Strategy for a Happy Life

Here is today's #StrategySaturday post,  a reminder to look for happiness in whatever life brings. Reprinted with permission from: https://happinessisajourney.com
~JS~ 

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Happiness is a Journey, by Crystal Boyd

We convince ourselves that life will be better after we get married, have a baby, then another. Then we’re frustrated that the kids aren’t old enough and we’ll be more content when they are. After that, we’re frustrated that we have teenagers to deal with. We’ll certainly be happy when they’re out of that stage.

We tell ourselves that our life will be complete when our spouse gets his or her act together, when we get a nicer car, are able to go on a nice vacation, when we retire.

The truth is, there’s no better time to be happy than right now. If not now, when?

Your life will always be filled with challenges. It’s best to admit this to yourself and decide to be happy anyway.

One of my favorite quotes comes from Alfred D. Souza. He said, “For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin – real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, or a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.”

This perspective has helped me to see that there is no way to happiness. Happiness is the way. So, treasure every moment that you have and treasure it more because you shared it with someone special, special enough to spend your time with…and remember that time waits for no one.

So, stop waiting until you finish school, until you go back to school, until you lose ten pounds, until you gain ten pounds, until you have kids, until your kids leave the house, until you start work, until you retire, until you get married, until you get divorced, until Friday night, until Sunday morning, until you get a new car or home, until your car or home is paid off, until spring, until summer, until fall, until winter, until you’re off welfare, until the first or fifteenth, until your song comes on, until you’ve had a drink, until you’ve sobered up, until you die, until you’re born again to decide that there is no better time than right now to be happy.

Happiness is a journey, not a destination.

*My youngest son holding my first grandson.*

Need Help with Old German Script Translation?

It's time for our first #FamilyFriday "RootsTech 2018 Memories" post! 

One of the awesome booths that I came across when I was at RootsTech this year, which I found quite intriguing was called SK Translations, run by a woman named Katherine Schoeber who is a German to English translator.

www.sktranslations.com

Here's a copy of her business card and a link to her website for your reference:

Katherine does translation services specifically for genealogy purposes. In fact, she explained to me that she specializes in the Old German script translation, which is pretty significant to me personally, because I had a situation several years ago in which this kind of a service would have been very useful to me.

Ahnentafel of Gerrold & Erika Wunsch

In my research, I had come across a German book called "Ahnentafel of Gerrold & Erika Wunsch" in which I had found a bunch of family records, and I was super excited about it! I thought that it possibly could get me past a roadblock with some of my German family who were living in that area at the time.

This was a special kind of book which the Germans call ahnentafel (or "ancestor chart) which is basically a German style family tree. What was even more intriguing about this book is that the author, Franz Josef Wunsch, had hurriedly hand-written out pages and pages of family history records to be sent to the family history library in Salt Lake City because he knew that that was a place they could be safe.

Franz Josef Wunsch, Author of
"Ahnentafel of Gerrold & Erika Wunsch"

Franz was a University professor and living in Prague at the time, but because of post-war tensions, all German-born citizens were being forced out of town and back across the border into Germany. As part of this expulsion, many of the archival records and books at the University were being destroyed. So in order to protect this information, Franz sent a complete hand-written family history (generations and generations and generations and generations of ahnentafel!) to the United States, to Salt Lake City, because he knew there was a family history library there, and that his records would be safe there.

When I came across this book, I recognized names of my family in that area, but I didn't know anything of that story which was written on the first several pages of the book, because I did not read old script German. Recognizing names of my ancestors, I was in the process of extracting these names to my genealogy records and trying to figure out where my connection was with Franz Josef Wunsch.

Tender Mercy - Translator to the Rescue!

When I was in the middle of this project, I experienced one of those tender mercies that often happens in family history work. My brother-in-law, who was in college at the time, came to visit for the weekend to our house, and he brought a couple of friends with him. One of these friends just happened to be a young man from Germany.

As I was talking to this young man, I remembered the book and the pages in the front, and asked him if he could look over it and see if he could figure out what the text was about. As he browsed the first several pages of script, he was able to give me a rough description about this story from history. Of course, I was intrigued! I was like, "Oh my gosh! Can you translate the whole thing? Can I pay you to translate it for me?"

