VETERANS DAY

Today is Veterans Day 2025

I'm inviting you to honor our Veterans today because they have defended the principles of freedom with courage and blood and quiet, unheralded sacrifice.

As Americans, we love the United States, our country—not because it is flawless, but because it was founded upon principles of liberty that go directly to heaven itself—and there is a striving within the TRUE heart of our nation to adhere to those principles.

I took these thoughts from many, many things I have read about Veterans Day, but they are also MY thoughts. I hope they are YOURS, too. 

TODAY AND ALWAYS!

SERVING GRATITUDE THIS YEAR FOR THANKSGIVING

 

FORWARD:

If you are like me, Thanksgiving is a much loved—and very favorite—holiday.  But don’t wait exclusively for November 27th before you focus on the blessings in your lives or to give thanks for the abundance God has bestowed on you and your loved ones. Since November is our American Thanksgiving holiday month, I am inviting everyone to "Choose Gratitude" as their personal priority. 

HERE ARE MY REASONS FOR THIS INVITATION:

I opened up my computer the other morning and saw an interesting article about yet another scientific study detailing how giving thanks is beneficial to healthy living.  What a shocker!  And yet, a lot of people still don’t seem to think this simple little practice can make a world of difference in their lives.

A few years ago, I felt so strongly about the encroachment of commercialism on Black Friday versus what I called Bright Thanksgiving Thursday, that I penned a couple of pages about my feelings in the monthly Nichols Family Newsletter I wrote for my kids over a ten-year period.  It was November 2011.   

I told them scientists have set out statistics for what many religions—including the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—have taught for years:  Gratitude is good for both the body and the mind.

Dr. Robert Emmons of the University of California-Davis has done a lot of research and writing about this subject, so I quoted to my children some of the interesting findings he had made.   Dr. Emmons reported that over a ten-week period, the people in his study who wrote down five things they were grateful for were 25 per cent happier than the people who wrote down five hassles they had had during the week.  He wrote that gratitude can in fact actually have the greatest impact during crisis conditions.  “In the face of demoralization, gratitude has the power to energize.  In the face of brokenness, gratitude has the power to heal.  In the face of despair, gratitude has the power to bring hope….  Gratitude provides a perspective by which we can view life in its entirety and not be overwhelmed by temporary circumstances.” 

Dr. Emmons went on to say that grateful people don’t deny or ignore the negative aspects of life.  Their continued awareness of problems in their lives brought positive action to make things better.  Hence, they were happier people in spite of challenges.

Former General Relief Society President Bonnie Parkin of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints told in a General Conference talk a few years ago about a family who had suffered some hardship.  But they wanted to maintain a positive outlook. Every day at their dinner table they each shared something good that had happened to them, something they were thankful for that day.   Soon their “blessings basket” was overflowing. 

I liked the simplicity of this family’s intent to still be thankful for what they had.

That year for Christmas I purchased a basket for each of my children’s families and filled it full of little tablets and pencils along with a copy of the story Sister Parkin had shared.  I suggested that they might want to hang the basket so it was convenient for each person to write a sentence or two—or draw a picture—on a regular basis about a blessing or something they were thankful for.  Then set aside a regular time to share with the rest of the family all the wonderful bounties they were receiving. 

I’m almost sure you have already read/heard about ways to focus on gratitude.  But I thought I would include the short list Dr. Emmons published.  It might have some ideas you hadn’t already thought about.

1.    **KEEP A GRATITUDE JOURNAL

2.   **REMEMBER HOW FAR YOU HAVE COME FROM A BAD SITUATION

3.**ASK YOURSELF THREE QUESTIONS:

“What have I received?”  “What have I given?” and “What troubles and difficulty have I caused?”

4.   **LEARN TO OFFER PRAYERS OF GRATITUDE

5.   **COME TO YOUR SENSES. 

          Through our senses—the ability to touch, see, smell, taste, and hear—we gain an appreciation of what it means to be human.

6.   **GO THROUGH THE MOTIONS

           Grateful motions include smiling, saying thank you, and writing letters of gratitude.

Do it now.  Do it every day.  Doing that will make you happy.  I know!

IT'S HALLOWEEN TIME AGAIN!

 

I've never been very fond of Halloween.  I'm not particularly impressed with dressing up in a costume and parading around for everyone to see me.  I would rather be in the background of the Halloween party.  

