Marriage Monday: Hand in Hand Combat

Not your ordinary hand to hand combat

.

Consider holding hands with your spouse when you have a tough decision, disagreement or important matter to discuss. The physical closeness may help you remember to be calm in your approach and understanding in your listening.

There may even be other side effects like keeping your voice at a moderate level, looking each other in the eye, giving each other your complete attention, etc. Can you think of others?

You can find my other Marriage Monday's here.

Marriage Monday: Habits to Cut and Habits to Nourish

I'm so glad to be back on track. It's been busy around these parts and I've thought often about you sweet folks who always were so nice to check in on my Marriage Mondays. Here's a quick one for you all to get us going again.


Cut out these seven bad habits and be sure to nourish these seven caring habits.

Deadly Habits:

1. criticizing
2. blaming
3. complaining
4. nagging
5. threatening
6. punishing
7. bribing

Caring Habits:

1. supporting
2. encouraging
3. listening
4. accepting
5. trusting
6. respecting
7. negotiating your differences

What are your thoughts?

Would you consider writing one or both lists to use as a visual reminder to cut out/encourage these behaviors in your relationships?

Information from this post was found in

Eight Lessons for a Happier Marriage

by William Glasser , Carleen Glasser

You can find my other Marriage Monday's here.

Introducing: Twilight Cliffs Notes (Animation)

Several years ago my husband thought he'd draw a little diddie in his free time. It ended up being a little bit bigger of a project then he intended but personally I think the finished project is pretty darn fun. So if you're interested in seeing a little movie go check out his Twilight Cliff Notes.

(Click title below)

TWILIGHT CLIFF NOTES

(or click this)

https://picasaweb.google.com/104483702904295291576/TarlSScribbles#5624796715751960658

Four by Eight

Eight Things I'm Looking Forward To:

1. Date night with my husband

2. 10 year anniversary (and planning it)

3. Halloween!!

4. Finishing my current read (Lola and The Boy Next Door by Stephanie Perkins)

5. The weekend (any in general)

6. Bedtime. Haha.

7. My new church calling! (Primary Secretary)

8. New clothes.

Eight Things I Did Yesterday:

1. Did my run in the rain.

2. Created and wrote a newsletter. From scratch.

3. Killed a spider. You're welcome honey.

4. Read a book.

5. Cleaned and organized my sons room and half of my room.

6. Helped kids with homework. I like it.

7. Took my girls to Hip Hop. (Love that class.)

8. Watched 30 Rock. Hilarious.

Eight Things I Wish I Could Do:

1. Sew fabulous things

2. Travel around the United States

3. Write a book

4. Make everyone around me happy

5. Eat vegetables without gagging. :)

6. Have a girls lunch every week

7. Decorate a house of my own

8. Read faster

Eight Websites I Visit Often:

1. Pinterest

2. Goodreads

3. Facebook

4. Google (g+, calendar, docs, etc)

5. City Library page

6. bank

7. mapmyrun

8. Pandora

Anyone have any fun weekend plans?

Dancing Birthday

So this was from a little while ago but I still wanted to share. My daughter wanted to have a dance party for her eighth birthday. My husband was super helpful too and compiled a cd for us with a bunch of really fun upbeat (and kid appropriate) songs. We had to have some great music for our dance party!

She picked out the colors all by herself. Then I had a ball coming up with things to decorate with. We had red vines, cinnamon bears and sweedish fish to snack on while we danced our hearts out. I also had red musical notes and black footprints decorating the walls.


We came up with a lot of fun games with such a broad theme. A few:

• The kids had to do relay races like carry a cinnamon bear on a spoon from one side of the yard to the other BUT they had to do a whatever dance move the person shouted out and they had to be the quickest.
• I lined them all up in two rows and had them do over their shoulder and through their legs with a balloon. When it got to the end of the line the last person had to dance to the front of the line. The first team to have everyone dance was the winner. We actually did a few variations of this because the kids were having fun like, switching kids on teams, having to spin the balloon around their middles, etc.
• We had an entire living room packed full of red and black balloons. I filled up about 10 other colors of balloons and then made a chart that corresponded. For example blue=do the twist, yellow=sprinkler dance, green=disco. I played music and when I stopped it the kids all had to grab a colored (non red/black) balloon and do that move.
• Inside each of the (non red/black) balloons I had a small paper. On it was written an instruction. After we played the above game everyone chose a balloon and we went outside. The kids had to try to keep their balloon unpopped the longest. When theirs did pop they had to read the paper and do what it said. Ex: 'Do 4 cartwheels and say Happy Birthday each time.' or 'run touch the fence then find the birthday girl and say 'Dance baby dance!'

I usually always try to make Tarl draw something for the kids birthdays'. :) Usually we do pin the __ on the __ but this year he drew her a great personalized poster. (After the party we hung it up in her room and she loves it!) The morning of her actual birthday this was on the front door. I'd also made about two dozen signs (all having to do with the number 8) that we hung up all over the house for this milestone birthday.






I looked for a long time, trying to decide what exactly to put on the cake. I decorated the house in musical notes and dancing feet so I figured the cake would look good with disco dancers. I realized after the fact I should have outlined them but I was too tired so I just let it be. I think it still turned out ok though.

Michael Vey WINNER

WINNER

of Michael Vey

The Prisoner of Cell 25

by Richard Paul Evans

Comment #2

Jacob!

Congratulations!

Hey Jacob, send me an email or comment on this post so I can get in touch with you about redeeming your prize!

Wordless Wednesday: Mountain Fishing Kids

(This picture was taken by me at Silver Lake in Brighton in Big Cottonwood Canyon in Utah in July, 2011.)