Creating Content, not as easy as it seems!

 Dear readers,

For this adventure I am working on my mind. My body is healed, I have been in remission for two years, and now I am working on becoming a digital marketing person for a company. It requires a lot of research, learning how to create content, learning how to create lots of graphics, and more! Just this week I will create an infographic for another class. This class I already created an infographic and I am really proud of how I did it! 

    I created an infographic on how to ride a saddle. I have also had to create a commercial. Let me tell you how scary that week was for me! But as each week comes, I am learning that I can do hard things, I can learn new things, and I can grow and become more. I want to be a great employee and someone that my boss can count on. I want to be able to create interesting stories and have the customers want to know more and convert that curiosity into purchases and sales! As I continue on this journey, I hope to have more moments where I am proud of myself and the work that I am creating. I hope that I can look back and see how I grew and got better and better at creating things on Canva as well!

ONE YEAR of Dallas Sunshine!

An entire year has gone by since we made it to Texas!  I cannot believe we have been here for 365 days! (Ok there were quite a few days spent back in California this year lol, but most of the time we were here!)

Looking back over the past year, I am so grateful that life just plugged along.  There were many busy days full of fun and laughter.  We even had one broken bone and one major surgery (what would a 365 day journey of Sunshine be without that? LOL) But mostly every day was learning something new, going somewhere new, meeting someone new.  A whole lot of newness came to pass!

We are now experts at which restaurants serve the best Queso and Guacamole in town.  We are now patrons of a restaurant every tuesday for Taco Tuesday with the neighbors.  We now own a 15 foot trampoline and have kids over ALL the time jumping on it!  Our animals love exploring our neighborhood with walks and escaping.

Some of my happiest times are walking around our local pond/lake and letting Ginger swim to try and catch the birds or trying our hand at fishing.

I made a promise to myself to NOT be a hermit like I was when I first moved to South Orange County.  I threw myself into organizations like MOPS, became a room mom for Joel's class, volunteered for local charities, became part of a preschool co-op for Connor's school, got Connor enrolled in a local preschool in town, went to every church meeting I possibly could to make new friends, got involved in a book club, joined a "Ladies who Lunch" group, joined a dinner for couple's night group, became a scout leader for our local cub scouts, and got involved in Joel's PTA as much as possible.  It all worked!  I probably did a bit TOO much at times, but I made friends that I cherish.  I have some of the most deep and meaningful friendships I have had in a long time.  It took me 3 years to find really good friends in my old town, and I cherish my friendship with them, but I am so thankful it took only a few weeks to meet new people here that I have had SO many adventures with already!  The people of Texas are so GOOD.  We feel blessed each and every day to know such amazing, warm, FUN people!

I am so thankful for all of the movie nights we have already had in our movie theater room with friends.  I cannot wait for many more!  I am so grateful for all of the people here that love to eat the most amazing food!  We have truly had some of the best home cooked meals of our lives with some of the best conversations about our kids and life!

Life has been super busy this past year.  Most of it involved us doing something with or something FOR our children.  That is the part of our life's journey we are currently on.  It will end all too quickly I know, but I am so glad I got to document just a little bit of it.

As always, our family's mantra will continue to be "Find the Joy" That is what this blog is ALL about.  There is so much sunshine and happy moments yet to be had.  Maybe from time to time I will hop on here and let them out.  I mostly try to treasure them up in my heart and treasure each moment.  I have learned NOT to take a lot of pictures when I am with my kids or watching them...I try to soak it all up with my eyes and let my children know I SEE them and love watching them in THAT moment.  I don't have any particular words of wisdom to write THIS time around.  I feel like we have learned so much and I hope we continue to make new friends, keep the old, and carry on with our days of sunshine!

April and May and a little bit of June!

Can I just say how happy I have been that I have not had the time to blog as I did for my last Sunshine blog?   I know that sounds funny, because this is a blog, and I am supposed to like posting our activities on here, but the fact that I am running around like crazy, having fun with my kids, DOING things at both of their schools, and not lying in bed for an entire year...well...it is just awesome!

