We’re the Woodhouse family. We’re members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Our family is very busy. The activities each week make your head spin. We get home at the end of the day, and we collapse as we high-five each other and say, “We made it through another day.”

We haven’t done this in awhile. I love my parents so much. I feel really blessed to be raised in the Church, because I like that they know the gospel, they live the gospel and teach us the gospel. But they’re still realistic about the world and what we live in, and pretty understanding. I always feel like I can talk to them. I think the thing that keeps our family going is knowing that we’re not only for this life, but that we’ll be together in the next life. Those relationships we have now will continue on. The friendships and love we have will not end here. Every day, decisions they make will affect our family— not only them individually, but it will affect our family as a whole. I feel like my parents taught us how to be truly happy, not just the temporary joy from getting a new car, going to a party, or other things. It’s learning how to be happy by living for the bigger picture and not for the moment. And they worked hard to instill that in us by making sure we had family time and going to church every week.

There was a time when our family was financially struggling. We’d just had the twins. That’s seven kids. Living in California is expensive. And I can remember it was really tough. We were in high school, and all of us played sports. So all of us were out the door, and we had jobs, and we were working hard. And it was really hard. But because of the Church, we could keep our heads high and hope for better times, ’cause we were putting our faith in the Lord. We put our 10% aside for tithing though we knew we were struggling and we needed every penny. The blessing our family experienced from the financial struggle is that they’re close to one another and that they pull together. We learned how to rise above the situation and still have a good time, still laugh together, still have fun despite our lack of materialistic things that everyone else had. So through the struggles and the adversity and challenges we all face—whether it’s financial or your kids, as they grow through agency, making their own choices—that you pray to a higher being. You ask for help and comfort, and you ask for direction and His involvement when you’ve done all you can. That brings tremendous comfort to me, being able to rely on Heavenly Father and see His help in our lives.

Not bad, not bad.