And the Trick or Treating--not fun for me for these two reasons

👻I don't like candy.  Weird, I know.  But for me it was a useless activity to ask people for candy I wasn't even going to eat.

👻I grew up on the high windy plateaus of south-central Wyoming.  By the 31st of October there was probably snow on the ground most years--and it was COLD.  Brrrr!  So, the costume was covered up by a winter coat.  Who got to see that when we rang the doorbells?  No one....

I do remember one house that used to serve hot cider and doughnuts.  Now THAT was MY kind of treat.  Of course, this was in the 50's before all the scare of razors and drugs and whatever in the treats that weren't already prepackaged before they were purchased at the store.

Anyway, I did make a big deal about Halloween for my kids.  I usually sewed their costumes, and we went all out on a family Spook Dinner which we all loved.  Then Dad would take them Trick or Treating.  He had as much fun as they did, and they all loved to check out their candy loot when they got home, trading with each other the likes and dislikes of their haul.

But this year, I saw this cute Trick or Treat wish online.  I can "do" this one.  

Happy Halloween!

This October, 

may your treats be many and your tricks be few.

 Hope you have a sweet Halloween.

TIMELY WORDS OF WISDOM

I must have some sort of writer's block again.  I have a whole list of writing assignments that I need to take care of--projects I usually look forward to and relish as I am conveying my thoughts and feelings onto a blank page and turning them into mini essays.

But I am dragging my feet.  Now, once I get to the desktop computer, I sit here with nothing in my head--let alone anything coming out of the tips of my fingers!

Hmmm!  Perhaps I need to go to my vast store of "possible ideas" which includes sayings, quotes, snippets of thought--anything that I have stored in my folders that might be the spark of a good writing piece.

So, here is my output for today.  Perhaps posting this one "small stone" will be the impetus to get the creative juices flowing again.! 

I hope so!

CONFUCIOUS SAY:  

THE MAN WHO MOVES A MOUNTAIN BEGINS 

BY CARRYING AWAY SMALL STONES.

FAMILY TRUMPS ALL...

 

                                      A  FAMILY

About 20 years ago when I pulled up my schedule for September flying with United Airlines, I saw that I had been assigned eight days of vacation and had no vacation plans.  So, I decided to visit with each of my kids individually for a few hours (just one on one with me without their spouse or children) in the hopes that maybe I could get reacquainted with the people whose lives I used to be in the middle of on a daily basis for so many years while they were growing up.  Truthfully, I could no longer remember stuff such as who liked peas and who didn’t and what each person’s favorite Nichols Family activity was.  In spite of the fact some of the conversations took a more serious turn, I looked back on the whole experience as a satisfying one.  I liked it and had fun with each one of my kids.

 The next year I decided to PLAN my vacation time and do the whole “one on one” visit thing all over again.  Only that time I prepared some questions I thought might lead us into conversations which weren’t as superficial as “What is your favorite color and food now that you’re grown?” Though some of that information popped out, too, when I asked questions like, "What was most surprising for you when you became a parent?" and "What are some of your accomplishments you are really proud of?"  

Once again, I was not disappointed.  In fact, I came away from each experience thinking to myself we had some really great discussions about a variety of topics.  Best of all I was reminded of the terrific person each of my children is.  I spent a fair amount of time pondering the moot question “What in the world did I do to have the privilege of being the mother of the Nichols Kids?"  Whatever it was, I was so very glad we belonged to each other. 

In spite of the fact I heard later that the “one on one” with ”probing” questions made a couple of my kids uncomfortable because they saw it as a quiz about their life instead of a genuine interest in who they had become, I still think fondly on those two vacations when I purposely spent intentional time with each of them. 

Sure, the lunch or dinner, or the visit to my grandmother's tiny little town, or the shopping trip or just sitting on a bench outside the temple after a session were fun.  It varied with the kid I was with.  But it was just the "being" with them that made it special for me.  I loved them.  I loved being with them.

This September 2025 is the 30th anniversary of a Proclamation about the family which the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints published for the world.  It teaches about family, marriage, and gender, and their part in the kingdom of Heavenly Father.  "The family is central to the creator's plan for the eternal destiny of His children."

Family is one of the words that matter in this document.  It says we have a responsibility to love and care for each other.  And that includes our parents in one direction and our children in the other direction. We supported and cared for each other.  We celebrated birthdays, baptisms, weddings, graduations, mission calls, marriages, and many other things.  We as a family are there for each other!   

