It has been a year since I last blogged.  I need to budget my time better and I had a hard time with the blog because I thought I didn't have anything interesting to say or post.  However, I have decided that it is a way for me to share thoughts.  I need that. 

During the last year so many things have happened and I can't possibly talk about all of them.  But a few that have made a big impact on my life are:  we have four new grandchildren, my youngest daughter has gone on a mission, my third daughter and her family have moved to Nevada.  Change always happens.  You just have to get used to it.  If there is one thing I have learned as I have aged is that everyday there is a little change going on.  We sometimes have big changes to deal with and those take time to adjust but change is good and it took me a long time to realize that.  I also have learned that looking for the positive in what is changing is the best way to deal with it.  What is that Mary Poppins song - ummm - a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.  Well, a spoonful of positive thinking helps the change not be such a crisis in your life.  My biggest change came when I moved away from all familiar people, places and things for the first time.  Just married for about a year and moved from sheltered Utah to what we referred to as hippie California.  We didn't have cellphones so I couldn't call my family everyday.  We didn't have computers so no skyp, no email, basically not much regular communication.  There was the very slow mail.  But letter writing was wonderful because you could read it over and over again.  You could tell just by penmanship what that person was feeling.  I noticed little things like when my mom wrote to me if she was feeling ok or not.  So those things really helped.  Now I am so grateful for instant communication but I do miss the handwritten letters. 

So I hope that all my daughters read this and maybe write me a letter.  They do from time to time and I love it.  I also love all the text messages and emails, pictures that I get.  Like I said before I am so grateful for our communication access these days.  My mom would have been amazed at what was available.  She grew up with no phone, no car, and the closest post office 10 miles away.  The changes in her life were truly amazing.  But she used to say we needed to take time to notice the small things of life.  I hope I can do that most days.