This is The Goal: Happy & Relaxed!

My daughter, Angela, put this puzzle together and gave it to me for a birthday gift after framing it.  It hangs on my bedroom wall.

The above scene is my goal as a mother.


A sometimes illusive goal, I must say.


But I love the relaxed smile on this mom's face and the body language she conveys as she interacts with her children.  This is a "Joyful Mother of Children"!

"Jesus taught about priorities when he said, 'Seek not the things of this world but seek ye first to build up the kingdom of God, and to establish his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.' 

'Seek...first to build up the kingdom of God' means to assign first priority to God and to his work.

The work of God is to bring to pass the eternal life of His children and all that this entails in the birth, nurturing, teaching, and sealing of our Heavenly Father's children.

Everything else is lower in priority."

General Conference Report, Elder Dallin H. Oaks

Here's another great one for us busy mom's and dad's!

"Recreation and diversion are as necessary to our well-being as the more serious pursuits of life. There is not a man in the world what, if kept at any one branch of business or study, will become like a machine. Our pursuits should be so diversified as to develop every trait of character and diversity of talent." 

~Brigham Young

"I REALLY LIVED"

By Sister Marjorie Hinckley

(wife to past President of the church, Gordon B. Hinckley)

I don't want to drive up to the pearly gates in a shiny sports car, wearing beautifully tailored clothes, my hair expertly coiffed, and with long, perfectly manicured fingernails. 

I want to drive up in a station wagon that has mud on the wheels from taking kids to scout camp.

I want to be there with grass stains on my shoes from mowing Sister Schenk's lawn.

I want to be there with a smudge of peanut butter on my shirt from making sandwiches for a sick neighbor's children. 

I want to be there with a little dirt under my fingernails from helping to weed someone's garden. 

I want to be there with children's sticky kisses on my cheeks and the tears of a friend on my shoulder.

I want the Lord to know I was really here and that I really lived.