Welcome friends, as always. I am so grateful you’re here. I love that you’re here. If you’re loving the podcast, will you review it and rate it and. Share it with your friends. That would be the biggest gift you could do for me. I’ve had some big goals on growing the podcast this year and just getting it to more lost parents so that they can learn how to manage their minds and manage their grief and live life after loss.

I would love if you would do that. I have a special episode. I’m calling it a bonus episode. You’re not gonna learn any tools or any grief stuff today. I just thought, you know, I talk a lot about my story and kind of share a lot on the podcast, but there’s a lot I don’t share and I just thought it would be fun to share some of my favorite things I was thinking about.

That amazing song and sound of music. These are a few of my favorite things and like favorite things, parties. I have some friends that love to do favorite things, parties where they bring everything they like and talk about it and share and get to know each other. I. Uh, and then of course, I can’t forget Oprah’s favorite things around this time of year.

She would always have, well, I guess a little closer to Christmas, but she would do an amazing favorite things show and give away so much stuff. But yeah, I just thought why not get to know each other better? And I hope as you listen to some of my favorite things, here’s my goal for you. I want you to think of your favorite things.

As I answer these questions. Why don’t you answer them for yourselves? I actually, as I was getting ready for this, looked online and there are just lists and lists and lists of favorite things, questions, and I think. We need a little bit more joy and fun. And when we talk about our favorite things, it kind of, you can’t help but smile.

I have just been smiling, getting ready for this. It’s been fun for me. But ask your partner, ask your kids. Bring these to the dinner table. Um, bring these to work and just get to know people better. And I don’t know, I think it’s just a really fun thing to learn about each other. And also, I have to say, I have a hard time picking favorites because I have a lot of things, like if anyone ever says, what’s your favorite movie?

I kind of look like a deer in the headlights because there’s so many for different reasons. But I’m gonna try to just give my quick and simple answers here so you can get to know me better. But like I said, let’s, uh, Let’s all do this. Let’s, let’s bring a little cheer and a little joy and talk about our favorite things, and then treat yourself if you are going through these questions or lists, or you’re thinking, what is my favorite dessert?

Why not go get it? Or what’s your favorite? I saw one of the questions was, what’s your favorite lunchbox treat, and why don’t you go get it? Go get it for yourself. Go experience it. Go do the things that are your favorite. Cuz I don’t think we do them enough. All right, I’m gonna start with my list. I’ve got 15 questions.

I’m gonna answer them and I want you to come over to Instagram. I am at Amy dot Smooth Stone’s Coaching, and we’re gonna be talking about this and you can, yeah, I’d love to hear your favorite things. I’d love to get your input and just open up a conversation because why not? I’d love to get to know you better.

Number one, what’s your favorite tattoo, if you have any? I do not have any. Uh, I. Yeah, I don’t have any tattoos. I think that it’s amazing. I love, there’s a lot of beautiful baby lost memorial tattoos. If I was gonna get one, I probably would get a really simple, small one, uh, to remember my babies, or I also actually love a lot of people.

I grew up in Canada and a lot of people have a little made in Canada with the maple leaf, like on their hip. I. Thought I might do that at one point. Uh, my favorite car to drive this one, I’m just gonna be basic mom. I love my Honda Odyssey minivan. I think minivans, I will get on a soapbox. I think minivans are the most amazing thing for what they are made for.

If you are hauling kids around, you need a minivan. It’s the best like stop messing around with the SUVs and the crossovers and like, Moving those seats around and I just get a minivan like, let go of your pride, let go of your beliefs. Minivans are the best. My favorite sports team. I gotta say the by U Cougars.

Anything. Yeah, so Brigham Young University, I went to that school. I love it. Uh, they do not always win. They’re just always disappointing, but also really fun and so fun to go to games. And when my husband and I were dating, we went to tons of games because we had the students Sport Pass and it was free.

And so we, we had a great, great time with our friends at all the b BYU games. Number four. My favorite goal I’m currently working on, Ooh, this is, yeah, I, I saw this question. I thought, wow, I am a life coach, and I talk a lot about goals and I really have not set my goals for next year, but right now one of my favorite goals is just to.