So he did, and he actually did a very good job, but it was really hard for him, because it was this old script German. So he ended up having to consult with other people, and it took him a long time, because he was a modern German young adult, and didn't necessarily know a lot of those words because they had fallen out of usage over the decades. Despite the difficulty, he ended up doing a good job for me, including some historical research which gave me some great background for my names. I can't imagine how much I would have missed out on had I not learned the background of how that book came into being!

Family History Uses for Translation Services

We will all run into situations like this during our family history research, where we need specialty services to get past roadblocks. Though in this case I was able to have a tender mercy come into the scene and help me find a translator, those kinds of situations are not always immediately available. This is where services such as SK Translations can come in handy. Had I known about her services at the time, I could have sent that old script to her, since she is an expert in the field, and had a much faster turnaround for my project. In fact, I may even at some point here get it re-translated, since she is an expert in this field and will likely pick up some things that the college student who translated it for me might have missed.

SK Translations booth at RootsTech

So there's my little plug for SK Translation services! I have not used them personally, but Katherine was there at RootsTech with a booth, all dressed up in German attire, which I loved, helping people with their German questions.

On their website, www.sktranslations.com, it says that she does presentations as well. These are one hour presentations on the topic: "Journey Into German Genealogy, useful tips and tricks for finding and using the multitude of records available online and in print to locate your ancestors." There are also samples of her work available to view, as well as information about a book that she has written called "Tips and Tricks of Deciphering German Handwriting. A translator's tricks of the trade for transcribing German genealogy documents." There are also reviews, frequently asked questions, and a blog, plus a button where you can click to request a quote. So check it out!

I think this is a great resource, and as I get further in my genealogy research in German, I will definitely be looking into using her services and reading her book and so forth. If German is part of your family history, and you want to have some help with some things that you've found that you cannot understand, I would recommend that you investigate SK Translations at www.sktranslations.com and see if you can get some help with your research.

Best of luck to you in your German family history!

This has been a #FamilyFriday RootsTech 2018 memory.

I hope you have a wonderful day!

~JS~ 🌞

I'm Grateful for the Beautiful World Around Me!

Wow, today it was just so wonderful to wake up early enough to see this gorgeous sunrise!

Today's View from my Back Porch! #nofilters #noautocolorcorrect

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I often have a difficult time getting up in the morning, and I have to lay there talking myself into it, or I find myself just sleeping right through waking up when I know that my husband's got a handle on the stuff with my teenagers in the morning. 😯 This getting-up-early thing is one of the challenges that I've had throughout my life, because my natural tendency is to be more of a night owl. If I want to get up early, I have to do a lot of mental gymnastics and positive self-talk to prepare myself for it the night before.

But today, for whatever reason, I just woke up automatically around 5:00 A.M. At first, I thought I was going to just go back to sleep for awhile. But I ended up listening to a podcast in bed, and then finally about 6:00, I just decided, "Heck with this, I might as well get up!" Wow, my efforts really paid off when I looked out the back window around 7:15 A.M. and saw this gorgeous sight!

What a great wake-up call! #nofilters #noautocolorcorrect

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I often find myself taking pictures of sunrises and sunsets in the beautiful country town where I live. We just seem to get so many incredible sunlit views punctuated by the mountains and fields all around us.

See what I mean?!? #nofilters #noautocolorcorrect

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There's just something so majestic and magical about seeing the sky all painted in a variety of colors. It just lights me up inside as I stare at it in wonder!

Makes me want to never move away! #nofilters #noautocolorcorrect

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So though these photos don't do it near enough justice, maybe you can catch a tiny glimpse of what I saw in person this morning. To me, it's a little tender mercy blessing from heaven, given to me by a loving Heavenly Father as motivation to get myself out of bed the next time that I don't particularly feel like it. :)

This is the only one I brightened a bit... I just had to do it so you could see those cute little chickens wandering around happily in the back field! #smartphonephotography

Today I'm just feeling super grateful for the beautiful world around me!

~JS~ 🌞

First Official Wellness Wednesday Video (Transcript)

This blog post is a (slightly edited) transcript from a video that I filmed in January 2018 as an introduction to what I was planning to call “Weight Loss Wednesday” which has now been updated to #WellnessWednesday. So it’s a little bit behind where I’m at now in my weight loss journey, but it has some good background information about my health history and methods that I’ve been using over the past year.

