Living in eastern Montana has challenged me to learn how to deal with the constantly changing weather. I’m really not exaggerating. It can be 83 degrees and sunny one day and 29 degrees with a full-blown blizzard the next. And this is exactly what happened recently. It was mid-April and I had spent the afternoon before walking the dogs outside in a t-shirt only to wake up the next day to a whiteout blizzard. It was a very wet, heavy snow that landed as a thick layer of slush over the ground....

I talk about my dogs a lot in my blogs because now that my boys are grown and off “adulting,” I have naturally taken a back seat in their lives. I’m not intimately involved in their day-to-day lives like I used to be when they were growing up which leaves me with a relationship gap–a hole that used to be filled with caring for my children. I have found that caring for my dogs and spending time with them each day helps to fill that emptiness just a little bit. I have three dogs, so when you...

I love the Christmas season, as do most of us, for so many reasons: the anticipation of special time with family and friends, the excitement of gift-giving and sharing with others, the sensory overload of Christmas decorations to admire and enjoy, and the pure and humble experience of celebrating the birth of our Savior and all that His coming means to us. It’s my favorite season of the year, despite the somewhat hectic schedule that I tend to put on myself (I’m such an overachiever, but...