Dopamine Addiction

This video talks about Millenials and the struggles they face and we face with them in today's society. It also addresses addiction. It is about 15 minutes long, but so worth having a watch!

Christmas 2016

The past 3 years we have alway driven to Utah from Idaho to celebrate Christmas with our families, this year Arah's family was in California and we were both hit with crazy snow storms. I love spending time with my family, but we have definitely made the most of being without them.

Christmas Eve we spent with some amazing friends who took us in and indulged in all my favorite silly traditions.  We made raclette for dinner (a new tradition) then Rice Pudding for dessert (complete with hidden almond) Rocky found the almond, it wasn't rigged at all;)

Then after our very cheesy dinner; we roped them into singing around the Christmas Tree with us.  It was a blast, we even got in all 12 days of Christmas.  The one problem we always have with singing around the tree is that we don't know all the lyrics, luckily we found a youtube video that had songs and lyrics, it worked wonders.  Taylor and Ana had wonderful singing voices that did a great job covering up my scary voice.  It warms my heart to carry on these Danish traditions that I have had my whole life.

We stayed late to wait up for Santa and even helped him assemble a toy kitchen for Rocky and Baby Eden. After one too many late nights this season we retired to our beds.... I was planning on sleeping in, but Arah was way too excited for Christmas morning.  As it turns out, Santa visited our house too! We went to church then relaxed the rest of the day. SO MUCH NAPPING!

Monday was for Skiing!

Adventure is out there!

How are you?

Arah and I  spent some time discussing the phrase 

"Mourn with those that mourn and comfort those that stand in need of comfort" 

He said one thing that was such a culture shock when he came back to the US after he had been in Germany, everyone here uses the greeting how are you? No one waits around to hear the answer nor really wants to know other than "fine". In Germany this question is only asked to close friends when you are sincerely looking to help and to serve others. 

We talked about how we have set the standard for everyone just has to be fine all the time. Fine is not the default setting, nor is happy, nor is sad. We are supposed to experience every emotion. We need to be more open with our feelings and more honest about how we are. It is our responsibility to share both our joy and our turmoil. We are denying others the opportunity to serve us, if we don't let them in and allow them to serve. 

I feel like so many times I've been in situations where I've thought oh I'm so alone, woeth me, when really it's probably my own fault that someone asked me how I was doing and I gave my usual response which is "fantastic" also the other way around when I have genuinely wanted to serve and genuinely cared about how someone was and we end up hearing nothing more than a standard response. 

One of my goals is to not ask "how are you" without sincerity and to always wait around for that answer. So if I ask you I hope you know that I love you and I want to serve you. And if you ask me I'm going to be brutally honest!