I continue to marvel at how well my children grew into their adult roles, providing for and nurturing their own families and friends along the way. 

But most of all, I appreciate each of them for their acceptance of me no matter what, even though I made a lot of blunders as a parent along the way—and still do even though I am staring my 80^th birthday in the face.

I once read that Denzel Washington said, “We’re all destined to leave some kind of mark in this world.  Sometimes we may miss that mark, but with a push in the right direction from time to time, we can set a positive example for others to follow.”  He continued, “We’re all extraordinary, in our own way, and that it’s what we do with our extraordinariness that sets us apart and makes all the difference.”

I believe Denzel Washington’s comments reflect how I feel about each one of my children.  Each in his/her own way is an example to me of some unique trait that is worth emulation. But that’s what families are for...to teach and to learn from each other.

And, I am glad we are in the same family--forever!

HOMEMADE KITCHEN DISASTER

 

If we want to talk about a kitchen disaster that could have had more serious consequences than it did, I would need to tell this experience.

When we lived in our first house, we still had only one car which my husband always took to work. So, the family either walked, rode our bikes, or didn’t go places or do things unless they were within walking or biking distance.

One day I was fixing supper and must have needed something at the store. And for some strange reason, the car was home in the garage. Perhaps my husband was on a business trip. I don’t remember.

And because I needed to steam the potatoes in the pressure cooker, which took less than 30 minutes, I figured we could jump into the car, buzz up the road to the brand-new King Soopers store, get the item, and be back before the potatoes were ready. No wasted time. I hurriedly put our little family into the car—and we were off.

However, to my horror, when we came down the steep hill and turned the corner to our home, there was smoke coming out of the house and a fire truck was there putting out a cooking fire in the kitchen. A fire that had begun when, for some reason the rubber gasket on the lid of the steamer didn’t seal causing the scant water in the pot to evaporate.

What a mess! In spite of the fact the firemen tried to do as little damage as they could to put out the fire, it was still awful. Though our insurance company paid the claim, it didn’t pay for someone to clean up the water bath and blackened paint on the walls. That took a lot of elbow grease to clean up! And it was MY elbow grease….

Lesson learned: NEVER, EVER leave the house when something is cooking on the stove! Anything could go wrong. Because the odds are it will!

Now, if we are talking about COOKING disasters, there are plenty of those in my lifetime, too. In fact, I hate cooking. The failure rate is way too high when I am the person doing the cooking.

Here’s just ONE experience of a major kitchen disaster:

Alexander* and I are two peas in a pod.  Some days are nothing but terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days.

Last Thursday was one of them. (January 2021)

I told my husband Louis not to eat before I got home after practicing the organ at the chapel following the religious education class I teach for high school students.  (He had gone to Seminary with me that morning to play a video during the lesson.) I told him I was in the mood for a REAL breakfast, and I was going to fix an omelet, bacon, muffins, and some cottage potatoes.  He liked the idea of a good breakfast.  Me?  I could hardly wait to get home and start cooking!  Yum!

But…I haven’t practiced culinary skills for a long time (nuking something in the microwave doesn’t qualify) and everything went wrong.  Well, almost.  The orange juice and milk were okay.

I got a terrific set of pans for my wedding 52 years ago.  They are heavy cast aluminum, but over the years the bottoms got warped from all the heat from the burners.  When that happened, my first husband Ross would take the pans out to the garage and hold a blow torch on them until he was able to pound out the bottoms for a flat cooking surface once again.  Voila!  Just like new.

Only, Ross has been gone for a long time, and Louis doesn’t do that kind of thing. Instead, he constantly asked me to get rid of the set and buy a completely new set.  One year for Christmas Louis even gave me a complete Rachel Ray set.  But I know HOW to cook with the ones I have. That new set was too fancy.  Expensive.  And I told him that if we were cooking for eight people every day like I used to, it would be worth getting a new set.  But not now.  It is way too late in the game for the upgrade.  I returned the pans to get a gift I could really use.

After that and a few more pointed suggestions that we get new pans, Louis got tired of my negative answers to his pleas. About three years ago he went out and bought two heavy—and I do mean HEAVY—cast iron skillets, because he saw a recipe online and decided to start cooking.  The pans were both too large and too small for the kind of preparation we do for two people.  And too heavy for me to handle.  My aging body just cannot pick up that kind of weight anymore.  Plus, Louis’ desire to cook lasted for only one or two meals.  Then nothing.