Um, build my confidence and learn a lot more about trauma so I can help my clients even more. Like, I think thought work is amazing, but adding that trauma piece is gonna be even better. So if you follow me on Instagram, you saw, I just bought like four amazing books on trauma that I’m excited to, uh, read and dive into, but really excited for the new year and what I have coming up.

So you gotta keep listening and you will hear all about that. My favorite language, this is a good question. I, I love. French. So I grew up in Canada where we, everybody learns French to some degree. I took a lot of French all the way through high school. And then my dad lives in Switzerland and my parents lived in Quebec.

And so French has always been a part of my life. And, um, my husband speaks Spanish and he speaks Chinese. And I think Chinese would be really fun. It is really hard. He. Uh, he was able to learn it with the military, so he spent actually a year and a half learning Chinese, and I think that would be really fun to learn how to speak.

My favorite vacation, this one, it was, There’s been a lot of good ones, but I have to say for my 10th anniversary, I went with my husband on a cruise to the, it was called the Southern Caribbean. So we started in Puerto Rico. We flew to Puerto Rico. We got on the cruise ship, and then we went down and every day we got to go to another island.

There was only one day when we were at sea, and that was the last day when we were coming home. We went to St. Croix, St. Kitts, Grenada. I can’t remember all the other ones, St. Thomas, but it was. Really, really fun and we got to do some really fun things. We rented scooters one day and went all around St.

Kitts, which is an amazing little island. The people are so kind, and we got caught in like this huge rainstorm on these scooters and it’s just something I’m always gonna remember. So that was just such a fun trip and it was the first time I’d ever left my kids and it was actually before Lauren died, so we had four.

Little girls at home and it was the first time I left them for a week, so that was a big deal. Okay. My favorite Tear jerker movie. This one? Well, there’s a lot. There’s some movies I just always cry at, but I think PS I Love You is one of my favorite grief movies. I think that it shows grief really well and doesn’t just gloss over it like you’re sad for one minute and then you’re just fine.

Like it really shows a lot of the process and I always just, I will cry at that movie for sure. My favorite pet now I have had, growing up we had a lot of cats. We have a dog now, but I gotta say my favorite pet ever has been our chickens. Two different times. We have had chickens and chicken coops, but we have moved from those places.

And at the moment, I don’t have chickens, but I love having chickens. They are so fun. They’re so cute. When they’re little, they don’t stay little very long. They turn into ugly teenager chickens and they’re jumping all over the place and they’re kind of smelly and messy, but they are so sweet. And if you.

Like love on them. They will love you. And we just had the sweetest chickens and they’re also really low maintenance. I built these cool like feeders and waterers that would last about a week, and so I love that they’re kind of low maintenance. I don’t have to, you know, deal with them too much. They don’t.

Make it hard to travel or anything, and people are always happy to take care of your chickens and get free eggs. So I, yeah, I loved having chickens and I think if we get a chance to do it, I would do it again. Right now we have a little dog that I’m pretty sure would not, I don’t know if the dog and the chickens would get along very well.

Uh, so we haven’t done it, but definitely. It is something I want to do. I also love knowing that my eggs were coming from super happy, well cared for chickens cause I just have a, just a soft heart for animals. And yeah, I just love knowing that my chickens and my eggs were very, very happy and well taken care of.

Okay. Is your favorite ice cream or cake? I definitely will choose cake in particular, I have a friend who has a cake business and she makes this fresh lemon with raspberry filling cake, and it is amazing. So I would probably choose that lemon raspberry cake any day of the week. Actually, sometimes I’ve ordered it for my own birthday.

Which is nice. I highly recommend just getting the cake you want for your birthday. My favorite shoes, I gotta say barefoot or flip flops. Uh, I just, yeah, I would rather not wear shoes at all, if possible. Even in the winter. Sometimes I wear my flip flops and people think I’m crazy. But yeah, I just would rather be barefoot.

My favorite makeup item I. I have to say Chapstick, I just, is that a makeup item? I don’t know. Maybe tinted lip bal. But yeah, I, I love getting dressed up sometimes, but generally I’m home. I work from home. I’m with my kids. Like if I don’t have to put makeup on, I’m not gonna do it. My favorite concert, I have to say.

I took my daughters to a 21 pilots concert a few years ago. I must have been right before Covid, but they, well, my oldest daughter really, really loved 21 pilots, and we got tickets to the show. We were so excited and I took them. And I have to say, they put on a really, really amazing show. I wasn’t a huge fan, but you know, it grew on me and we listened to a lot of the music as we got ready to go to the concert and.