April and May were fantastic months filled with laughter and sunshine.  It FINALLY started warming up enough in April that I was able to plant some flowers in the front yard and create a little garden...or so I thought lol.  The next day a freeze came in and promptly killed all of the flowers I had planted...all except one!  A gardenia bush I am slowly nursing back to health. I am happy to say there are green leaves on the stems now and I am hoping for some blossoms soon!  The other plants that froze over the winter...well, they ALL came back and surprised me and now I do have a lovely garden of green plants with tiny buds that should all be blooming soon!

Also in April we had visitors from all over the country for a month!  Our friends from California had their Spring Break and decided to drive route 66 and check out Dallas and the surrounding areas.  One day we called our realtor and she took them to look at homes out in the country.  Well, they fell in love with one, put an offer in and are moving here in July!!  We are so happy for them and can't wait to go out to their home in the country and have some adventures!  Visits with friends is always fun!  Our next set of visitors came from Oregon.  They are our former neighbors and good friends who have 2 Golden Retrievers that were Daisy dog's best friends.  They also have a little girl that was only 6 months old when they left California for Oregon.  It was so great to spend an evening talking and catching up and looking at pictures of their daughter and fuzzy girls.  We are so grateful that we live in a busy city that many companies consider a great place to have their conventions!  Here is hoping for many more visits for years to come!

In May we were OH SO busy but in a really good way!  Last year it was just me and the boys and our neighbor and her son for Mother's Day.  This year I got a brunch, a corsage, and my family back together again!  It was really nice!  The following week, David and I celebrated our 12th wedding anniversary by going to downtown Dallas to stay at a fancy hotel overnight....away from the children...for the first time in a year!  It was fantastic!!  We ate at a super fancy restaurant, had hours of conversations, hot meals, long walks, and all without any interruptions.  It is nice to have 24 hours away from the kiddos but we were also happy to get back to them.  The week after that was Joel's birthday and we flew out to California!  Joel turned 8 years old which in our religion we believe is the "age of accountability" where a child CAN be tempted from Satan whereas before they were perfect.  So off we flew to California to be with ALL of our family and close friends back there.  We were so happy so many people were able to share in our special day.   We did the baptism, then had a party down at my dad's work, then we went out to dinner at the kid's favorite tepanyaki grill!  It was a funfilled day but a SUPER long Saturday as well!  Sunday morning we woke up early and headed down to the PCH Grill at Disneyland area for breakfast with Mickey and our friend Tim.  It was a great time!  Then we headed back to church so Joel could go for the first time as a member!  After that, my family, parents included, all came home and took 3 hour long naps! The next day we were off again to Texas...PHEW!  It was a busy weekend!  But one filled with love, laughter, family, and the spirit of the Lord.

One amazing thing that happened in May that I for sure don't want to go without talking about is my Essential Oil called doTerra that I began to buy...and now sell.  This whole school year had been a difficult one for Joel and we prayed to try to find the best solution for him.  Whether it was a child psychologist, more Occupational Therapy, whatever it would take, we were willing to do.  Someone told me about these oils and I decided to try them.  I didn't tell the teacher and for 3 weeks we experimented with them.  Well, at the end of 3 weeks, the teacher thought we had put him on medication because he was doing SO well and had improved in focus and emotional stability SO much!  Oh what JOY!! It was one of the greatest HAPPY MOMENTS of my year hearing that something was working for Joel so well!  He truly has been changed by essential oils!  He uses a combination called Serenity, Balance, and In Tune.  And here is my website that you can go to to check out all of the other essential oils that I personally believe have helped my family SO much!  My little kitty Aladdin can now breathe better without his prescription cat meds for kitty asthma thanks to an oil blend called "Breathe"

 http://mydoterra.com/doterrawithmely

So there is the website my readers.  I hope you look around and find oils that help you relieve stress, increase YOUR joy (there is one called Elation that is pretty awesome lol) and get a bit healthier!

So here we are in June...I will write on the 365th day of our journey here, but as it comes to a close, I am so grateful, as ever, that we moved to such a wonderful place.  There are so many good, positive friends that we have met here that have truly changed our lives.  We have a wonderful backyard with a great trampoline we just got this past week thanks to my mom and her joyful memories of ME having one.  We consider ourselves SO fortunate to live where we do, to be able to have the friends that we have.  There is sunshine all around us and we find more and more each day!  I hope you take the time to find the joy as well!  

Month 9!

