We put a lot of time and energy in our work – extra hours, extra effort to get the contract or meet deadlines.  Hobbies can help give balance to the stress of our jobs, a needed outlet for creativity, or just release some pressure.  These are both good things. But why don’t we put the same effort into our families?  As Adam Mitchell says...

I can still remember where I was standing and the way my daughter Aubri looked at me that fateful December day.  She came to me and said, “Dad, Dan really wants to talk to you to ask if he can be allowed to date me.”  I knew this day would come. I answered honestly, “Do you know how difficult this is for your father?” To which Aubri...

It is often said that balance is the key to happiness. Financial balance is an important part of a balanced life. Life can sometimes be like the balance scales our grandmothers used years ago with many different aspects of our beings coming together to balance and form the people that we are. We work and play, rest and expend energy, commune with...

We all know that building strong relationships takes ongoing work. We start by prioritizing our relationship(s) and finding time for those who are important to us.  If we neglect to do that life moves along and we can lose touch.   A close relationship is like a dance.  When one person moves, the other one responds.  The dance can go really...

In difficult economic times like these, it’s natural to search for ways to cut expenses and reduce the pressure on your family income. Among the many ways to lower expenses, the easiest may seem to stop making donations to your favorite charities. If we truly believe in what these organizations are doing, discontinuing our financial support means...

Story told by Jeff Yellow Owl, written by Patty Duncan In 1923 the government took my grandmother from her parents and put her in a boarding school to immerse her in the white man’s culture. She remembers bumping along in a wagon, watching her home and family disappear in the rolling hills of the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in...

Messages in bottles have been the stuff of folklore for centuries. Dying, desperate sailors have hurled them. Curious children have launched them. Nicholas Sparks wrote a novel based on them, but don’t read it—or watch the movie—unless you already have a prescription for antidepressants. The story I find most interesting about such bottles,...