The Joy Sisters

In the middle of the seventh paragraph of The Family: A Proclamation to the World , it states, " Successful marriages and families are established and maintained on principles of faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, work, and wholesome recreational activities."  The first principle on that list is faith. Our family put that principle into action each week as we drove over one hundred miles round trip twice a week to church for Sunday worship and Wednesday evening activities. One hour each way in good weather and in Minnesota Fall, Spring and Winter too....when church wasn't canceled. We have been doing this for nearly ten years, often in vehicles that we were having faith in to make the trip there and back! When Madison went off to college at a non-church school instead of following Miranda and Danelle to BYU, one big check in the plus column for her was that the college was in a town that had a church building within walking distance of cam...

Both dad and I are converts to the church. We both had upbringings that were not always in line with the principles of The Family: A Proclamation to the World. None of your grandparents were familiar with the teaching that " Parents have a sacred duty to rear their children in love and righteousness, to provide for their physical and spiritual needs, and to teach them to love and serve one another, observe the commandments of God, and be law-abiding citizens wherever they live. ". (Family Proclamation paragraph 6) When it was our turn at parenting, a lot of the personal experiences and examples that we had were more of "what not to do". It was a blessing that we had several instruction manuals along the way, one of them being The Family: A Proclamation to the World.  Dad and I joined the church in 1990, the same year that we graduated high school and met on a blind date and we married a few months later in the summer of 1991. To say that we were in need ...

When my grandparents Bob and Violet became empty nesters, they realigned their division of duties. During their child rearing years my Grandma stayed at home with the kids. She did the meal planning, the grocery shopping and the family had a clean up rotation. After the kids all left home within a few years of one another, they shifted these duties. My whole life growing up I remember my Grandma Raynor doing the meal planning with my Granddad.    They would discuss what was ripe and ready to harvest in the garden and plan around that. We often had sliced beefsteak tomatoes with homemade buttermilk dressing as a side to steak or chicken.  After they planned the menu together, my Granddad would go grocery shopping once or twice a week. He did the main shopping, I only remember my Grandma going to the grocery store if she was shopping for a special ingredient at an out of the way market or there was something that my Granddad hadn't found.  Other than barbecuing...

One of the hallmarks of our Hubert Family Homeschool was reading out loud. We read a lot. We read several of the Little House series including the original Little House on the Prairie Series as well as The Charlotte Years, The Caroline Years and The Rose Years. One of the things that we took note of was how the children transitioned to adulthood, sometimes almost accidentally or overnight. One week you were a student and the next week you were a teacher.  Somewhere around the middle of the last century researchers started noticing that the qualities that normally defined adulthood were being delayed or taking longer to achieve. They coined the term "emerging adulthood" (2016, p. 3) to describe this new period of time "between adolescence and adulthood". This is a time of transition where more and more young adults are delaying big girl and big boy decisions and responsibilities.  I t doesn't have to be this way. We are still receiving counsel from ...

So. Here is a strange thing. Blogging had all but died over the last year or two and then we had this worldwide pandemic and everyone started blogging again.  I had already planned my big comeback (haha) before all of this hit, but life got in the way and I got a little behind. I am taking FAML 100: The Family this semester. It is an online BYU-I class that focuses on aligning family values and principles in family life and society as a whole with the document The Family- A Proclamation To The World . For my semester long project I had decided to do a series of blog posts, posted here on my existing blog for my daughters and future posterity. With two jobs, school, getting sick and a global pandemic my plans got a little sidelined. While I mostly kept up on my school work and kind of wrote blog posts in my head as I went along, I didn't do such a great job posting here as the semester went along. So now I am catching up all at once and hoping to get it all done before the final d...

This video short is based off of one of my favorite Women's Conference talks of all time .  ~JOYsister Heather

We are so excited to have our guest blogger DeAnna Murphy – Author of Shift Up! Strengths Strategies for Optimal Living ( http://amzn.to/2EK9jwI ) visist us on our blog today. She is sharing an excerpt of her next book with us here. Thank you DeAnna! I have a  huge  “what-if” for you.  Just imagine that you have say, 2.5 million friends – roughly the population of Chicago – and all of you get together at the same time to play a game of dice – and by the way, you do so with a dice that has a trillion sides.  Seem crazy?  Well, it gets even crazier, given that the outcome of this experience is that each of your 2.5 million friends all roll the dice and come up with the exact same number at the exact same time.  It you concluded that this is highly improbable, you would be quite right. The probability of this happening is greater than the estimated number of total atoms in the entire universe, somewhere around 10 78  or in other words,...

We are grateful to end our month with our JOYsister Michelle from MommerForever on  Instagram.  We are inspired by her art and wisdom.  We hope you will be too, as she shares about the ways she has been renewed. ~JOYsister Christine I was asked to contribute my thoughts on a word beginning with “re-“ meaning again & again, repeating, or repetition.  The word RENEWAL came to me.  With Easter being just a day away, I reflect on the ultimate sacrifice made by Jesus Christ so we could be at-one with Heavenly Father AGAIN someday. RENEWED.  I’d like to share a journey of mine with you. I used to get so stuck in my junk. Like I just couldn’t do this or that, I wasn’t good enough or perfect enough, worthy enough, and I let that define me for a VERY long time.  A VERY LONG TIME! I was sick because of it, I was paralyzed from progress because of it.  How did I get out of this state of mind? I started to pray. I started doing ...