Image Credit: www.crazyfitmama.com

I'll be uploading the video to YouTube by the end of the day today and then I'll add the link to the bottom of this post. So without further ado, here’s the transcript of the video. Enjoy!!

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Hey there everyone! Jumbled Sunshine here! I am going to do my first official Weight Loss Wednesday video right now. I just wanted to share with you a little bit of my weight loss journey so far, and kind of where I'm at, what I've done to get here, and where I’m going.

Background

Growing up I did not have a weight problem. I was a fairly small-sized person, I guess. I wasn't like Skinny Minnie, but I was just kind of an average kid growing up. In High school I started thinking I was really fat (you know as everybody probably thinks when they're in High School!) so for a while there I worked pretty hard to exercise and to try and stay at a decent weight. I probably even took it a little bit too far, as many of you may have been down that kind of a road before. But by the time I got through to college, I started being a little smarter about things, and I just pretty much did okay. I was just kind of an average weight, not super skinny, but not heavy.

It wasn't really until I started having my kids that, you know, I would gain weight, have a baby, then I'd lose most of it, but maybe not all. After my second baby, I was like, "Okay, if I gain 10 pounds with every baby, I'm in trouble!" So I worked really hard at it, and I remember after my third child was born, being super excited to be able to put my wedding dress back on. So that was like pretty awesome. I'm like, "I've had three babies and I'm wearing my wedding dress!" You know, I just remember that felt like a pretty awesome achievement! 💒

Anyway, I worked pretty hard on staying on shape throughout the years as my other children were born. But then, after my sixth baby was born, I started having some other health issues, and it just really started to take a toll on me, and I didn't have a lot of energy. Then, when I went through my seventh pregnancy, which was my last, that's when I just put on the weight and I didn't ever lose it. Not only did I not lose it, but I put on more weight after the baby was born.

So just for the last decade (baby number 7 is 13 now!) I've been just like heavier than I really feel like is good for me, and I've been wanting to make a change. I've done some things here and there, and I'd lose a little bit of weight, and then maybe maintain for awhile and then regain it. You know, just kind of that up-down that I'm sure some of you are familiar with!

Time for a Change!

In the meantime, a lot of my health problems had resolved for the most part, and I wasn’t having near the problems that I had had for awhile, so I decided that it was time to really buckle down and work on my health and weight loss.

So starting on April 20th of 2017, that was the day that I put my weight down on a chart and started charting it, and started following some plans to try and make a difference. My goal was to lose 50 pounds total.

Trim Healthy Mama

I started doing Trim Healthy Mama, which many of you might be familiar with. And that was kind of my main way that I lost probably the first 15 pounds. If you're not familiar with Trim Healthy Mama, you can look at their website: TrimHealthyMama.com. They've got some great stuff. There's a little bit of a learning curve, but once you start figuring it out, it's really a plan that can be a lifetime plan I think. At least for me, I was able to learn how to be in pretty much any situation, and stay pretty close to on-plan. I customized it for myself, as anyone should, and I saw really good results with that. Like I said, I lost about my first 18 pounds with that program.

Periodic Fasting (AKA Intermittent Fasting)

Then I kind of hit a plateau, and nothing was happening, and I got thinking, "Okay, I need to do something a little bit different now." So that's when I decided to try some periodic fasting. So with that, what you do, at least the way [I was doing it in January] is that you fast for 14 hours and then you eat for 10 hours. So out of every 24 hour day, you're only eating 10 hours of it. (The resources I initially used actually suggested that men fast 16 hours and then follow with eight hours of eating.)

It sounds like it would be really hard, but really what it kind of came down to for me was cutting off my eating after a certain time in the evening, and then just counting 14 hours forward, and not eating until that time the next morning. I would kind of start to get hungry toward the end of that 14 hour period, but not bad. And it really kind of jump-started me, and I was able to go past the 25 pound loss, which was super exciting!

2017 Results

I got all the way to 27 pounds lost, which was a little more than half of my goal of 50 pound weight loss. So to recap, mostly I did Trim Healthy Mama, then I started doing some periodic fasting, but I would still eat pretty Trim Healthy Mama-ish during my actual eating hours. And that's pretty much what I did through most of 2017. That's not super specific, but I can go into more details on other Weight Loss Wednesdays.