Louis got the same “cooking bug” again a few weeks ago.  This time, he went out and bought two frying pans—also odd sizes for our needs—but at least I could handle them.  

So, that morning when I got home the cooking adventure began.  I prepared the muffins first.  Easy, peasy and put them into the oven.  The omelet and potatoes could cook while the muffins were baking.  However, I wasn’t used to using these new pans, and I underestimated how fast and hot they prepared the food.

             The next thing I knew, the potatoes were scorched!  While trying to turn them over and eliminate the tainted ones, I began to smell an awful burning odor.  YUP!  The omelet—completely charred on the bottom and the top still a really runny egg mixture—was a disaster.  There was NO saving anything from that—though I did try to scrape char off the bottom and cook the rest of the eggs.  Didn’t work out.  What a surprise, huh?

The bell dinged for the muffins but, because I wanted to eat them HOT, I just turned off the oven and left them in for a couple more minutes while I wrestled with the burnt food on the stove top. 

By this time, I was screaming bloody murder stuff like, “No wonder I hate to cook!  The failure rate with me is too high, and I don’t LIKE to cook anyway.”  Louis heard the commotion and came into the kitchen offering to take over and prepare a completely new omelet for the two of us.  That made me even madder! I told him I wouldn’t eat it, so not to cook anything for me, and I flounced out of the house.  But not before I took the muffins out of the oven.  By then they weren’t burnt, but way too dry.  I didn’t care and took one with me.

Got into the car and backed out of the driveway….but there was no place to go.  No one to go visit.  No store where I needed to purchase anything. Nothing to do.  I had already practiced the organ that morning. Nothing.  I ended up sitting in the church parking lot and tried to read on my smart phone.  Couldn’t even focus on that!  So, I just sat there until the huff was finally over and then I drove home.  

Louis had indeed fixed a new omelet and salvaged enough potatoes for his meal.  He had prepared the bacon, too.  Then he ate and cleaned up the dishes and the kitchen.  By the time I walked in, it looked like no major crisis had happened at all.

I don’t remember what else I did that day.  Probably NOTHING that could have been considered great, since I was so over the top enraged about my cooking skills.  But you can be sure I more than likely thought the whole day was a piece of junk.  

Ah, yes!  Alexander and I could have been twins on that crazy morning.  Nothing worthwhile came my way the rest of that day, I’m sure.  My attitude killed it all.  

Some days are nothing but terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days.  That was one of them!

Welcome to my world, Alexander!

*Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day is a children’s book written by Judith Viorst and illustrated by Ray Cruz. It won several awards during the 70’s and was a Reading Rainbow book. Alexander and I could have been twins!

 

READY TO ROLL...OR LEARNING TO DRIVE

One of my step-granddaughters is ready to get her Driver's License.  She lives in another state, so I'm not sure if she is required to take a driving course at school or if her dad has taught her so she can make that big transition to adulthood.  

Either way, there is an awful lot to learn.

 I think over the years of my own children learning to drive and the many times I nearly put my foot through the floorboard of the car trying to brake for them when it didn't seem like that was going to happen in time.  Or on one occasion such a sharp right turn which nearly rolled the car into the ditch that it scared both ME and MY SON!

Those are tense, but also funny, memories.

Often when I go to our chapel to practice the organ, I see a young person with a parent in the car with them "practice driving" in the ample--and empty--parking lot there.  If I remember correctly, my kids had to have so many "practice hours" before they could get their driver's license.  An empty parking lot is a good way to instill confidence before hitting neighborhood streets and busy traffic elsewhere.

My own preparation was kind of unique.  Here's the story...

My mother didn’t drive when I was growing up. But from hearing stories in the family, I knew she had driven when she was younger. In fact, she used to drive my dad’s dual wheel truck when my sisters were small, and the family would go up to Idaho with the bags of salt my dad and mother prepared for the sheep ranchers.

It was the Great Depression. No jobs. No money. But my dad didn’t let that stop him. He was relentless in finding innovative ways to provide for his young family of little girls. One way he did that was to harvest salt from Great Salt Lake, put it into bags my mother sewed, and then haul the load up to the sheep ranchers in Idaho. Obviously, he knew a lot about that because he had been a sheep herder—for my mother’s uncles’ sheep outfit where they had met when my mother and her sister were cooking for the sheep herders one summer.