We decided to post every day in March.  It has been a stretch.  Sometimes guest bloggers that wanted to join us ended up with plates way to full.  Though we know they will be back with us in future months, we had to dig deep to meet our goals.  We are almost there.  As I sat tonight without the original plan, and knowing to meet my goal, I would need to come up with a post... the word RESOLUTE came to my mind.  I looked it up:   admirably purposeful, determined, and unwavering.  Yes, that is what we strive to be! I can't possibly start at the beginning because I don't have enough time.  {Date night!}. This JOYsister thing, this brainchild, we don't know where it is going, but it's filled with passion and love, and really it's a God thing.  It has grown with us and on us.  The original JOYsisters... Heather, Renae and Lori were like the three musketeers.  They share an amazing history and friendship.  They named th...

Sometimes we get to step back through the portal of time and relive a moment, experience a place, recall sweet memories.  Last weekend I got together with life long friends.  Friends that began my adulthood with me and have stuck by me ever since.  We have laughed together and cried together.  Experienced sorrow that rocked us to the core, and inexplicable JOY.  We borrowed a church building where our boys could play basketball and sardines and we could sit and visit.  The particular building we gathered in brought back sweet memories of childhood, teen years and my early years as a young adult.  My sister and I used to sit on that very stage and watch our then boyfriends (her's became her husband) play basketball.  That gym stage that we once sat on while we dreamed of all the possibilities tied to youth, on Saturday had a bag of diapers, wipes, bottles, basketballs, and carseats on it.  Life has changed, evolved and progressed.  B...

I first met my husband when we were seniors in high school.  We didn't go to the same high school, in fact, we grew up almost 45 miles from each other in rural North Dakota. It was a chance meeting in the hallway at a basketball game in Edgeley, ND where we first made a connection. That connection has lasted over 31 years. As our relationship evolved from dating, to engagement, to marriage, to becoming parents. Through all our milestones, we have had to consciously make a decision to reconnect. We have changed so much as individuals in this process, especially considering we started dating as teenagers in high school! ​ We didn't know when we first met how our lives would unfold or what the future held for us. We didn't know the amazing joys and heartbreaking sorrows we would experience together. Yet, we do make the choice to continue to reconnect on a daily basis. As I reflect on how we evolved as a couple over the years, I am struck by the common thread of reco...

We are grateful to have Danelle join us this week for a guest post.   She shares some of her insights on regret. She may only be 19, as she states,  but she is already wise beyond her years. We'd love to hear your thoughts  about regret and how you manage it in life. Comment below. People often say, “live your life with no regrets”. While a nice concept, I believe the only way you can live your life with no regrets is if you can see into the future. Because few “can” the rest of us have to content ourselves to our lives full of mistakes and regrets. The feeling of regret is learned at a very young age. Toddlers will break a rule, get scolded and break the rule again. When they break it a second time however, they remember the scolding and regret their choice. While toddlers may not see their actions in such clear terms, the older they get the more they understand. I’m only nineteen years old. To most people I’ve barely lived my life, and yet I can’t coun...

As a woman and JOYsister, I have spent much of my life living under umbrellas of unrealistic expectations, mine and others.  Mine for myself and mine for others.  And other's unrealistic expectations of me.  When we talked about developing the JOYsister community we wanted to cultivate and nurture a place where women build women.  Where women pray for or sent positivity to other women that need it.  Where women look for the good, lift and love.  AND... a place where a sink of dirty dishes, an enormous pile of laundry, a craft room where no surfaces are easily discoverable, a broken heart, depression, tragedy, hurts...are all safe here.  We wanted to live by the motto, Have Courage and Be Kind.   Recently my niece came to visit and took family photos.  She left me with over 1700 images.  Yes, you read that right.  But I wanted to pick for myself and I am the blessed recipient of my generous and talented niece.  Of those...

I once had a counselor tell me that one of the most important reasons for us to keep a journal is for our own recollection of events. She said that it is very common among once happy couples to completely REwrite their history together and distort it according to how they are currently feeling. That is where language like ALWAYS and NEVER come in, as in "he NEVER complements me", or "she ALWAYS nags".  If we are writing down tender moments, kind feelings, happy memories and recording the good times, instead of our current negative thoughts and circumstances swaying the past, the opposite can actually be true. Isn't that cool?  We can reread, revisit and actually {RE}WRITE our current script. The one that is happening right here and now. We can write JOY into any circumstance by looking at past happy events and reminding ourselves of previous good and happy times. We can remember what we loved about our spouse, a friend, our home, the scriptures, the church...

re·joice v.   re·joiced ,  re·joic·ing ,  re·joic·es v. intr. To  feel   joyful;  be  delighted:   1.  To  feel   joyful   about   (something):   2.  Archaic  To  fill   with   joy;   gladden. I was born and raised in Southern California and lived inland for most of my life. We didn't have seasons there. I felt like I was living in a never ending cycle of blah. When we moved our family 1900 miles away to Minnesota 15 years ago it was like my senses were awakened to seasons and I suddenly felt like REjoicing. That first Spring I had hope, hope like I had never had before. After several LONG, cold months of Winter, Spring had finally arrived. I REjoiced at the first bud that pushed it's way up from the dormant ground. Suddenly I had several buds and I remember feeling overJOYed as I REjoiced in this season. Spring is a time to REjoice!  Easter is in the Sp...