I hadn't really done a lot with exercise, I mostly just adapted my eating. During this time, I was still recuperating from the shoulder surgery that I had on February 28, 2018, so the exercise I did do was mostly just my shoulder physical therapy exercises. This weight loss journey was over a period of about seven months, from April 2017 to November 2017. I think I did it wisely, where I'd drop a few pounds, and then I'd maintain for awhile, and I'd drop a few pounds, maintain for awhile, and so on.

Holiday Blues

Things went really well until the holidays came. In November and December of 2017, my eating habits were pretty sketchy, so I did gain some of my weight back. I was mostly off-plan over the holidays, although I did do pretty well with the periodic fasting, but then as soon as I was eating, I ate terrible for all my eating hours. And then I would fast again, and then I would eat terrible. I probably would have gained more weight back if it weren’t for the periodic fasting. I mean, I only gained about four pounds over the holidays, which isn't too bad for being pretty off-plan for nearly two months.

January 2018 Progress Update

So right now [as of January 2018] I am at about 23 pounds down from where I started. No biggie, I'm gonna get right back on the wagon! I wanted to let you know what I'm doing right now, currently. What I decided to do, starting January 2nd (because January 1st was still kind of a holiday around my house) I thought to myself, "Okay, I gotta get some motivation to get back into this." So starting January 2nd, I'm doing one rule: no treats, no sweets for the whole month of January.

I'm also doing some periodic fasting, so I'll usually stop eating maybe like 8:00 at night, and then I'll go to like 10:00 in the morning before I eat. I'll go into it in another video, because I know that you think, "Well, isn't it better to not eat in the evenings, and then to eat breakfast?" Because you always hear eating breakfast is important. But actually some of the research I did actually kind of showed the opposite. And it was sort of interesting, and it's been really successful for me. Like I said, I was able to lose an additional 10 pounds doing that periodic fasting, even when I wasn't eating perfectly in the other 10 hours of the day.

January 2018 Goals

Anyway, so going forward in January, my current goal is basically just don't eat sugar. I mean, there might be a little bit of sugar in stuff. I'm not gonna be like crazy hyper-vigilant about it. But I'm not gonna be eating candy, and cookies, and ice cream and all this stuff that's been dropped off at my house for the whole month of December! So none of that.

Basically, the idea in my head is that if it could be a Trim Healthy Mama “S Meal”, then it's good to go. So just no sweets. I'm not gonna necessarily be trying to be super vigilant yet on the Trim Healthy Mama stuff, because I kind of need to do it one step at a time. But that's my plan, and I'll be able to get back on track here.

So that's my updated progress. If you have any questions about specifics, let me know! I'll put some links below that link to some of these sources that I've talked about, and where I learned what I learned about the Trim Healthy Mama and the Periodic Fasting.

So anyway, I hope you have a wonderful day. Thanks for joining me for Weight Loss Wednesday and I will talk to you again soon!

~JS~ 🌞
#WellnessWednesday

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 [JS here on 5/23/18: Apparently I never uploaded this video to YouTube!! 🙄 Unfortunately, I'm noticing this oversight on a day when I'm not in the right place to find and upload the old video, so just wanted you to know that I'll try to add it soon! Let me know if you're one of the people waiting on it and I'll move it to the top of my very long to-do list. Otherwise it may be awhile. 😉] 

Flexible Pantry Box Menu Planning System Coming Soon!

Today for #TechTuesday, I was trying to think of what to share, and I actually thought of a low-tech thing that I'm pretty excited about that I thought I'd share with you today. This is the Acriment 5x8 Card File Holder (purple color with crystal cover):

It's actually quite large. I was surprised how large it was! But I'm excited about it, even though it's not ready to go at all, and it's just sitting there waiting for me to do something fun with it! (YAY!)

Intro to my Flexible Pantry-Box Menu Planning System

But the reason I'm excited about it is because I'm gonna use it for re-assembling a menu planning system that I created about, oh somewhere around 2001 probably? Well, actually probably even earlier than that, so let me just say that I created it, oh man, this makes me feel old! I probably created it in the nineties, a couple decades ago, wow! Thinking about that being a couple decades ago is like, "Whaa!" 😲

Anyway, I created this menu planning system, and I used it for quite awhile when my kids were all little, and it worked really well for me. The basic gist of the system was that I had two separate little recipe card boxes, and each one had a different purpose. One of them was called my "Pantry Box" and it only had recipes in it that I could make from what I currently had in my pantry, or my fridge, or my food storage.