Yeah, I just think they did an amazing, amazing job at that concert. It was so fun. And I actually told my girls, I said, that’s kind of gonna be hard to top as your first concert. It was probably one of the best concerts I’ve been to. Really, really fun. My favorite school subject. I was a pretty much a big nerd in school.

I loved everything, uh, in high school. I loved chemistry. I actually thought about becoming a chemical engineer until I found out what that actually meant. It wasn’t what I was thinking, uh, but I loved. Doing science experiments. I loved all of that. And then in college I actually as a recreation major, which don’t knock it, it is a really cool major cuz I got to take so many different classes and I had a class on survival, which was really fun.

And I took like a psychology class where we taught chicks how to peck a.to get food and that was really fun. But yeah, I just love learning. Anything. So I don’t know if I could pick a favorite school subject, but everything I’ve learned has been amazing. I would say my worst was, I took calculus in the summer, which was like a six week course.

We had to do it like two hours a day and I, yeah, zero stars do not recommend. That was, that was rough. Especially for someone that’s used to getting a’s. I did not get an A in that class. It was hard and I was a newlywed and it just, it didn’t work. Okay. My favorite family memory, there are so many because, yeah, we do a lot of stuff with our family, but I gotta say my most recent favorite family memory is right before my daughter got married in September, we all went up to where she was getting married, uh, near.

Her husband’s family and we were staying at a hotel altogether and we went out to get ice cream and we found this local super cute ice cream shop and we sat outside and it was like warm, but like the perfect evening temperature. It was probably eight 30 at night and we just went to go get ice cream as a family before she went off and got married and kind of everything changes and.

That was really fun. And you know, we took a picture and we have that and I’m so, so glad we could go and do that. And that’s a great family memory. Okay. And then my last question that I pulled out of these, uh, like 200 favorite things, questions, is what is your favorite job and. I gotta say, so my first job was a subway sandwich artist, and I was really, really good at it.

I’ve had a few jobs here and there. Of course, I love being a mom. That’s been the main job I’ve had for most of my life. But being a life coach is my absolute favorite job. I can’t even tell you guys how much I love it. I love using the model. I love being just a safe place for people to bring their grief and their struggles, and also their joy and their celebration.

I. I love helping my pregnancy after lost clients. I love when I get pictures of new little babies. It’s my most favorite, most joyous thing, and I love when my clients sometimes have to send me the news that they’ve been through another loss and that I can be there for them and help them, and help them see that this isn’t the end.

Like they’re gonna make it through this and they don’t have to do it alone. I love learning about the brain and thought work, and I love making big, big goals. I love watching my clients make big goals and achieve them. I, I love the growth that it’s given me personally and the growth I get to see in my clients.

I am like a total life coaching nerd at this point. I know sometimes there’s like some criticism around life coaching or feel like it’s a little. Like too much, but I just, I love my job. I love making this podcast. I love even writing Instagram posts or showing up in stories and talking to you. It is my favorite, and I want you to recognize your favorites and find your favorites again, or find new favorites because.

Life is meant to be lived, and you gotta draw out the goodness in your life, even when it’s hard. I, I just can’t even, I mean, I could say Lauren’s casket was my favorite. It was the cutest, prettiest casket ever, and I’m so grateful for it. Right? But really, I just want you to know that you are also my favorite.

Getting to talk to lost parents every day is my favorite, and it’s what I’m here to do. So if you have been thinking about coaching, you need to do it. I have some one-on-one, one-on-one spots open, and I also have peace in my pocket. If you start right now, you’re gonna get help all throughout the holidays and don’t we all need a little bit of support through the holidays and.

What’s even better is it’s only $97. It is less than an air fryer. I know you all have an air fryer. You got your eyeball on? Yeah, come do peace of my pocket or come do one-on-one coaching. If you feel like that’s the right fit for you, both are gonna get you amazing results. Both are going to be the support you need.

Just say yes to you and give yourself that gift. I hope that you. We’ll soon be saying that life coaching is your favorite too. I’ll see you next time. Are you tired of feeling like your baby was somehow your fault? Go to coaching com and get my free mini course. How to Stop Blaming Yourself After Loss.