One day late again! 

1) Peculiar Minds is a special ten day series that began Friday over at Real Intent. It focuses on mental health issues through an LDS {Mormon} perspective. I encourage you to go and read what has already been posted beginning with the very first post, Peculiar Minds, which explains everything that will be covered through the lens of faith and hope.

 If you suffer from any type of mental illness or are supporting and loving one who is {which basically means all of us, right?} come read, learn, and join the conversation as we try to break down the barriers of misunderstanding and misconceptions.

2) Pregnancy Update. Only 4 1/2 weeks until I’ll be holding my new little boy! My due date is March 25th but because of gestational diabetes an induction date has been set for March 19th. I am hoping though that he decides to come on his own like Ganache did.

As usual we are coming down to crunch time still trying to decide on a name. We had a family home evening where we showed our big list to the kids and had them write down their top five favorites and then come up with some name combinations. It actually helped quite a bit! Instead of having a list 15 names long we now have a list about 4 names long. We’ll have to wait and see his little face before we can really decide.

3) Putting Me Together is a wardrobe/style help blog I’ve recently started following. I am loving her series called Wardrobe From Scratch. I never thought I’d be into learning about fashion and what styles fit me better than others but I realized during this pregnancy that my maternity wardrobe is much more coordinated and put together than my regular wardrobe {and that’s mostly because my mother took me shopping for maternity clothes two pregnancies ago}. It’s easy to put outfits together and feel beautiful. I may look like a whale at this point but at least I am a cute whale!

Looking over my regular clothes I see there is a great deal of improvement that needs to be made. So I am learning and taking notes and gathering ideas so after I have the baby I can begin rebuilding my wardrobe and hopefully downsizing {in more ways than one, ha!} what’s in my closet.

4) Pornography harms. It is a huge bane to society causing destruction and ruin wherever its deadly poison is spread. I was extremely pleased to read about the efforts that Iceland has made in fighting pornography in that country. “Iceland could become the first Western democracy to block all Internet porn under radical new proposals. … Two years ago, the Icelandic Parliament (successfully) banned all strip clubs on the grounds that they violated the civil rights of the women who worked there and were harmful to society. This argument — that porn violates the rights of both women who appear in it and children who are exposed to it — is the cornerstone of the new proposals under discussion.” (Deseret News)  Gives me hope that someday the same will happen in this country.

5) Patterns and doodles to color. Sometimes its just relaxing to sit and color or give your kids something to color so its quiet for a few minutes. You can download free doodle pages at Doodle Art Gallery. There are doodles for everything from kaleidoscope designs, to nature, to animals, to the alphabet.

There are even inspirational quotes that I plan on using in my seminary class because there are some kids that like to doodle when we are having a lesson. At least this way they will be coloring in something that goes along with the lesson!