Happy things, and quotes from Charles' scriptures.

by Anna Arnett

To quote Randy Pausch again, "Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want." (Or something like that.)  Today I got more experience than I'd hoped for.  The day started out fine.  By noon I'd finished my pressing chores and prepared to blog.  After debating on a subject for some time, I named several, but really finished only one.  Handwritten notes in my husband's large-print triple combination, the one he used on our temple mission in Australia, 1987-89.

I drafted my blog, then edited it three times, and felt immensely pleased. However, in the editing, I somehow gained a second copy.  No problem.  I'd delete one of them.  That's when I got EXPERIENCE.  I used the copy and delete buttons, but when I went to post, I found everything gone.  My paste gave me only a short paragraph I'd edited to a different spot.

So what did I do?  I went shopping and bought a new skirt.  For the next six hours I did only what I felt like doing, which was practically nothing.  Now, at bedtime, my conscience is getting the best of me, and I'm starting my blog all over again.  I hope to finish by midnight.

Four subjects I wanted to brag about, until I decided bragging is a form of pride and pride is a sin.  So I only mentioned them as family things I'm happy about or (in terms Heavenly Father used when 'bragging' about his Son)  about which "I am well pleased."  These things were:  

(1) Mark's "Baby Boomerang" will be showing at the Phoenix Film Festival Monday, April 5.  Yippee. 

(2) Paul arranged for the AZ Liberators group (B-24 vets and families) luncheon to be at the Diamondback stadium with publicity at the game, and some ticket rebate donated to the Arnett Institute (our non-profit historical organization, with emphasis on the non). 

(3) Grandson Christopher's innovative membership day spa is about to open a second location, this one in Gilbert.  

(4) My three oldest are still putting together presentations on their January re-enactment of the Prisoner of War march from Stalag Luft III, now back in Poland, to Spremberg, Germany -- a distance of over sixty miles -- with a dozen other 'kriegie kids' whose fathers or grandfathers had covered in 1945, the coldest days on record, in a night, a day, and a second night.  This group took three days with hotel stops and a chartered bus tagging along behind.  Nevertheless, I'm not only pleased with them, but a trifle envious.  "Mom, you'd never have made it."  (Did I blog about this before, or only think about it?)

If any of you want to know more about the any of the above, just ask with a comment and, since I love comments, I promise to answer in whatever detail you ask for.  I'll probably opt for email answers.  After all, how many (other than that particular blog's author) go back to old blogs and read all the comments?  I'd really like to know.  Wouldn't you?  I'd hope to be pleasantly surprised.

Now for the main blog.  Actually, I only discovered these quotes this morning.  I use my own scriptures. I'm transcribing them,  just as I found them, the ten numbered ones on the the inside of the back cover, others scattered on the front few pages, wherever he found a blank spot.

1.  If we never start, we will never succeed.  If we never quit, we will never fail.

2.  A long life may not be good enough, but a good life is always long enough.  Charles W. Arnett.  These were words intended for comfort, written to Reg and Daisy Boulton upon notification of the death of their daughter Kathy McMullin, in giving birth to her second child.  The child also did not survive.

3.  What you are to be, you are now becoming.

4.  "It ain't what a man don't know that makes him a fool, it's what he knows that ain't so."  (Edmonds, "Through Temple Doors," p. 75) - Josh Billings

5.  Truth is that which temporarily has the appearance of permanence."  Nat'l mag. 1st place (the Farm Magazine, Oct 1927)

Truth is knowledge of things as they are, as they were, and as they are to come. - Joseph Smith.

6.  The church we do not want to be in:

   a.  Museum style - where you go only as a spectator.

   b. Hairdresser style - where they split every hair four ways.

   c.  Service station style - where you go just to get filled  up.

   d.  Sleeping car style - where the passengers don't want to be disturbed.

   e.  Refrigerator style - where the chill drives out newcomers.

7.  It is better to aim for the stars and miss it than to aim for the gutter and hit it.

8.  I believe all I read in the Bible that I can understand; the rest I accept on faith -- Abraham Lincoln.

9.  A man who submits against his will is of the same opinion still.

10.  It is easy to discipline without love and it is easy to love without discipline, but it is required of us to discipline with love and love with discipline.

"Stand up for freedom, no matter what the cost.  It can save your soul and maybe your country."  Pres. Ezra Taft Benson

"Half the world is composed of those who have something to say and can't, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it." - Robert Frost

We cannot become celestialized by being good, but by doing good. - doug Howard

1877 times, "And it came to pass . . . "

"The opportunity for service seldom, if ever, comes at a convenient time."  CWA

No one nor any thing can make you angry unless you choose to let it.

All of us want to succeed; some want to succeed badly enough to work for it.

The flowers of all our tomorrows are in the seeds of today.

Those who bear sunshine to the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves.

Eternal progression takes us to perfection.

It's wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing things - Thomas Jefferson

The bathtub was invented in 1840, and the telephone in 1876.  Just imagine those wonderful 36 years of being able to take a bath without the phone ringing.