UTAH RANKED MOST DEPRESSED

That makes me so sad.....I saw a report by a psychiatrist that states it is from High expectations and lots of guilt because of organized religion. Wow, are we good at "should'ing on ourselves. I should do this. I should do that, I should have done this....Many years ago I heard a phrase "I shall not should on myself today." I am trying to use that in my life. I try not to use should in my vocabulary. I can use the word could, because that allows for choice.

I thought I would take the time while Larry is out of town to do an update. If I did it each time he was out of town, our entries would be much more often. It has been a busy last 6 weeks for Larry. He has been to Germany twice, Brasil twice and to Minneapolis sometime in between. He also got his million mile status notification and is very tired of the travel. His back is still very sore and we hope that it will get some rest while he is home for the month of December.

I am sitting in my basement, while up above me my living room floor is being installed finally. Hopefully my hardware will be next and then the trim and finding someone to do the backsplash. My living room furniture will be delivered somewhere around the 12th of December. I'm not sure how the furniture wil look with the paint and so may end up doing some type of treatment over the yellow paint. The temple has been closed for the last two weeks and so I have been busy cleaning out closets and drawers, going through the last 5 or 6 boxes in the basement that are left from the kitchen. I really need to decide what in those boxes will be going up into the kitchen.

I loved our Thanksgiving Holiday. It was wonderful to spend time with my extended family. I think that my daughters gained some very valuable insights into family dynamics.

Our first Christmas party is coming up on Saturday. The ward is having its party the first Saturday of the month to avoid all the other conflicts. It will be a very pain free party. We have divided things and each of us have a fairly short list of things to do for it. We hope to set a wonderful tone for the Christmas season.

I have Christmas cards to get out. I think I will do some type of photo montage of what we have done throughout the year. However, since my computer crashed, I have very few of the addresses of friends that I used to send cards to every year. I keep hoping that somehow I can get them all back, but some only send cards every other year. And since they haven't heard from me for a few years, they may not send them at all. I miss my friendships that I ahve formed over the years, but am grateful for those who keep in touch. I told my kids that all I want for Christmas is a work day where they can all be here to work on things in the basement room. I have a ton of books that we will need to go through.