Holidays – Page 13 – FindYourBuriedTreasure

Love and loss were intertwined this Christmas

My brother-in-law passed away on December 23. He had been very sick for quite a while, and as Christmas approached, we learned that he wasn’t expected to live much longer. That doesn’t make it any easier to accept or to live with when it happens, especially when it’s around the holidays. “I was hoping so much that he’d be able to hang on till Christmas,” my sister sobbed when she called us from the hospital. We were prepared to drop or significantly alter our holiday [...]

By bettyliedtke|January 11th, 2013|Columns, Family, Health and Well-being, Holidays, Professional Speaking|Comments Off

Success in the New Year will come 15 minutes at a time

My New Year’s Resolution is going to take exactly 15 minutes to complete. The catch is that it’s going to take 15 minutes on each and every day in 2013. I’m taking the 15-minute number from an organizing and decluttering expert who calls herself FlyLady, and who insists that you can do anything for 15 minutes. And she’s right. No matter how busy you are, how many projects or activities you’re juggling, or how exhausted you may be by the end of the day, you [...]

By bettyliedtke|December 28th, 2012|Columns, Holidays|Comments Off

Corrections for Christmas songs and symbols

The StarTribune published an article last week about Christmas music. The point of the article was that most people today are annoyed with how early, how often, and how much they are assaulted with the sound of holiday music in stores, on the radio, and pretty much everywhere they go throughout the months of November and December. What caught my eye and captured my attention most, however, was a little fine-print detail you almost had to read between the lines to see. The titles and [...]

By bettyliedtke|December 21st, 2012|Columns, Holidays, Music/Singing|2 Comments

Guess who’s coming to your holiday dinner?

If you were having a dinner party and could invite four people from anywhere and anytime in history, who would be on your guest list, and where would you hold the dinner? Every once in a while, I’ve had to answer questions similar to this – usually in a Toastmasters Table Topics session or contest. But this time, it was during a Holiday Happy Hour with a writing group I belong to. There are actually two separate groups, because the first one was growing too [...]

By bettyliedtke|December 14th, 2012|Columns, Holidays, Quotes and Sayings, Toastmasters, Writing|6 Comments

A foggy morning clears the air

It was extremely and unseasonably foggy last Sunday morning – the kind of fog that feels surreal if you’re out driving in it because at times it is so thick that you can’t see anything around you. Even the deacon who delivered the sermon at Mass commented on it, noting that he had to be extra careful while driving to church from his home that morning. “What it really did,” he said, “was make me slow down.” He went on to talk about what a [...]

By bettyliedtke|December 7th, 2012|Columns, Family, Holidays, Values|3 Comments

What to do when it’s difficult to give thanks

“Finding the Treasure in Our Gifts from God.” That was the title of my speaking program in Uganda this year, and it’s one I’ve been invited to present several times since coming back to the States. Part of the program focuses on our talents and traits – the skills and abilities that come naturally to us that we don’t always appreciate and sometimes don’t even realize that we have. Another part of the program calls attention to the gifts that are all around us – [...]

By bettyliedtke|November 22nd, 2012|Columns, Holidays, Professional Speaking, Uganda|Comments Off

Washing of feet much more than a symbol

Wash your feet. That’s probably not something you hear or say very often. We wear shoes and socks much of the time, and most of the walking we do is indoors or on paved roads and parking lots. You probably wash your feet when you take your shower every day, but most likely you don’t think about it even then. You just do it. “Washing of the feet,” however, is something many of us think about during the Easter season – especially on Holy Thursday, [...]

By bettyliedtke|April 6th, 2012|Columns, Holidays, Uganda|Comments Off

Variety is the spice of life and weekend parties

I attended a Bridal Shower on Saturday, and a Super Bowl party on Sunday, so last weekend was especially social and enjoyable. The shower felt almost like a high school reunion. Well, more like a twist on a high school reunion. The bride-to-be is the daughter of a dear friend of mine, someone I met when my family first moved to Chanhassen almost thirteen years ago. We met through volunteer work at the middle school and the high school in which our kids were enrolled, [...]

By bettyliedtke|February 10th, 2012|Columns, Family, Holidays|Comments Off

How will YOU change the world?

“Let this be the year that you change the world.” These are the words that were going through my mind when I woke up on Christmas morning. This is something that happens every once in a while – I wake up in the morning, and by the time I’m fully conscious, which is just a second or two later, I realize that there’s a phrase or sentence repeating itself in my brain. Sometimes it’s a line from a song, and I find myself thinking back [...]

By bettyliedtke|January 6th, 2012|Coaching, Columns, Holidays, Uganda|Comments Off

First response to New Year’s Resolution

My New Year’s Resolution for 2012 is to become a First Responder. This doesn’t mean I’m going to train to be a police officer, fire fighter, or EMT – the people equipped to be the first ones on the scene of an accident or other emergency. Instead it means I’m going to train myself to get in the habit of responding immediately when I get an invitation, request, or a question from someone in person, by mail, or by email. What it really means is [...]

By bettyliedtke|December 30th, 2011|Accountability, Columns, Holidays|Comments Off

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