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Ode to a New School Year!
Today is September 3rd, and in our neck of the woods (Western NY/Buffalo area) that can only mean one thing… School is about to start! I know. I know. I sound a little too excited, don’t I?! I’m really not, honestly. The beginning of September always comes with bittersweet feelings that must be reminiscent of…
Dear Tired Mom in the Middle of Summer Vacation…
Dear Mom in the Middle of Summer Vacation with Young Children At Home, Are you tried? I am. Are you wondering if you’re going to make it? Through the day? The week? Until September? Gosh, sometimes I wonder if I’m going to make it out at all. I often picture myself, in 15 years…
Minivans, Meditation and Marshmallows: Retreating to the Blue Ridge Mountains
It’s hard to believe that it was already a week ago that we loaded into the Toyota Sienna and barreled down to Virginia with another school year behind us, and an adventure before us. I usually like to give the kids a couple of days to acclimate to summer vacation before taking off,…
Book Review: Stepping on Cheerios
“I had expected ordinary, and I got extraordinary. Isn’t that just like God? You may not know what’s coming in life, but it wouldn’t be any fun if you did. Plus, you might refuse to participate because what if you got hurt or couldn’t control most of life, which you can’t.” (quote from: Stepping on…
Celebrating and Reminiscing a Decade of Motherhood!
I turn 39 today. I know, way to close to 40, right?! Ava turned 10 two weeks ago. My baby, the one who made me a mother, turning the double digits and almost as tall as me to boot! We keep telling her to stop growing…she just won’t listen. What does that all mean? Well,…
Chasing Famous: Living the Life You’ve Always Auditioned For (A Book Review)
Chasing Famous: Living the Life you’ve Always Auditioned For is a book that encourages readers to take a look at their lives and consider how they can use their “story”, “gifts” and “every day moments” for the glory of God. It’s a book about not running after fame, accolades, or the admiration of…
Making Marriage Beautiful: A Book Review
The title of Chapter 1 (posed as a question) in Dorothy Littell Greco’s new book, Making Marriage Beautiful, says it all: Marriage Will Change You: What Do you Want That Change to Look Like? This is a convicting question, and I’m not sure that the answer is immediately clear for many of us. Of…
Control Girl: A Book Review and Giveaway!
Controlling? Me? No…definitely not! Of all the words I might use to describe myself at times (sensitive, anxious, sometimes impatient) “controlling” would not be a word that fell into the list. Most of the time, anyways. However, after recently reading Control Girl, by Shannon Popkin my eyes have been open to the many subtle, and…
When Everything Comes Undone
It happened again. Scott and the girls were all out of the house , so momma did what momma does best– put on some loud music, jumped into crazy-cleaning-Ninja-lady-mode and got down to work. I folded blankets, lined up shoes, wiped countertops, vacuumed the mudroom, swept the floors, put toys away, threw toys away (shhh,…
Book Review: Waiting for Wonder
What if, in this waiting, God is calling us to more? This is the question at the heart of Marlo Schalesky’s new book, Waiting for Wonder: Learning to Live on God’s Timeline. I confess, when I first read the title I wasn’t sure I wanted to delve into the topic of waiting. Waiting is…
Pray A to Z: A Book Review
Do you ever struggle to know how to pray? How to go deeper or make things feel fresher? How to connect with God in a more personal way that doesn’t feel rote or repetitive, small or self-focused? I know I do. I pray daily. I pray throughout the day. Many days ‘pray without ceasing’ feels…
NyQuil, Jesus, and a Treadmill: Read This Post on Really Bad Days!
The title of this post is a reminder to myself…”Read this post on really bad days!” I need to remember that. Do you ever think about writing yourself a manifesto to read on the days when your brain spirals downward into the blah blah discouragement dumps? This is that post. The post that reminds me…
Creativity Project Week 5: The Columbus Art Museum
Earlier this week I read a blog post by Elizabeth Ivy Hawkins, an artist and instructor from Grand Rapids. Hawkins was a presenter at a writing conference I attended in October, and while I missed the chance to attend her workshop, I was glad to learn more about who she is as an artist (and…
Creativity in the Margins of Life
“I wrote this book in the margins of life…it took 6 years,” said Ann Voskamp, speaking on writing her newest book, The Broken Way. The margins of life. Creativity, for most of us, happens in the margins of life. Even for a New York Times bestselling author, creativity often happens in the margins. Why? Because for…
52 Weeks of Creativity: Week 3, Crafting With My Middle Kiddo
Hi, Friends! Hello from rainy Buffalo (: If you missed my post last week, I’m beginning a personal project called 52 Weeks of Creativity in the Midst of Motherhood. (It could be stretched to “Parenthood” for the dads out there. You needn’t be excluded!) I’m doing a little bit of catch up…
52 Weeks of Creativity in the Midst of Motherhood: An Introduction
photo courtesy of google images This is the beginning, the first post, in a yearlong pursuit to integrate more creativity into my day-to-day life as a mom: 52 Weeks of Creativity in the Midst of Motherhood. I’ve hemmed and hawed about whether or not I should make such a big commitment because the type-A…
Finding Your School-Year Rhythm Again
The signs are everywhere. The cooler evenings, the heavier dew in the mornings, the ransacked school supply shelves at Wal-Mart and Target being replaced with Halloween and Thanksgiving trinkets. There have even been a few moments, either later in the day or early in the morning, when the girls and I have been outside and…
Live, Laugh, Love as Life Moves By!
Ahhh, all of my “recent” blog posts (and paper journal entries) seem to start the same way. Or, at least I have the same feeling each time I begin one. They sounds a little something like this… “Wow, I can’t believe it’s been so long since I wrote last.” “Where did the last month go?”…
Adventures in London and Beyond
If you had asked me several years ago if I would take three kids, all under the age of 10, on an international flight to England for a week I would have told you that while I loved the idea of doing such a thing, that in theory it sounds really great, that I’d like…
An Anchor for My Soul: Celebrating Easter!
I started writing a blog post recently, and then stopped. And then started another one… And stopped. I went back to the first one…spent more than an hour on it, and never hit publish. It was about lice, and stitches, sickness and dislocated elbows. About backed up plumbing, and the shenanigans that left us spending…