"There's an app for that!"

The Mormon Church is the "Apple" of religions

It’s said that whenever a problem arises at the Silicon Valley-based company, Apple employees quip, "There's an app for that!" And they mean it. In other words, those folks really consider no challenge too daunting, no problem too complicated that it can’t be solved with a downloadable application to an Apple device.

Similarly, the Mormon Church offers solutions to everyday problems.

Learning a foreign language

Gerontologese: the language of the older crowd

They say children under age six pick up new languages most quickly, but I’m not so sure. I’ve been hanging around the older crowd lately (OK, I am the older crowd) whose foreign-language skills seem strongly correlated to their age. I’m not sure what this new language is called, exactly, but I think it’s something like “gerontologese.” Mostly Latin-based, it’s sprinkled with lots of acronyms and, mercifully, a few English words.

Going dark

Writing is my home

I've just revisited my blog, which I let go dark for more than a year. Reading old posts was like getting caught up with old friends, but making the time read them was like . . . well, getting caught up with old friends. You wonder if it might be too much hassle, if it might take too much time, if it might not feel as satisfying and important as you hoped.

I’m a Mormon, and I don’t care who knows it

Living our religion out loud

We’re in the news, we Mormons. It seems everyone is talking about Mormons these days, thanks mostly to presidential candidate Mitt Romney whose campaign has caused a journalistic avalanche of articles, editorials, television interviews, and radio talk shows discussing, if not featuring, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and turning “Mormon” into a household word.

Just 3 must-haves for the car

Every good driver carries tricks in the car

Water doesn’t count. Everyone knows that almost as important as keeping enough gas in the tank is carrying water in the car at all times. But beyond that, we all have things we can’t live without when we drive. Even though I’m down to just one child, I’m still driving a minivan, and the two of us have become quite attached; in fact, it has become a sort of home on wheels. So, over time I’ve personalized what I keep inside. I can get along without some things, but others are must-haves for the car. Here are just three:

Beyond glue guns and kitschy crafts

Everyone is better off with a woman in his or her life

I wanted to throw it away. It was just another failed craft project I did at a women’s church meeting, but being newly married with very few Christmas decorations, I really wanted at least one nice ornament for our tree. Besides, this project seemed so easy. Instead, I was impatient and tried to hurry along the glass etching then quickly glue-gunned the ribbon around it, with the end product resulting in a very homemade-looking ornament.

Robin Hood is back in town

Let capitalism be the hero

Sadly, even some of the best political gaffes are lost on those who don’t understand the difference between capitalism and socialism, so I keep trying to explain the economy to my children in light of the presidential candidates’ platforms. To help me, I turned to my son’s 11th-grade Social Studies textbook, whose sum total definition of socialism is “the idea that the government should own and operate industry for the community as a whole.”

Rediscovering parenting tools

One of my all-time favorite parenting books

Growing up, vacuuming was a real chore. Our industrial-strength canister vacuum looked like R2D2 minus the cool lights and funny voice, and hauling that clunky thing around was as much work as the vacuuming itself. We’d bang it against walls and furniture just moving from room to room, and going up and down stairs was out of the question. Dust mopping, in comparison, was efficient. Four times as wide as any broom we had in the house, our dust mop with its nifty little swivel device in the center made it easy to turn at the end of every pass across our hardwood floors. Good tools just make life easier.

Just three reasons I love being 50

Halfway to 100, and life looks good

When my mom turned 50, I thought she was ancient. After all, half a century sounds pretty old to an eight-year-old. (Who knew she’d almost double those years of living?) But now that I stand where she once did, I think this is a vibrant age! In fact, if I knew 50 was going to be this good, I might have looked forward to my birthday a little more. It turns out the fifties are great for lots of reasons, but here are just three:

Just give me a sign!

Should vs. Want

Yesterday I drove through the state of Idaho. After dropping Grant off at college, Ken and I followed our Google Maps directions as carefully as we could, working our way across wide-open spaces crisscrossed by highways. Considering neither of us had ever made the trip before, we did pretty well until we got a little off track in Twin Falls, where we had to ask directions from the lone worker at the Reeder Flying Service (airport). “Just go back across the canal, turn left at the first intersection,” she said flatly, “then drive about five miles, and you’ll catch 93.”