Looking for summer activities for kids that will help them learn self-reliance? Use these ideas for chores, reading, snacking, and help your kids be more independent! Here are three ways we are taming the summer chaos by teaching kids to be more self-reliant this summer. Today was the first official day of our summer. And…
I remember being pregnant with my first child, and having all kinds of notions about how it was going to be to have my own baby. I wondered what she would be like: I hoped she would have my love of reading and learning and her father’s musical abilities. I wanted her to be brilliant,…
Yesterday, my youngest and I were out shopping when she told me that the shoes she was wearing hurt her feet. “Are they too small?” I asked. “No. They just pinch my toes. But I can handle it. I’m a big girl!” And then it hit me—I am not a mom of littles anymore. And as far as blogging…
Grant us peace. When Ralph Vaughan Williams wrote the cantata back in 1936, he had no idea the profound impact it would have on the soprano soloist in a small town in Upper Michigan some 75 years later. I look like a dork, but I promised my mom a picture of my dress, and things…
Last ditch effort to revive the dead phone. Phone in a baggie full of uncooked rice and placed in oven with the light on. It didn’t work, though the phone is still in the rice bag and now on the radiator. The bag is also full of hope. It all happened on Ash Wednesday. The…
When I was first asked to review On Little Wings, I thought that the synopsis included in the email was very intriguing: “This is the story of the countless ways we get love wrong. And why, despite every disappointment, we keep fighting to get it right. Jennifer must do the impossible bring her mother home. When…
So, thanks to Pinterest, I found eleventy billion cute little valentine ideas. And I wanted to make all of them. Which, naturally, would require picking myself up by the bootstraps and leaving my January blahs behind. As it was, aside from a bit of shopping for the projects, I didn’t actually pick myself up by…
The world really is black and white in winter here. As proof, this picture is in color. The sky is usually white, the ground is white, and nearly everything else is black or grey. My red car almost seems out of place, like a colorized element in a black & white photograph. The spring is…
I remember being close to delivering Bria, my first child. I couldn’t wait to not be pregnant anymore, as I’d had enough of that, but to actually have to take care of a real live baby? That scared me enough to think that maybe being eternally pregnant might not be so bad. Of course, she…
Asking your kids for good behavior means telling them exactly what you want them to do—not what you don’t want. One year ago yesterday, we ended our Caribbean cruise. I thought I should maybe start posting the rest of the pictures. This is the girls getting ready to go to the beach on Grand Cayman…
This year, I have felt a bit like Mr. Scrooge and The Grinch. Not so much that I don’t like Christmas, but I have certainly felt too rushed, too obligated, and too busy to really enjoy it. I’m not really sure what it was about this year, but my goodness, we’ve been going at the…
When I first walked through this house while on my house-hunting trip, I was a little puzzled by the gigantic, low-ceilinged room upstairs. It was billed as a bedroom, and I suppose it could be used as one, but it was not your normal bedroom. However, I knew that it would make a perfect playroom…