I would say that my role model, as far as just somebody leading by example, which to me is what a great youth counselor does - they are there to talk to and lead by example - would be my mom, but she wasn't a youth counselor. She was a teacher, and she is a good person and definitely one of the biggest influences in my life.

I did most of my volunteer work when I was in college because I knew of more ways to get involved. In high school, we'd do things like, there was a homeless shelter near our hometown and our church group decorated one of the rooms. In college, I was in a sorority, and we did a lot of things, like pick up trash on the highway.

I feel like my life right now is so crazy; there's no time to dwell on difficult things. You just have to figure out how to fix it or get past it because there is no time to do anything else. Being a mom to a toddler, my career, and my husband's career - all of our worlds just kind of colliding at once, you just make it work.

It seems women are expected to be so much more than men, which means we have to work that much harder. We're the ones under the microscope. We're expected to sound perfect. We're expected to look perfect all the time. We're expected to be style-setters, whereas the boys roll onto the stage in their jeans, T-shirts and baseball caps.

The only reason I felt like I could sing a song like 'Blown Away' is because I have definitely lived through my fair share of trips to the cellar in the spring. We were no stranger to that. I still ask my mom, 'Is the cellar cleaned out now? Is everything OK?' Even in my new house, I had something built in it that's like a storm shelter.

The first one I remember singing on stage was 'Somewhere Out There' from 'An American Tail.' I was around 7, and my choir teacher at school asked me if I would sing it. My parents told me that I needed to move around the stage, so for the entire time I just walked back and forth from side to side while I was singing - there's videotape of it.

I talk to my fan club members, and I blog, and they know what's going on. But as far as Twitter, I'll be in a restaurant, and I'll get home, and somebody tweeted, and they talked about what I ordered and what I was wearing. In some cases, that could be dangerous, because you don't want everybody to know where you are every second of every day.

Wake up feeling like my life's worth living. Can't recall when I last felt that way. Guess it must be all this love you're giving. Never knew never knew it could be like this, but I guess some hearts they just get all the right breaks. Some hearts have the stars on their side. Some hearts they just have it so easy. Some hearts just get lucky sometimes.

When I'm on stage, I feel like a performer for sure. I know people are looking at me and taking pictures. That part's wonderful. But, I live the most boring life away from what you see me on camera doing. The other 300 days out of the year I'm just the most normal person in the universe. I'm a wife. I'm a mother to my doggies. I'm a maid - I clean the house.

You can do anything you put your mind to. I believe in all of you. Never doubt yourself, even if everyone around you is doubting you. Stand tall. Prove them all wrong.Each and every one of you have something amazingly special about you and don’t let anyone tell you any different. Thank you for being my fans.. and my friends. Thank you for giving me a reason to sing. Thank you for being you.

I know people are really interested in everything that the celebrities are doing, even if you don't consider yourself a "celebrity." What always would drive me crazy is - I took ethics classes in college - and it always amazes me how there would blatantly be something that I did not say in quotation marks. If you're putting quotation marks around it, it better be exactly what that person said.

My support group - my mom, my dad, my sisters, my brothers-in-law, my immediate nieces and nephews, my immediate family like Aunt Donna - I know I can trust them. Most of the other people...they never called me before, they never said "I love you" before, they never wanted to take a picture with me at family reunions. It's like, don't do it now...You win the lottery and all of a sudden everybody's your best friend.

There's a certain sense of ownership that the fans have over you....The thing is, it's all good. You just have to get used to it. If somebody comes up to you while you're eating dinner or something, it's kind of like, 'Well, I asked for it.' It's much better than the alternative-nobody caring and nobody buying your music. The point is to try to just realize that these people are really excited, and that's a good thing. You want them to be that way.

Figure out what you want, how you want to feel, whatever your motivation is, you have to figure it out. That's step one: where do you want to be? The next thing is just trying to get there and cutting yourself some slack along the way. You're going to have days when you veer off your path, then just get right back on. We all have cheat days, holidays, or celebrations, whatever or period when we can't work out as much as we like, and just do the best you can and when you can get back on track, get back on track.

it's so easy to get lost inside a problem that seems so big at the time it's like a river a that's so wide it swallows you whole while your sittin round thinkin 'bout what you can't change and worrying about all the wrong things times flying by moving so fast you better use it all cause you can't get it back sometimes that mountain you've been climbing is just a grain of sand and what you've been out there searching for forever is in your hands ooooo when you figure out love is all that matters after all it sure makes everything else seem so small.

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