I have had old VHS tapes for up to 30+ years, mostly Christmas and birthdays and silly church talent shows. I haven’t watched them in years. I knew my mom and dad were embedded in the tapes and I didn’t think my heart could handle seeing them. I lost my mom when I was in my 30s and my dad in my 40s. They were amazing parents and grandparents and I have felt their loss every day of my life. My daughter recently had all the tapes digitized. The day they came we watched a couple

Erin had this made for me out of Randy’s old shirts and T-shirts. This is him all wrapped up in one. The things he loved….NCIS; he loved this show before he got sick but the years he was sick he (we) watched it over and over. It’s like Gibbs was part of the family. We ventured out and watched Hawaii Five-O and loved that one too He was an avid BYU fan….football and basketball. Go Cougars! Two of our daughters graduated from BYU-Idaho so we spent a lot of time in that part of

Ten years ago, October 30, 2014 was the longest day of my life, thus far. Randy had seen a neurosurgeon who pretty much knew what he had from the scans but he had to do a biopsy before treatment could start. He submitted the request to the insurance company and we waited. And waited. Randy’s symptoms were getting worse by the day. I called the doctor and he told me I had the option of taking him through the ER to be admitted. I thought, “well heck yeah! That sounds easy.” It

So I did this thing with a little help from my friends. A group of us did a girls weekend which started with a hike through Kanarra Falls in Cedar City. It was about 4.5 miles with a lot of climbing up and off rocks, walking through (cold) water and hiking uphill. A hike alone would be challenging for me since I have no balance on my left side (years and years of nerve damage from a herniated disc.) It indeed was challenging AND that’s with using walking poles. I did fall in

I've heard many people say “I have no regrets in life” or “I try not to have regrets.” I am someone who regrets too many things, things that don’t matter in the big scheme of life, things that I thought were right or that I did my best with at the time, things that I had no control over at the time. This is not healthy by the way but it is normal to have regrets. Brene Brown said, “No regrets doesn't mean living with courage, it means living without reflection. To live withou

This is from my trip to Greece. I wanted to summarize what these pictures mean. Making new friends and building new relationships has been hard for me in Utah and it has made me miss my friends and family in California, including those who have since moved away (Utah but 5 hours away, Missouri, Texas, Washington, Colorado.) Friendships have always been important to me since grade school. I didn’t ever think I would meet so many amazing people on this trip, if even just to sh

It will be 4 years next month that Randy passed away. This would probably have been fitting to post then but I wanted to share it now. This is super long and I don’t expect most of you to read it. I’m not sure I would if I weren’t a widow. I'm often asked by friends and family and my past two therapists what’s hard about being a widow and it’s just so hard to explain. My situation is somewhat different because I technically lost Randy 5 years before he died. One would think 9