It takes imagination to help others.  Your creativity grows as you go an extra distance on a regular basis.
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Plus, there’s just no tellin’ what those you help are thinking as they experience the unexpected moment of your love that can rearrange their narrative, their life.

- You can hold the door - maybe for a few people before you proceed.
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- You can smile and greet everyone as you go through your day.  (Holidays make it particularly easy - try saying ‘Have a great Labor Day weekend!’ to everyone you encounter on the days around this holiday.  They will inevitably smile back and return the happy.  And if someone doesn’t, maybe - just maybe - you’ve REALLY left a huge dose of love in their heart that they needed desperately.)

• You can let the person with only a couple of items go before you in line, or provide the few coins the person in front of you is short, so they don’t have to put an item back.
• You can compliment a harried (or any) store clerk on her hair, or jewelry, or dress, or smile…
• You can pick up something dropped for someone.
• You can stop and talk a little extra to a coworker, asking them about their weekend.

​To your imagination and CREATIVITY as they re-arrange someone’s day and life,

Not all orthodontics courses are the same. Some are super-charged, with lots of power and insight about a subject that deceptively appears to be slow and simple. Dr Chris Baker explains. ​

Here it is August, and time to begin planning and working on some ways to share love over the upcoming winter holidays.

For starters, every year, we bake a bunch of wonderful Sour Cream Coffee Cakes - many actually - preparing for our Christmastime love fest.

After baking, cooling, wrapping and freezing, we have a freezer full of gifts.
Then, beginning around Thanksgiving, we have fun delivering them and surprising folks - like: 

• the tall smiling friendly lady at the grocery who bids everyone goodbye, while I am sure she was placed there to observe for folks who may be taking things without paying.  Yet, she seems, with aplomb, to emanate that her purpose is to make every customer leaving, happy.  
• the lady at our local warehouse club store who stands for her shift all day, checking the receipts and baskets of the customers leaving.  She makes it seem her joy to be there, though one leg is noticeably shorter than the other and her posture severely affected. (May even be have CP.)   One would assume her back would hurt. But no complaint, only friendly greetings.
• the nursing staff at the rehab center where our elderly ill friend is being cared for.
• the mom and pop owners of a small local restaurant, who work tirelessly and long hours, to make it a wonderful place to get a bite to eat, while they share loving care with everyone.
• the housekeeper at a local office who is always ready to give a smile and wonderful energy.

And, it changes me and it changes Claude, as we surprise and gift these precious souls in our spectrum.  
Loving you changes us too,

Years ago there were no cart corrals at the grocery store.  There were people who walked you and your cart to your car, and returned the cart.  
Sometimes now, we find carts that folks leave in the parking spots or between rather than taking them to the corral. Look at the opportunities to teach your children to pay it forward!

• You can park, then take a wayward cart with you into the store and use it.
• You can be sure your cart is safely in the stall, not able to roll into a car.
• You can notice someone who could use help with their cart - a mom with a small child who she is putting into the carseat, an elderly person, a person with limited ability to maneuver, or anyone, for that matter.
• You might even help those folks load their groceries into their car, then help with the cart.

Think of how you feel, and how your children learn, when you model these opportunities to love and care for others.  
Send your teenager to return your cart to the store if you’ve parked where there are no corrals, or walk with your younger child and do so yourself.
Teach your children well.  Transform their experiences. To Life!!
Le Chaim,

Orthodontics is one area of dentistry where the patient WANTS treatment. BUT, that can change if unexpected results occur. Here's how to prepare. ​

Worry is thinking negative thoughts over and over.  

We all engage in it.

Over time it can change who you are.  Not for the better.

"Will all your worries add a single moment to your life?"   ~ Matthew 6:27

Today, if you find yourself worrying, work to delete that thought and replace it with something you are grateful for.  Keep doing it.  

Get the worry on the run, feel ever so much better.  Extend your life.
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Let me start:  I am grateful for you!

Claude and I were in Sam’s Club the other day and saw a boy, about 10 years old, and his mom.  The boy, sniffing and wheezing, looked longingly at the end-cap display of candies. 
He asked mom to buy them.  She said yes.  The genuine smile of happiness on the boy’s face was huge.  He felt happy.   
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Thinking to myself of the labeled many ingredients like refined sugar and high fructose corn syrup, that his happiness was unknowingly about ingredients that, for him, were toxic.  
 
Let us be a model for our children. 

Let us teach them through our food choices, and reading labels, to avoid poison in our foods.  And that will keep us healthier for longer, for our children - and keep them healthier, too.