Be a little silly today - spread the silly - *litter* silly everywhere you go today. Amaze yourself with how silly you can get.  One of my favorite ways to be silly and share silly is googly eyes, like the ones I'm wearing in the picture above or the ones you can use to decorate so many things!

Today's reading:  The Secret to Finding Rest {Matthew 11 & 12}

Part of Hawaiian culture, ʻohana means family (in an extended sense of the term, including blood-related, adoptive or intentional). The concept emphasizes that families are bound together and members must cooperate and remember one another. (source) Ohana was introduced into a broader general awareness through the Disney movie "Lilo & Stitch." At least that's when I first heard of the word and its meaning. *grin*  What I love about this word is that family is expansive - it can, and does, include people who become woven into our hearts and lives as if we were born to each other.  I'm fortunate to have a great family I was born into but to also have people in my life that are family that came to me in different ways.  Who gets included in your circle labeled Ohana? 

I get accused of being stupid with some of the things I do. For example, one time I assembled these superhero packets...for adults. I put in a color-your-own mask, a power cuff (fine it was a bracelet but go with it), some motivating thoughts about what it takes to be a superhero, and a way to devise their own superhero name. I made the packets colorful and superhero-ish. I included a note about why they were getting the packet (hint - because they matter and they are superheroes). There were grumblings over how stupid I was to make the packets and hand them out. The thing is, I didn't just hand them out for the mere sake of being silly (although I don't think there is anything wrong with that) but I did it because I had a message I wanted the people to receive. A message I knew most of them needed to hear. I had a reason, I always have a reason. Don't be shy about being thoughtful - even if you think it might come off as stupid. Just be thoughtful in some way,

Have you ever had to taste your words? Nobody is exempt from having to taste their own words at some point as this story shows. Instead of having to put bitter and sour back into your mouth you can make those words more palatable by admitting that whatever you said was wrong. Now doing this takes humility, but humility tastes way better than bitter and sour.  *grin* 

For #TriviaTuesday invite others to join in! Host a lunchtime trivia game or an evening trivia party and exercise your brains together. Here's a couple of ideas to jumpstart your brain on hosting your own trivia get together. Have fun!  10 fun trivia theme nights Quiz Night Games

This is wise advice. My first thought regarding this quote by Jefferson are those payday advance businesses. They encourage people to spend money they don't yet have and then when they have it they owe it back plus interest therefore keeping them in a cycle of debt. Of course, there are credit cards which are also a form of "payday advancement." What gets a lot of us in trouble with spending what we have not yet earned is impulse buying. Well it gets me in trouble anyway. Impulse buying serves the same *need* as comfort eating or binge watching TV does - we get triggered by something and to ease the discomfort of the trigger we engage in a behavior - be it the eating or for the purposes of today's post, impulse buying. But there is help for the impulse buying and figuring out the triggers that get us to engage. Here's one article I found.   Maybe the problem for you isn't impulse buying, maybe you just spend your money in the wrong ways an

Pick a friend and get silly today, it will do wonders for your hearts. Just in case you and your friends have forgotten how to have fun or need a refresher course click here. And while your kids, or others, may think you are boring - you know better! Prove them wrong by getting silly today.

Today's reading:  Here’s the Secret to Joy

It's the time of year where family, or the absence of it, is perhaps more evident than other times of the year. Families are complicated units of people trying to do life together, bound together by blood or desire. When a family is healthy and mostly functioning well (let's face it, all families are a wee bit dysfunctional) it is a vital part of your life and of theirs. Here's 10 reasons why. (There's some interesting, or perhaps obvious is the better word, typos in the article but I'm trusting you'll be able to read around them.) 

You never need regret thoughtfulness. It will always make an impact that you may or may not see. I believe, and Mother Teresa did as well, that there is a famine of thoughtfulness. So today take a time out and extend yourself in a thoughtful act or word toward someone.  Need an idea for thoughtfulness? Try one of these (and note how easy and simple being thoughtful is!):

The topic for #WordWednesday is keeping your word. Take today to consider if you are being true to yourself and others by keeping your word. Here are a couple of articles that can help you in your considerations and remind you of the value of your word.  Here are 5 reasons to do what you say you will do Keeping your word

Trivia. It's what's good for your mental health. I love trivia. I'm mostly no good at it but I love it all the same. Turns out that being good at it isn't necessarily the point - if I don't care about winning that is. It's just good for my brain to stay active! So work those brain cells a little today and see if you can tackle this trivia question for the day.

I'm bad with money. I understand the value of saving it and all that. I understand the need to steward it well so we can pay our bills and feed our children and all that. I do, I understand. But I'm really bad with it nonetheless. It's a thorn in the side of my marriage. And after 22 years of marriage my hub and I have come to a place where I try - I fail - and I try again. And he does his best to juggle it all. It's not ideal - y'all don't need to tell me that. So for me to enter into the topic of money is a bit laughable but it's my attempt to try (see above cycle I mention *grin*). Here's what I do believe about money for sure - it's a balancing act. To have money and to hoard it is just as bad as spending it all and having none for necessities. There's a balance to be lived.  Out of balance means you are controlled by money rather than being in control of it yourself. How do you think about money? (Rhetorical question - you don't

Guess what? Being silly is good for your career and your creativity and getting things done! So get silly! Really. Get silly so you can get working.  When you get silly your brain reacts by producing connectivity patterns involved in sound association, thinking and visual imagery. And those things help you think more creatively and productively about your work. (source) So see? Being silly is actually necessary to your career. *wink*

Today's reading:  The Sabbath: An Ancient Vehicle For Social Progress

How do families impact society? Or do they? If I'm asking the question then you probably can guess the answer is yes, they do impact society. Today's family friday is about the importance of family on our societies.  The strength, or weakness, of our society starts with the family. Why the family? Because it is the family where people start. It's where we find ourselves - our personalities, our characters, our values. It's where we learn, first, how to interact with other people and how to work in a group as well as individually. The family is where we learn how to be a support to someone and how to be supported by someone. Our families are where we learn how to have emotions in ways that are healthy, where we learn to respond to crisis'.   (source) When we have people come from weakened family structures we have a society that is weakened. This is because we all contribute to our society with our personalities, characters, values, and how we h