Personal

18 04, 2016

Reaching Your Potential

By Shelly and Rich Howard|2017-03-06T11:16:05-07:00April 18th, 2016|Family Culture, Letters, Marriage, Parenting, Personal|

For those of you who know us, we are nuts (mostly Rich) about goal setting, planning objectives, formulating mission statements, etc.. for ourselves individually and collectively for our family. And while we enjoy these kind of developmental/growth tools (mostly Rich), they are basically tactical and action oriented activities that serve the underlying message of reaching one’s potential. We describe and define reaching your potential as being “the best you” that you are capable of being [...]

4 04, 2016

Freedom To Grow

By Shelly and Rich Howard|2017-06-20T07:25:16-06:00April 4th, 2016|Letters, Parenting, Personal, Relationship|

Do you give your children the freedom to fail or make mistakes? Or more appropriately, do you allow them freedom to grow with personal responsibility and ownership? Whether you are a child or an adult, failure is not failure if you learn and grow from it. As parents, it’s especially difficult for us to see our children suffer frustration, experience emotional pain or the discomfort that comes with failing or making mistakes. However, in order [...]

21 03, 2016

Take Five

By Shelly and Rich Howard|2017-03-06T11:16:05-07:00March 21st, 2016|Family Culture, Letters, Personal, Relationship|

In our Five Minute Warning letter, we discussed the idea of creating an environment to succeed by establishing a time frame for obeying and honoring relationships through offering a window of compliance. Similar to that idea, last summer, a dear friend of ours from Trevor’s baseball team shared with us a pearl of wisdom she had heard in a sermon at her church and how she creatively applied it in her family – Take Five. [...]

15 03, 2016

Standards in your Oyster

By Lis and Dave Marr|2017-03-06T11:16:05-07:00March 15th, 2016|Family Culture, Personal, Relationship|

This issue of getting the kids involved in family chores and what to pay them for allowance, if any, was a confusing bit of parenting for the Marr family. Now that the kids are grown and we can reevaluate our handiwork, we can validate some of our decisions and might revise others. Family chores are life’s maintenance activities that must get done in order to have a reasonably orderly life. As always, in raising children, [...]

7 03, 2016

Actionless Intentions

By Shelly and Rich Howard|2016-03-12T08:39:10-07:00March 7th, 2016|Letters, Parenting, Personal, Relationship|

“The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” ― Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) / Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (1091-1153) This might be a bit overstated for our topic today, but it does drive home the point. How many times have we said this: Someday I’m going to… Once I get through this, I’m going to… This spring I’m going to… I’ll do it next time… …and then it never happens. You don’t follow through or, [...]

29 02, 2016

So Dave Spanked Him

By Lis and Dave Marr|2016-02-29T20:56:51-07:00February 29th, 2016|Parenting, Personal, Relationship|

After Dave spanked our son for doing nothing other than being a little boy, he came back to bed totally defeated. “I have no idea what I’m doing.” Lis was pregnant with Michelle and was due in a month. So in anticipation of the new arrival, we moved Daniel to a ‘big boy bed’ well in advance so he didn’t feel kicked out by his sibling. The first night Daniel got out of bed repeatedly. [...]

8 02, 2016

Temperaments

By Shelly and Rich Howard|2017-03-06T11:16:05-07:00February 8th, 2016|Letters, Marriage, Parenting, Personal, Relationship|

Have you ever considered the temperaments or taken a temperament test? Shelly and Trevor are Phlegmatic while Rich and Alex are Choleric. These are the temperaments in our family. Like love languages, temperaments are a tool that help us to describe our emotional/personality characteristics. We have found that knowing our own temperament and our boys’ temperaments has been very helpful in our parenting and understanding some of the dynamics in our relationships. We have also [...]

2 02, 2016

“Me Always, You Never”

By Lis and Dave Marr|2017-03-06T11:16:05-07:00February 2nd, 2016|Parenting, Personal, Relationship|

Disagreements are a part of married life. Often they are temporary misperceptions of intent and priority. Sometimes little irritations accumulate over time and are like small items not put away until you look around and see that things are a mess. These little irritations can easily be blown out of proportion where discussions can lead to accusations of character flaws, indifference to shared priorities, and even loss of love. Our early marriage went down this [...]

27 01, 2016

Private World

By Shelly and Rich Howard|2017-06-20T07:23:35-06:00January 27th, 2016|Parenting, Personal, Relationship|

One of the greatest joys you can experience as a parent is when your child lets you into their private world. What is the private world? It is a special place where we hold deeper thoughts, treasured memories, and we feel the most vulnerable. It is the essence of who we are. The private world is what we share with our spouse and only our closest, most trusted friends. As our children begin to grow [...]

19 01, 2016

Male Leadership Guide

By Lis and Dave Marr|2017-03-06T11:16:05-07:00January 19th, 2016|Letters, Personal|

Just Dave writing today. One of the major interests Lis and I have is doing what we can to help marriages strengthen and succeed. These OneFamily letters from us and the Howards are examples of that. The intent is to provide you with the combined 25 years in leading parenting classes and the combined 52 years of marriage that somehow we can come up with a thought or two that will make your lives more [...]