So it has been 9 months since we have lived here! Holy cow! We have been super busy this past month with church stuff, kid stuff, house stuff, Spring Break, animal stuff, and just hanging out when we finally get the chance!

So we have been here for 9 months and in 2 wards during that time! They recently rezoned our area and we are now in a different ward then when we moved here. We made so many wonderful friends and I will forever be grateful for the opportunity to meet some incredible people that I will be friends with for a long time! Now we are in a different ward and we have the opportunity to meet even more people! I was recently called into cub scouts as a leader. Looking forward to working with the boys and getting crafty!

Spring Break came and went by far to quickly. My parents came out to visit and we had a blast playing Texas tourists! We got the chance to take the train in Grapevine down to Fort Worth and eat lunch and take pictures of the boys riding long horn cattle! Joel brought his Flat Stanley with us wherever we went and I think everyone had fun taking pictures of him! We ate at some yummy restaurants with my parents. My dad and I took the boys fishing one day and both of them had the chance to catch a fish! Happy moments galore right there! My parents even got to be here for a mighty thunderstorm and got to see lightening and thunder up close. After the storm, there was a TRIPLE rainbow in our backyard...it was fantastic! But the time with them went by too quickly and they had to head back to California.

I have been enjoying a book club that I recently joined. It is so nice to hang out with friends at night time and talk about all kinds of books! I have some friends that have lent me some books and I am finding the joy reading again. It has been a long time since I read as much as I have been, but I am really enjoying going to other worlds, visiting other people's lives, and doing it all in my jetted tub!

With each month that passes, we meet more and more friends. We met new friends at Joel's open house at school, I have been going and eating lunch with a friend from church. Each Tuesday we go to Taco Tuesday with our neighbors and friends and meet more people there. We have a new ward and have met some wonderful people already. We have truly made this place our home and I am so happy with how abundantly blessed we have been.

Some of the greatest happy moments from the past month are small, but fun. I love watching Connor run to hug Joel when we gets out of school each day. Joel and Connor race back to me every time....it never gets old! I love when Connor has a bad dream, I find him sleeping in Joel's bed, cuddled up next to him and snuggling Joel like a teddy bear. I have loved going to the movies with my boys and listening to them laugh! I love taking my sweet puppy dog on walks and watch her sniff everything and find joy in chasing the birds through our pond. I LOVE when, for the brief minute of my life, the laundry is done for the week! I love that there have been many days of sunshine this month! Spring is arriving and we have planted a flower garden this year. I can't wait to see the flowers bloom! I love that my grass is coming back to life and turning greener every day! I love family dinners with my husband and kiddos and getting to talk about our favorite parts of our day.

Life is busy right now, but that is how it is supposed to be when a person has young children. I am so thankful I get to be as involved as I am in Joel's school and get to participate in their lives. I am so blessed dear readers! Hoping all of you are finding the joy in the busy times. They can be stressful, but they are also worth it! Until month 10! Have a joyful month!

Month 8

Hey all!

 So writing a bit early but who knows, maybe I will have so many happy moments I want to share that I do a few February blog posts!  This month is starting off so well and I feel so blessed each day!

This week has been an amazing week filled with fun and friends and I feel like it would be a shame to not blog some of these amazing happy moments!  I went to lunch at one of my favorite restaurants with some great ladies from church on Thursday.  It is always nice to sit and chat and get to know people better.  The best thing that happened on Thursday, however, is that it finally snowed here!  Not only did it snow, but it snowed SNOW flakes!  And I don't mean the occasional snow flake, I mean thousands, hundreds of thousands of them, if not more!  It was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my life and I got some amazing photos of them all!
So I took some pictures and videos of the snowflakes falling down.  Every single drop of snow was in the form of a snowflake or in a snow cluster of snowflakes!  It was simply one of the most stunning things I have ever seen before in my life!  I tried to stay out for as long as I could to enjoy the incredible happy moment I was having, but it was pretty darn cold!  I am just so happy for the pictures I have to remember that day!