So for instance, right after I'd gone on a shopping trip, I could look through my other box, which I called my "Index Box" because it was an index of all my recipes, and I could pull something from that and I could put it into my Pantry Box and ... well, I'm kind of explaining it backwards! But no worries, I am going to be publishing a really good in-depth overview of the system, and even doing some how-to's on how to set up your own system if you're interested in this. But I digress.

The point is that there's one box that's your Pantry Box that has everything in it that you can make from what you already have in your pantry. And then the other box is all the rest of your recipes.

Life with A Growing Family Can Be Chaos!

And the reason this worked well for me was because life with little kids is, well, unpredictable! And also, I guess with my personality, I don't necessarily like to stick to a really rigid plan. So for example, you might have a really rigid plan of, "I'm gonna make homemade tortillas and beans and rice on Wednesday night," but then on Wednesday, you've got one of your kids throwing up, or you just don't feel good, or whatever, and that plan doesn't really fit what's going on in that day. (Yep! You know exactly what I'm talking about, right?)

And so I liked being able to just grab my Pantry Box at some point in the afternoon and just say, "Oh hey, here's something I feel like making today!" And I knew I had every ingredient I needed for every recipe in that box.

Grocery Shopping Planning Simplified

And as I was flipping through my Pantry Box, if I came across something that I realize that I didn't have the items for, then I would move it over to my Index Box. I also had a little special section in the Pantry Box where I could put recipes that I wanted to make soon behind a little tab that was labeled TO BUY. That way, when I was making my shopping list for the next week, I could review those recipes to see what I needed to pick up.

Basically I just had this constantly rotating box of lots of recipes that I knew I could make without having to go to the store. And over time, you kind of figure out what kind of things you want in your pantry, and you can just stock up on those when they're on sale. And it was just a really flexible system that I liked better than any other menu planning system I'd ever seen.

E-Book and Workshops

So anyway, way back when, when I created this, I actually made up a little ebook that I was planning to offer to people. I also did a couple of workshops to share it with people, and it was pretty exciting. But, as often happens with me, I'm not sure exactly when it happened, but something major must have happened, because I never did market my menu plan. And then, to top it off, when we moved from one house to another house, as I made that move, I lost my boxes!! 😭 Somewhere in that move, I never could find them again. And so my menu system was gone.

Since then, I've pretty much done a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants non-system where I'll just look things up on the internet, and I'll make what I feel like that day. Or I'll write down just what I'm gonna make for the week and then shop for those things. Or as has happened the last couple years, I have a daughter who lives at home with me, who's a young single adult, who loves cooking and doing things in the kitchen, so I've been mostly letting her do a lot of the cooking because she enjoys that. This has given me more free time to work on some of the other things that help our family like side income and etc.

Needless to say, my tried-and-true menu system hasn't been used for a long time. But I was thinking about it the other day, and wondered if I had something about it in my files. Searching through my Google Drive, I came across my old ebook! I read through it to "teach myself" how to set my system back up, and in doing so, I realized that my system needed to be updated for today's technology.

The Flexible Pantry Box Menu Planning System Returns

So... I decided to recreate my Flexible Pantry Box Menu Planning System! And I'm gonna do it in a single box instead of two different boxes this time, which is why I purchased this Acrimet 5x8 Card File Holder. The 5x8 cards are nice and big to write on. Instead of having two separate boxes, I'll have an index in the back, and I'll have the pantry section in the front, because it's a very long box with plenty of room. It's an awesome-looking index card box!

I'm going to recreate my system and use it for several months, and then update it based on what I learn as I'm setting it up and using it for awhile. Then I'll share it back out to my Jumbled Sunshine social media pages! This is just a little preview post to get you excited about what will be coming ahead.

Tools and Supplies

Today I wanted to share with you this awesome product that I purchased to recreate my system in. It's made out of metal and is very heavy-duty. As a matter of fact, you need to find a place for it on your counter and just let it sit there. Granted, when I share the system in full and give you a step-by-step process to set yours up, you can use any card file containers that you want. But this is the one that I picked that I'm going to be getting my personal system set up with.

