marriage, and I know that now. I know there are marriages that don’t work out, and
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Parenting Skills

Through our journey together, we have talked about our relationships within the family, within marriage, and even to others!! But today, we are going to talk about the relationship we have with our kids. Parenting is such a huge aspect in our families, and there have been THOUSANDS, literally THOUSANDS of suggestions on how to best teach your kids and help them grow into solid members of society. But let’s be honest. Not all of them work. And not all of them are humane. It takes a lot of work to help your kids grow and develop, and everything we do is for them. Now, I am not a parent, but I do know some good authors who really are trustworthy when it comes to teaching about parenting. So, you don’t have to take my suggestions, but I think it would be worth your time and energy to look up some of these resources if you are struggling with parenting. One of my newest favorite authors and researchers is named Michael Popkin. He writes parenting books and has loads of resources to hel
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Fathers, Education, and Finances (oh my!)

 In “The Family: A Proclamation to the World”, it states that it is a father’s responsibility to provide, preside, and protect in his home. It also states that it is a mother’s responsibility to nurture their children and provide a safe place for them. It also states that mothers and fathers are obligated to help each other in these responsibilities as equal partners. Isn’t that such a beautiful thing? That mothers and fathers are equal partners in the home and that it is their sacred duty to help one another with them. However, I think the world is starting to turn away from this idea of “equal partnership”. I know that I’ve been noticing a startling trend of women who believe they don’t need a husband in their home or that men are irrelevant in a woman’s life. I know I’ve even thought these things! “I can be independent!” “I don’t need anyone watching out for me!” Have you seen similar responses before? There is actually a huge amount of evidence of the importance of having BOTH
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Only the Best Communications

 I don’t know about the rest of you, but speaking is hard!! I often say that English is my 3 rd language, just under mumbling and blabbering. It is hard to talk to another person and to really get your point across!! As you can well imagine, marriages become a lot harder when one or both members of the couple either can’t communicate effectively or the other just doesn’t understand. Luckily for us, there are so many ways to work on this!! So, why don’t we learn together? First, there is a basic makeup of communication. We obviously use words (kind of an important part of communication). We also use tone and nonverbal cues (or body language). These three parts make up our basic communication everyday. Granted, communication gets a bit muddled with technology since we don’t use two of the three elements. (No wonder we don’t always understand texts!!) Now, the way we communicate starts with the thoughts or feelings of one person. They “encode a message” so to say and that message g
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Family Stress

 Stress. We all have it. We all love it. (Can you hear my sarcasm here?) Unfortunately, stress is a part of life and we have all had to deal with it all our lives. But how does it affect the family? The more obvious answer to this is that stressing events brings distress to each of the individual members of the family. This distress brings on our feelings of fight or flight or freeze, cementing in our heads that something is dangerous or even an event is dangerous. This is actually a good thing. It means our heads are working right! External stressors for families are the more obvious things that we can see, like something happening to a family. An example of this is the death of a spouse or a child. These are high stress situations that cause huge amounts of stress for the family. Internal stressors are those things we can’t see that rock our foundations a little bit. This could be the anger that is felt from those external stressors, causing a member of the family to stay quiet and
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Intimacy in Marriage

  Every culture has a different view of intimacy in marriage. As members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we have a different view of sexual intimacy in marriage than much of the rest of the world. So, why is it still so strange and foreign for us? Now, I am going to tread lightly with this subject, but I would love to hear more thoughts on this subject in the comments! Growing up, I heard a lot about the word “chastity”, only kind of understanding what it really meant. We were taught in various ways that having sexual relations outside of marriage was against God’s commandments and that we were irreparably tainted if we broke that commandment. Although this is true, that sexual relations outside of marriage are wrong, it is luckily not up to us to define who is tainted or not. But why are we taught this? Why are we taught that a rose that has been stepped on cannot be fixed? I think it stems from a misunderstanding of both this commandment and the reality of the
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Mawwiage is What Bwings Us to This Blog Today

 I n last week’s blog, we discussed the issues of dating versus “hanging out” and the implications that come with that. Today, we are going to take it one step further and talk about the next steps: engagement and marriage!! From what I’ve observed from friends and family members getting engaged and married, this time seems to be the most wonderful and delightful, but also the most stressful thing that a couple would have gone through up to this point. It is a time where you and your significant other decide to commit wholly to each other and become a partnership. Your engagement comes with a lot of decisions. And by a lot, I mean, A LOT of decisions. You suddenly have to decide where you are going to live, how you will spend money together, who is invited to the wedding, when the wedding is, and so much more. (Not stress inducing at all, right?) It is so important during this time, however, to make sure that both members of the couple are involved in all of the planning. I don’t
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What's the Deal With Dating??

  We live in a society that thrives off of connections. We connect with each other through social media. We connect through being with people. We even connect with the guy that cracked a joke in our math class! We thrive on connections! But when did we become so casual about it? When did connecting with a person face to face turn into connecting through a screen? When did connecting with someone on a deeper level suddenly change to talking about that new video game? Don’t get me wrong, this light talk is important and I am an avid connoisseur of it, but our deepest connections run, well, deep! Dating is a hugely effective way to gain connections with other people! It provides us opportunities to get to know other people who may or may not have similar interests as us, and who have decided to spend time with just you. In the words of Dallin H. Oaks, “A ‘date’ needs to pass the test of the 3 p’s: (1) planned ahead, (2) paid for, and (3) paired off.” So, when did this change? As a sin
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Boys and Girls are Different... and That's Ok!!

Boys and Girls are different, it is a lovely fact of life. But just how different are we? Why would we be different? Does this mean… we are not the same?!?! Yes, there has been a huge controversy over the past several decades about equality. And I do agree, men and women need to have equal rights in the workplace or in social instances. I do not think, however, that this means we all need to be the exact same person. We are all innately unique. We all have different talents and abilities, some more noticeable than others. For example, I am incapable of eating 20 hotdogs in 10 minutes. There are some people that have that talent, and I applaud them for their abilities! The same goes for men and women. I am going to be very sensitive from here on out, and I will be talking in generalities. So, I will apologize now, and if you would like to message me, I’d love to chat about it! Generally speaking, women tend to be more social than men. This making women also more violent or aggress
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Cultured Sandwiches

  Did you know that all families have a culture? There’s a reason why we sometimes shake our heads at the way a roommate or friend makes a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, or how they wash the dishes, or even how they brush their teeth!! It all can sometimes seem so foreign to us, strange in a way that we often question. Each of these aspects comes from how the individual learned to do them at home with their family. Many of these families learned these things from their families and so on. Going back to the peanut butter and jelly problem. In my family, I was taught to put the peanut butter on one slice of bread and the jelly on the other slice. Some people put them both on the same slice of bread. And other commit the horrid crime of using Smucker’s Goobers (a jar that has both of them swirled together…) All of these things are learned from our parents, and possibly even from their parents. This is just one example of how our family can influence us. But our families can be in
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