On Friday we went to see the Lego Movie together as a family.  What a funny movie that is!  It was so great to spend time together as a family and I am so happy we got to see such a great movie!  I also found the neatest song this past week from the movie Despicable Me 2 and I absolutely have to post it on here.  Every time I hear the song I think of this blog and I hope it makes any of you who read this smile as much as I do when I hear it!  Here is the Youtube link: http://youtu.be/y6Sxv-sUYtM

Saturday, today, was a great day and I got to sleep in, do things around the house, hang out with my boys, and then head out to a day and evening of fun with friends!  We went and saw Frozen "The Sing Along" with a group of friends from church and preschool.  It was one of the sweetest things I have ever heard!  Over 100 little children voices singing along to the beautiful songs of that movie.  My heart was so touched and I liked singing along with them, but mostly I just loved listening to those precious voices.  I am posting the youtube link to my favorite song.  It makes me SO happy and this snowman REALLY knows how to find the joy!  http://youtu.be/UFatVn1hP3o
ENJOY!

After the movie and getting to talk with some of my favorite people, the boys and I headed out to meet David at our friend's house for some pizza and salad and cookies!  We had so much fun talking about their recent trip to Paris.  They are just such great people and the kids had so much fun running around and playing with their friends.  We had so much fun talking about travels, video games, how to make yummy food, and other stuff.  Can't wait to get together with them again!

So I just had to post all of this because we are out here truly finding the joy in Dallas and I am so thankful for all of the people who are right there with us!  We feel so blessed to live here and so happy to be surrounded by really fun people!  I hope everyone is having a great weekend and that you are able to find the joy, go see a movie, watch some happy moments on youtube, or just relax from a long week.  Take care all!

Month 7

Hello out there readers!

 I have got to say blogging once a month on here is the way to go for this time around!  I am doing a journal at home and writing down little joys of the day.  I am going to bed at a decent hour, AND I am enjoying not feeling guilt for not blogging every day on here because I do not have the time I did the last 365 Days of Sunshine.

Month 7....can't believe we have been here already for 7 months!  This past month has been filled with fun that is for sure!  We traveled back to California for Christmas break and enjoyed our time with family and friends and fun!  We did 3 whole days of Disneyland and California Adventure.  We had SO much fun and had friends join us there for rides and shows.  I got to do a mom's night out at one of my favorite restaurants with friends.  We met up with other friends throughout our stay and had the most wonderful time catching up!  We also got to go fishing with my dad and sister and niece.  We had a blast learning how to fish and even though we didn't catch one darn fish, we still had so much fun learning!  We can't wait to try our luck catching a fish here in Texas now at one of the many watering holes around.

Christmas was very nice and it was fun to drive to California and back.  We stopped in New Mexico and spent 2 lovely days with David's family.

School started back up and life got crazy again!  I had a fun birthday week here in Texas and enjoyed lunching with friends and spending time with my kids going to eat sushi for my birthday.  The boys were SO happy I picked a sushi restaurant for my birthday dinner!  Speaking of lunch, I have really enjoyed this group of ladies who get together on a weekly basis to try different restaurants around town.  I have met so many lovely women and I am so thankful for the friendships I am making!  We also have gone to a couple of adult dinners and had a blast getting to know the husbands and other couples!  People love to talk about politics here in Texas and I am often in political heaven as we talk about guns, the NRA, and other stuff.  A gun range opened in the area recently and we can't wait to go and try it out!

As I said before, I feel beyond blessed for the friendships I am making here.  I have so many joyful friends who have been so helpful!  It is such a blessing to have friends come over and hang out, bring their dog to play with our dog, bring a paint brush and help me paint my china hutch, and hang out and enjoy fun times.

There is so much joy to be had here in Texas.  We are never without trials, that is just a way of life for us lol, but lots of joy to be found as well.  I just feel so lucky to sit in my home and feel the peace wash over me at the end of a long day.  I am so thankful for being my boy's mom and getting to do fun things with them like taking them to the movies, going to a museum, or feeling the VERY cold air with them for the first time!  I am SO not used to living in a cold place, but I have been walking around in 20 degree weather sans gloves lately.  I think I am getting used to it...holy cow!

I have been able to attend my MOPS meetings a lot more this semester and it has been so much fun to get to know more ladies here in town!  We had a mom's night out tonight and it was so much fun getting to know ladies from different tables.  I just love getting to know other mothers and hearing their stories about their kids and what they do.  It is so fun to get the advise from other parents and see how they deal with situations that arise.  We are all doing the best we can....isn't that awesome?!

