It's just a "Kerrie" thing!

I can't believe it's been over TWO years since I wrote a blog post. I really need to step up my game! I have a lot of cool things to share... projects and crafts, cute pictures of my grandsons and my cats, everyday life experiences, and my love and knowledge of essential oils! I believe the older we get the fewer hours there are in the day - does anyone else feel like this?

Since my last blog post: We've added another grandson! Graham Michael Howard was born April 11, 2014.

He's 19 months old now and he gives his mother a run for her money! It's a good thing he's so adorable or he'd be in big trouble all the time! Tatum is 3 and he's a great big-brother! 
Kenny is home from his mission and started school at BYU in August. Karli is doing great and is almost finished with school. She'll receive her BA in Communications from Dixie State University in a few months. Right now she is doing an internship working as the PR manager for the university's wrestling team. The internship and her senior capstone project/paper are all she needs to finish her degree. James and I are doing great! We are readjusting to being "empty nesters" after having Kenny home for a while before he left for BYU. We both have plenty of projects and hobbies to keep us busy outside of work. I joined  dōTERRA as a Wellness Advocate a little more than two years ago and I love sharing my knowledge and experience, and the many uses and benefits of the purest essential oils with others!

If I write it, it will happen right? Well, I am writing here that I will commit to blogging/posting more... maybe once a week or so? We'll see how that goes! 

Time... My Random Thoughts

I’ve decided that I have a love/hate and bitter/sweet relationship with time.  This seems to be the case regardless of whether I am waiting in anticipation for something ; reflecting on the past, or even considering  the time that led up to the event that I had previously anticipated for so long.

For example; when you consider a 25 year period of “time” it seems it is something that will take forever to get here. However, my first daughter is 25 years old and when I think about that, it seems like it was just yesterday when she was running around building la-de-ta-dee’s and chasing “stomy” (aka stoRmy)  through the house. Now, she is a beautiful mommy with a busy toddler of her own running around their house!

I am looking forward to Christmas. Not for presents, but because that is the next time I will get to speak with my baby boy. I got to talk to him today for the first time in 6 weeks. Yes, before that 6 weeks started I thought it would pass slowly but in retrospect, it really did go by fast. I am anticipating Christmas day when we get to talk to him again and I have established little points in between as things for me to look forward to that will help make that time pass more quickly through the “waiting in anticipation” point of view.

As to the full two years that Elder Kuhn will be gone… I am trying not to think about it in that perspective. Yes, I miss him and will miss him every day but dwelling on that will not make the time pass any more quickly. Rather, I am trying to shift my focus to the bigger picture and be thankful for the wonderful choice he has made and the work he is doing on behalf of the Lord.

Time is a precious commodity whether going quickly or slowly. How grateful I am for the joy I have received over time, from being a wife and mother. I am blessed with a loving, hard-working husband, three amazing and wonderful children, a son-in-law that loves his family, and a beautiful grandson. I look forward to the many other times of anticipation and reflection that time will bring!  

Holiday Traditions

Since 1991 our family has had the tradition of making candy and delivering it to our friends on or around Christmas. Another tradition is that each year we take a family photo and send it with or as a Christmas card to all of our friends and family. I know we've done this every year since at least 2002.

This year we did not uphold either of these traditions. I really don't have explanations as to why. I wanted to, but I guess I felt like that desire was not embraced by any other member of my family.
We couldn't all get it together to take a family photo - which seems ridiculous considering what a great photographer Jenifer is. . . but the guys (James and Colby - not Kenneth) had bushy hair and beards in November and in December when we were together, James and Kenneth both needed haircuts.
I probably could have pushed and James would have been fine but Kenny is another story...

The candy making and subsequent delivery are very time consuming projects and while I have plenty of time, I really just did not have the energy to undertake the task by myself. Karli has been my biggest helper with this for the past few years but with her work schedule she didn't get to come home until the 23rd and when she got here we left immediately for Arizona. We probably could have made it when we got back on the night of the 25th but at that point I felt like we'd pretty much missed the boat so why bother.

For us, 2012 was a good year. Most of you probably already know that we are grandparents now, which was probably the most exciting thing that happened to us this past year! Tatum James Howard joined our family on July 11th. He is adorable and loved very much!

Anyway, I wanted to just let everyone know that even though you didn't get a candy delivery or a Christmas card from us this year it doesn't mean that we weren't thinking of you. I hope that you are all healthy and happy and that 2013 will be a great year for you and all of your loved ones!

It's Brighter than the Sunshine!

So this is the first official blog entry on my very own blog...yes, I know I handle all of the blog posts for the Bonanza View Young Women's blog but that is simple - it's not about me - it's about the gospel and the young women's program so there are millions of things to share - this blog has been much harder for me. I actually started setting it up almost two years ago. I was inspired by my beautiful daughter's blog and thought it would be fun to try and set one up. I didn't get very far. I guess the creative waves weren't flowing then because I couldn't even come up with a name I liked!

I was called as the Mia Maid advisor in February of 2008 and then few months ago I was released and called as the young women's secretary. As an advisor I heard about SugarDoodle - one of the most wonderful web sites in the world - and it quickly became my go to spot for anything I needed help with for my lessons. I went looking for help with my new calling there too and found tons - I also discovered that Melanie has links to many of her favorite LDS blogs. Looking at these gave me additional movitation towards the blog movement.... but still not enough. Finally in late November after typing the same monthly calendar for December over for the 4th time I decided that I needed to try a different approach. With all of the changes that took place on the ward level I was literally typing new calendars and trying to distribute them to the YW Presidency almost every week. I wanted to create some type of on-line calendar for the young women. I wasn't sure exactly how to do it but after some trial and error my problem was resolved with the creation of the Bonanza View Young Women blog - I also created a google calendar - for the year - and added it right on to the blog. The calendar is always available and if something changes I can edit it in less than two minutes. The responsibility of calendaring is still mine but the responsibility of everyone having that information is totally on them! It's a beautiful thing!

After working on the young women's blog for the last 2 months the "you need to create your own blog" bug has really been after me. I had a few hours to myself this weekend so I decided to give it another try. Of course I don't do anything the easy way. After coming up with a new blog name that seemed more fitting for me (I'll go into that later) I created my own custom blog background in PSE7, then had to learn how to install it correctly in blogger (I need the book HTML for dummies) - this took a while and I finally had to have help from my 16 year old (thank you Karli)! I teach these kids everything about computers except this html thing  - I just don't get it! Finally, I set up my custom fonts for the blog. I had done this before (thank you Jenifer for sharing the tutorials on this wonderful website KevinandAmanda.com) so it didn't take quite as long. I created a custom signature for my blog posts which none of us will see until this posts - and I learned how to change the blog title so that it is transparent (yeah)!

Now, I am almost finished writing my very first post and I am feeling somewhat satisfied with my accomplishments for the day! We'll see how this goes... the creative stuff comes easy for me most of the time - the hard part will be expressing myself and letting people get to know me; thus I named my blog Behind Her Mirrored Shades in hopes that it will be a reminder for me to do those things.