flickr photo credit Nina Matthews Decorating for Christmas is an all hand’s on deck affair for my family. Two days after Thanksgiving, we start spreading Christmas cheer after a hearty breakfast. I walk downstairs and open the creaky closet door under the stairs, and take a deep breath. This part… Read More →
As I look at the calendar, I see days turning into months and flying by in years. We are bookended with ages of 14 and 4 and a couple in between. I know pretty soon, it will be 24 and 14. It all goes by so quickly. This week we… Read More →
Our family has been back to the books for a few weeks already. Everything is in full swing with dance, piano, church and school. Calendars are filling up with lessons and events, reading logs are getting filled with minutes spent behind a book. The first few weeks of back to… Read More →
Every Tuesday night in September and October you’ll find us in the bleachers at a football stadium. We’ll be cheering on the RMS Golden Tigers — and watching our girl on the sidelines as she works hard to pump up the crowd. I cheered in high school and my mom… Read More →
photo credit mandejoy Roaming in and out of passages, the walls spoke loudly, inviting passersby to ponder deep meanings of brush strokes and inspiring a new generation of artists. As I gazed upon the naturalistic Monet painting that took my breath away, I glanced at the girls slouched in a… Read More →
Motherhood has taught me a valuable lesson. I will fail. And that’s okay. Before having my daughter I made very successful choices. I made decisions and judgments based on whether or not I knew in advance that I would succeed. If it was questionable, if there was a chance I… Read More →
We made our annual weekend getaway, leaving behind us the disparate legos wedged under the mattress and the temporary fingerprint stains on the windows beside our front door. Just the two of us and four days to read for hours, to pray — uninterrupted, to take long walks and long… Read More →
This hasn’t been the best summer on record for my girl and me. In fact, it’s been just plain hard most of the time. We’re a lot alike … and we’re a lot different. And somehow, the likenesses and the differences have not made our relationship easy. I’m tired of… Read More →
It was when my oldest daughter, now 18, was in second grade that my eyes were opened to the possibility of being a “yes mom.” Don’t get me wrong, I’m not talking about raising a spoiled brat who gets whatever she wants, whenever she wants it. And I’m the first… Read More →
I have declared this the Summer of Freedom. Every year since my first baby stepped bold into our family all joy and determination, summer has mostly slipped by unnoticed. I blame this in part on the fact that there was no such thing as a “school year” for us. Summer… Read More →