My sister posted a link to an article on learning from failure on her blog.  It really made me think about the way I praise my children.  I will no longer tell my boys they are smart even though they are.  From now on they are “such hard workers” or “worked really hard on that”.  Read the article here if you’re interested.  I promise it’s worth your time, especially if you have kids.  If you don’t it’s worth reading for yourself.

(Seriously, how cute is she?)

This week I was also reminded of one of my favorite quotes.  Marjorie Pay Hinckley  – “I don’t want to drive up to the pearly gates in a shiny sports car, wearing beautifully, tailored clothes, my hair expertly coiffed, and with long, perfectly manicured fingernails. I want to drive up in a station wagon that has mud on the wheels from taking kids to scout camp. I want to be there with a smudge of peanut butter on my shirt from making sandwiches for a sick neighbors children. I want to be there with a little dirt under my fingernails from helping to weed someone’s garden. I want to be there with children’s sticky kisses on my cheeks and the tears of a friend on my shoulder. I want the Lord to know I was really here and that I really lived.”  I read this quote for the first time many years ago and have never forgotten it.  It truly is the kind of person I strive to be.