Fab 5: Best Apps for Your Family

Now that games, scriptures and grocery lists can all fit in one device in our pockets, we've tracked down the very best apps to help your kids, your spouse and your whole family get more in synch--and have more fun!

There are tons of great apps out there that can enhance your life—by providing inspiration or entertainment or by helping you live more efficiently. Here are a few of my top recommendations. If you have apps that have changed your life for the better, let us know about them! Email schristley@ldsliving.com to share how you use them.

1. For everyone:  LDS Temple Passport App

The app allows you to collect "passport stamps" for temples you've visited, keep track of temple attendance and journal about experiences there, learn cool temple facts, and access temple schedules and directions. Automatically updates as new temples are completed or announced. Available for $1.99.

2. For Women: Wunderlist

Three Degrees of Donny Osmond

Mormondom can be pretty small, but just how small is it? How many links does it take to connect yourself with beloved LDS celebrity Donny Osmond?
                                       Donny Osmond, photo from IMDb

This game might sound familiar to some. Does Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon ring a bell? For those of you who aren't familiar with it, in 1994 actor Kevin Bacon gave an interview in which he said he had worked with everyone in Hollywood or someone who's worked with them. Soon afterward, the game of connecting various people to Kevin Bacon in as few links as possible became something of a cultural phenomenon. Bacon even appeared in a Visa commercial that parodied the game. In the commercial, Bacon wants to write a check, but the clerk asks for his ID, which he does not have. Bacon leaves and returns with a group of people, then says to the clerk, "Okay, I was in a movie with an extra, Eunice, whose hairdresser, Wayne, attended Sunday school with Father O'Neill, who plays racquetball with Dr. Sanjay, who recently removed the appendix of Kim, who dumped you sophomore year. So you see, we're practically brothers." (If you want to check it out for yourself, search the name of any actor in Hollywood with "Bacon number" after on Google and you'll find out how they're connected.)

The Power of Starting Something Stupid: First Two Chapters Free Online

These chapters are excerpted from The Power of Starting Something Stupid: How to Crush Fear, Make Dreams Happen, and Live Without Regret, by Richie Norton.

Chapter 1
What You Must Know First: Gavin’s Law

A decision had to be made. The impossible decision.

A nurse quietly entered the room and injected a dose of epinephrine into his I.V. I wouldn’t have noticed her, except that when she left, she slid the glass door closed behind her and drew the outer curtain for our privacy.

We were alone. After days and days of incessant attention by multiple doctors and hospital staff, the room was completely quiet. Quiet, that is, aside from the gentle rise and fall of the ventilator and the soft beep, beep, beep of the heart monitor.

Adrenaline coursed madly through my veins. The room spun around me as I sat, disoriented to the point of nausea, on a stool beside his bed. I gripped the bed rail to keep from tipping over. But I wasn’t watching him. My eyes were glued to her as she fell into the chair in the corner of the room and wept, chest heaving, face pressed hard into her hands.

“This is a decision we shouldn’t have to make,” she said almost imperceptibly, as she ran her hands frantically through her hair, pulling it tight away from her face.

Agony. There wasn’t any other word. I took her hands in mine and looked deeply into her eyes, and together, we made the impossible decision: Do not resuscitate.

Those were the wee hours of the morning on January 7, 2010.

Two Years Earlier

On a sunny Hawaiian day, in the spring of 2007, Gavin took a gray, plastic container and placed his journals, a beat-up card containing the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi, and a few other precious possessions inside. He sealed the box and labeled it “To be opened 2027.” He took a Sharpie and adorned his treasure chest with a clever little drawing of a pirate and a short note to himself that read, “Hello, old man Gavin!”

Marriage & the Slippery Slope of Social Media

Couples are finding themselves careening down a slippery slope of texting, chatting, posting, and creating intimate connections that are often inappropriate. Here is how to safeguard your marriage.

It was a typical day in my couples counseling practice. I listened to a heartbroken spouse tearfully share her pain regarding what her husband had done. She had just discovered he had been cheating on her for the past six months with one of his old high school girlfriends. “How did this happen?” I asked the husband. He began to cry as well. He didn’t  understand how it happened. He mentioned making jokes with the woman on a social media site one day when he saw her post something humorous. From there he described a tale of secrecy that moved to fullblown sexual indiscretions. His wife found out because he left his phone on with one of her messages loaded.