I am also so thankful for Facebook.  I have been so grateful to keep in touch with so many people from California and it has been so nice to keep tabs on a daily basis with my dear friends from there!  I am hoping for a visit from any one of them...maybe when this state thaws out a bit more?  Being cold all of the time here does have its advantages though.  My very fluffy kitty cat now loves to crawl under the blankets and snuggle down with my.  My dog meanwhile snuggles on the other side of my body...I become an animal taco!  I love it!  Soft, fluffy, fur in each direction keeps me warm all night long!

Well, those are some of the very happy moments from this month 7 in Dallas.  What a beautiful town Dallas is!  I love the shiny buildings and architecture all around.  I just booked a hotel stay for our wedding anniversary weekend at a really nice hotel downtown!  Something to look forward to!  Haven't had a night away from the kids in almost a year!  YEA!  Have a blessed night all and keep finding the joy in your own life!

Month 6 :-)

So hey there!  LONG time no blog!  But you know what?  I have been busy!  Busy having happy moments, busy making happy moments, busy being a mom...isn't that great?!  It is what I wanted the last time I blogged.  I was down and couldn't do the things most moms do for almost a year of my life, so I had the blog to keep me happy and remind me about the good stuff I DID do with my kids during the day.  Now I am out and about with friends and my children all of the time and am hardly on my computer and it is fabulous!  SO, I have decided to do a monthly blog all the way to the end of my first year in Dallas.  It doesn't feel right to just NOT blog anymore, but I will highlight some of the BEST parts of my month so that way I can remember, and if there are some truly phenomenal days I want to remember, well, I will do my best to blog on those days as well!

So here we are almost exactly 6 months to the day (tomorrow) since I moved to Texas!  The first little while was pretty intense, but the past month has been so wonderful!  I have joined a ladie's lunch group that meets once a week at various restaurants around town.  It is on Connor's day off of school and so he comes with me.  He enjoys it so much and love to "wunch with da wadies" as much as I do!

I also belong to a group that meets once a month for "Joy in the Journey" and I have truly made some friends for life there!  I am loving every minute of being in a ward that does many many activities outside of church!  The kids have primary parties, we have adult parties, the lunch group, my joy group, a park group, my preschool, and a recipe club....busy busy!!

Speaking of the recipe club, I had the pleasure of teaching people how to cook a 20+ pound turkey this past month!  I cooked a total of 3 turkeys in November because I was also asked to help cook Thanksgiving Dinner in Louisiana this year.  It was a HUGE success and we all made memories there this year that will last a lifetime!  Life is so much slower in the deep south and there are so many wonderful people that know how to cook really good food....living just 5 hours away is a huge blessing to us!

My mother in law also came out this past month and we enjoyed her visit so much!  We did our first inaugural trip to the Gaylord Texan and enjoyed walking through the carved ice sculputres, the thousands of Christmas lights, hot chocolate (courtesy of GramZ) and dressing up for the cold! (little did we know it would be practice for the future lol.  Yes my Mother in law brought many happy moments to our little family for the week she was here!  She brought so much joy and laughter and play time!  The boys wore her out with sword fights, back yard games, doing an early trip to Target for an PRE Christmas present (because grandparents are always aloud to buy as many toys for their grandkids as they wish!) and going with her favorite daughter in law to all of the fun lunch places around town!

This past week was a week at home and our first encounter with ice.  We had about 5 inches of ice in our backyard and we all settled down for 3 days in our home.  We were extra prepared and it was fun cooking breakfast, lunch, and dinner for my 3 boys every day.  We ventured out one day to try driving on the ice (for those of you who have ever driven in heavy rain it is pretty much like hydroplaning in slow motion).  We went to a field nearby and brought out our California boogie board and went sledding with it!  We had a fun COLD time!  Ginger has been beside herself with all of the available ice to chew!

Well, that is a culmination of a lot of happy moments for the month.  I feel so much better about doing it this way.  I have many little happy moments in my day (like playing hide and seek in our home for an hour with the boys tonight lol).  But I really want to touch on the big ones on here.  I am so grateful as ever for this blog and the opportunity to post joyful moments.  I hope each reader can look back and smile on the previous month and find their favorite moments as well.   LOTS of happy moments to come this next 30 days with many more memories to be made all!