I will also be considering ways to adapt the menu planning system for today's technology. For example, putting things into, perhaps Google Keep, with the categories and pantry items tagged or something. So that might become part of the system as well. But we'll see, because some things really just do better with low-tech systems, despite all the advances in gadgets and software. I mean, it's great to have your recipes organized electronically, and I can see all the benefits of it, but every time I start trying to organize my system electronically, it just falls flat. I don't know, there's kind of a barrier to recording them and getting back to them quickly and easily. So I like the idea of just having a good old-fashioned recipe box on my counter that is a flexible menu planning system.

Looking Forward

This post has been just a teaser, to give you something to look forward to in the coming months. Though I did drop a couple of ideas that you can in your menu planning. I would encourage you to work on getting your recipes organized with everything you can make with what's on hand, in your pantry. Keep all of those recipes together in one area so that you can plan on the fly based on what is going on in your family that day.

I look forward to sharing more with you about this as I get it set up and share my journey with you as I get my system up and running again. I'm really excited about it! 

~JS~ 🌞

What Beauty Advice will you be Sharing when you're 100 Years Old?

For #MotivationMonday I wanted to remind everybody that you are never too old to take care of yourself!

(Image credit: Allure Magazine YouTube Channel)

Did you spend the weekend taking care of other people? Be sure to do something special for yourself today! 🌞

Watch this video of several sweet 100-plus-year-old ladies sharing their beauty advice below. You'll be motivated to take care of yourself so you can age as well as these beautiful women!

What beauty advice will you be sharing when you're 100 years old? 

Happy #MotivationMonday!

(Image credit: Allure Magazine YouTube Channel)

"This is Why We Can't Have Nice Things!"

Today for #FamilyFriday I have a little story to share. This morning, as I was going about my business as usual, I walked past a table in my living room and glanced at the beautiful wooden animal carvings that my husband had brought home from Africa.

Here's what the carvings look like from a distance.

But then, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that something was amiss with one of the carvings. At first I just kept walking by, thinking briefly, "Hmm, I wonder what that is?"

Can you see it? 

But then it kind of sank in, and I stopped suddenly and turned around, thinking to myself, "Wait a minute, what WAS that?!?" As I headed back towards the table and looked more closely, I couldn't believe what I saw!

“Lego Man Gets Skewered by Wild African Mammal!” 

Yikes!! This just really made me laugh because this is what day-to-day life with a family is like! 🤣 When crazy things like this happen, you have two choices. You can look at it and say, "Oh my gosh, one of my kids ruined this carving. My kids ruin everything! This is why we can’t have nice things!"

Or... you could look at the situation and think to yourself, "You know, there's somebody living in this house, who I love, who has a great sense of humor and put that there because they thought it was funny. And it is funny! And if it scratched the carving, who cares! I can get another one another time. But I can never replace my child.”

This is what I chose to do this morning. I chuckled to myself and felt grateful for the uniqueness of family life. I walked away, leaving Lego Man just where he was, as a reminder of the fact that I am blessed to have all these special little people in my life. ❤

Happy #FamilyFriday everyone!
~JS~ 🌞

What We Have Here is a Failure to Communicate!

This meme made me laugh!! 😂

[Photo credit: www.facebook.com/MyHusbandIsMyBestFriend]

Okay so we all know that this picture is exaggerating... but it's true that husbands and wives need to realize that their brains may process things differently! In my personal experience, I've found that my husband will focus on one idea at a time and I'll be bouncing all over, making connections, seeing a big grand picture in my mind. And it's so exciting! (so I go on...) "And this! And that! And the other!!"

But then I suddenly realize that he hasn't said anything for awhile and stop to ask him what he thinks. Turns out that he had formulated a response for the first thing I brought up and was waiting to say that, but it was now irrelevant because I have gone through ten more subjects since then. 🤣 So at this point he has ten different possible responses, and he's trying to decide which one to comment on. (silence... thinking... silence...)

In my excited enthusiasm (and lack of patience) I see his hesitancy as not having a response at all, so I start up again to fill the void... and leave him in the dust again! And the cycle repeats. Or at some point I may stop and be like, "How come you're not interested? This is exciting!!" But the poor man is just trying to keep up with the topic changes!!