However, after they moved to Rawlins, my mother’s ability to drive atrophied following an incident that happened as she was pulling into the 100 foot driveway of our house.

The story goes that as she was moving toward the kitchen door, she turned briefly to the back seat to quell some kind of disturbance. In that brief second the car went out of control (it couldn’t have been going TOO fast) and mowed down the picket fence which lined the driveway. Apparently, my dad rushed out of the house to survey the damage, and instead of asking how my mother and the kids were, he raced to his newly planted seedling trees to make sure they were okay.

Now, my mother wasn’t a volatile sort. It took an awful lot to move her to an outburst, but when my dad was more concerned about his trees than his wife and family, she got out of the car vowing she would never drive again. And, as far as I knew, she never did.

Was my mother sorry about her ultimatum? I don’t know. Perhaps she changed her mind somewhere down the road, but for some reason that circumstance of her not driving never changed. So, by the time I came along my dad had been her chauffer—or my sister Lois who lived up the street—100% of the time.

I kind of think my dad was tired of being tied to my mother’s need for him to drive her here and there, so when I was eleven years old my dad decided to teach me how to drive. I was ecstatic! Boy was that a dream come true. I was quite surprised, however, that my dad had no compunction about teaching me to drive at such a young age. But, I don’t think I protested….Nah! I was ready and willing, though I wasn’t even tall enough to reach the pedals.

My dad’s truck was a dark blue 1953 Ford with gearshift on a rod that came straight out of the floorboard. Three gears and reverse which I well knew from having driven around town with him since I was in Kindergarten as he ran errands to the hardware store and the nursery, visited with friends, supervised the construction of our little chapel (which was built during a time when the members did the work), and made trips to the local dump.

So it was that my driving instruction began at the gravel pits north of town, not too far from the dumps. I had to sit on the edge of the seat in order to operate the brake and gas pedals while I was shifting gears.

I don’t remember how long the instruction was confined to that remote area where I could drive in circles, back up, move forward, and otherwise pretend like I was on a regular street. But one day my dad decided it was time for me to slowly drive into town and to our own neighborhood. It was scary for sure, but I did it.

And I also don’t remember if I really ever took my mom anywhere until I got a driver’s license a few years later. In Wyoming a kid could get a driver’s license at age 15. Obviously, by that time I had also learned the rules by studying the driver’s manual put out by the State of Wyoming, I would assume. If there was something like Driver’s Education (and I think there was in the high school) I certainly didn’t need it. I was practically a seasoned driver by that time.

I’m not sure why, but a person had to go to the Highway Department to take the written exam and have a driving test. But there was a way around that.  According to the kids at school, word was if you went to the Police Department in town on Saturday morning, you could take the written test. And if it was close to noon when that office closed, then they didn’t make you take the driving part. My friend Anne Campbell and I decided to try it out. She was a month younger than I was, so it must have been the beginning of the year after my 15th birthday that we got bold enough to do it.

I went to my dad and asked him to take Anne and me to the police station to take the test and hopefully get the full requirement taken care of and be bona fide drivers. We were giddy! Though my dad scoffed and told me I knew how to drive so I didn’t need him to take me, I convinced him it wouldn’t look too good for us to show up ALREADY driving in order to take the test and make us legal. He acquiesced and took us to the Police Station.

Sure enough, we passed the written test, but by then it was too late to take us out driving, so the police officer just gave us our license and sent us on our way. YES!!!!

That was when I became my mother’s official driver—and ran the wheels off the car every chance I got. And, I got into a lot of trouble along the way, too, because my dad monitored the mileage and if I went more miles than he calculated I should have to gone to do errands or visit a friend, then I had to account for it. That was when guys at school told me about disconnecting the speedometer cable when I drove and screw it back on when it was time to take the car home. I also “borrowed” the car that was always in our garage except for outings and also “borrowed” my dad’s truck—much newer by that time—when I wanted to joy ride when he was out on his run for the railroad.

But those adventures are a story for another time.

My dad bought me a two-tone blue 1953 Ford for my first car when I was a Sophomore in High School and other Ford sedans over the years (1959 and 1961) so I could “do my job”. He was so proud of me and my expertise at driving. He trusted me to drive all over including taking my mother to Salt Lake City. I was pretty nervous, but I knew I was a good driver. Because my dad had taught me well, I had confidence in myself.

 Suffice it to say, I loved learning to drive. I loved driving. And I loved being the driver—all the time.