As Jed Clampett once said on the Beverly Hillbillies, "What we have here is a failure to communicate!!" (This is one of my husband's favorite quotes. For context, just watch this funny video clip from 1:00 to 2:30. )

When communicating with my husband, no matter how enthusiastic I am, if I want him to participate in the conversation, I have had to learn to slow down and WAIT (and even count to ten in my head!) and patiently give him time to comment, one subject at a time. (It's so hard!!!) But it's amazing how much better we communicate when I do this! And he has had to learn to comment OUT LOUD, not just in his head haha. 🤔

It's a process! But it's worth it to take the time to learn how your spouse communicates and help him understand how you communicate, and then work hard on improving your interactions. Mostly it just takes understanding, love and patience. 💖

What can you do to better understand your spouse today?
Make it a priority for #FamilyFriday!
~JS~ 🌞

The Revolution to End Extreme Poverty

I came up with #ThankfulThursday as a way to remember what we are grateful for and look for ways to pay it forward. "Because I have been given much, I too must give" is the mantra for Thankful Thursday! There are so many ways to give back, from simply smiling at someone in the grocery store, to traveling across the world to help someone out of extreme poverty. All efforts are important to the individual touched by your actions. So don't think you can't give back just because your circle of influence is limited.

This week I attended the CHOICE Humanitarian Breakfast of Humanitarians where we were privileged to hear from Dr. James B. Mayfield, co-founder of CHOICE Humanitarian, and Bishnu Adhikari, who has worked with Jim for many years. These two men have spent a lifetime finding ways to give back to the world around them. It's such a blessing to know both of these great humanitarians personally.

I was very impressed with a video that was shown at the Breakfast of Humanitarians, so I thought I'd share it with you today. Imagine a world where extreme poverty no longer exists. Is it possible? Watch this video and see what we have been working on, in conjunction with great humanitarians like Jim and Bishnu, to make this dream a reality. Look for my husband, Lonny, at 1:59. 😇

We would love to visit with you more about the work we are doing through amazing organizations like CHOICE Humanitarian. Lonny regularly does presentations about his work in the developing world and would be happy to come share pictures, principles, and a bit of culture with your family, civic group, or church congregation. Send inquiries to: m.me/jumbledsunshine

I challenge you to celebrate #ThankfulThursday by finding something, big or small, that you can do to #giveback to others today.

~JS~ 🌞
#ThankfulThursday

Burgers are Better with Cheese Sauce! (Or are they?!?)

Hey everyone! Here's your #WellnessWednesday video of the day:


😂😂😂 But seriously, let's do something to improve our health today! This morning I practiced Wellness Wednesday by doing my husband's morning calisthenics and stretching routine with him. 👏 He's been doing this quick exercise routine most mornings for nearly a year now and has totally gotten rid of his back and knee pain. I've been having a lot of aches and pains lately, so I figured it was about time I joined him!

What kinds of things do you do to take care of yourself with a busy life? Share in the comments below. And have a wonderful day!! 🌞 ~JS~

Motivation Monday Giveaway! "A Moment in My Hands: Treasure Your Moments" by Rosie Martinez

Hey everyone! It's #MotivationMonday!! I am so excited to share a special book with you, written by my good friend, Rosie Martinez of A moment in my hands. She recently published the Kindle version of her new book that you can find on Amazon here: http://amzn.to/2tjeov5 Check it out! (And here's a secret... If you have Kindle Unlimited, you can read the book right now at no additional cost!)

Rosie is a sought-after public speaker whose stories delight and inspire audiences. In fact, she can even keep a group of teenagers riveted on her story as they learn wonderful life lessons without even realizing it! I am so excited to read all of her wonderful real-life stories with that will inspire and motivate us all!

In fact, I got so excited about her success that I decided to give away FIVE COPIES of her new book!! So if you don't have Kindle unlimited, you can still get your hands on this awesome book as my guest. All you have to do to win is:

1) Like my Facebook page: Jumbled Sunshine
2) Make a comment on this post, telling us what you do to help motivate yourself on Mondays. :)
3) Send me a message (at the top of the Jumbled Sunshine page there is a blue button that says "send message") to tell me you've completed these two steps.

That's it! The first five people to respond will receive a reply giving them a unique, single-use Amazon link to a giveaway where everyone wins! You'll receive a free Kindle copy of Rosie's book, "Treasure Your Moments: A Moment in Your Hands" courtesy of Jumbled Sunshine Studios.

I hope you're having a fantastic Monday so far and I hope you share your light with everyone around you today. 🌞 ~ JS ~