Perhaps the greatest thing to bring me joy in life is becoming a mom to three magical humans. One of my favorite traditions is writing them open letters for their birthdays as one of the ways we celebrate them. So I’ll have two posts this month- an open letter for each kid. Today it is for my middle kid- my oldest daughter who turned 6 earlier this year. Continue reading
love
What I love about ME
It is SO HARD to take a compliment and even harder to compliment myself. I had made a note in my drafts folder for this blog YEARS ago of a challenge that was popular at the time to name 5 things you like about yourself, something that was a challenge because it seemed extra hard or uncomfortable for women especially. Well, after almost this exact same prompt coming up in a recent MOPS (Mothers of Pre-Schoolers) meeting, I’ve finally dusted off this old post idea… and upgraded it from like to love. I challenge you to share with me some things YOU really love about yourself too… Continue reading
Saying Goodbye to Our Most Recent Home: A Love Story
I cried my contacts out the night we signed the paperwork for another family to purchase our house. Partially this was due to the stress of still needing to find our own next home in a truly insane real estate market with very little inventory, and partially because it was the beginning of the end of a very messy, imperfect, beautiful love story between our family and our home. Continue reading
Big Family, Little House
The song “Love grows best in little houses” has come to mind a lot over the past few years (yes, the peak 80s/90s country cheesiness…), and the last year especially. It was one of the themes we continued to cling to in our starter home… but clearly that song was written before a pandemic and working from home with kids making noise through thin walls, and there’s a reason they only had two kids in the song not more!… I’ll admit that the main reason we are moving is so that we can have a little more space. We want room for the kids to grow and hubby to continue to work from home when needed. We want space to have people over after a long quarantine from entertaining. Still, I will miss our little house like crazy, and wanted to share a few reasons why our big family has loved our little house… Continue reading
Zoom, Letter Writing, Faith, Hope, and Love
As we head into the holiday season, I’m thinking a lot about how, like everything else in 2020, the Holidays are going to look oh so different this year. Continue reading
Raise Your Hopeful Voice- Celebrating 8 years of Marriage Plus a Q&A
Yesterday was my anniversary… or actually, OUR anniversary. Continue reading
Prenatal Anxiety Part 2: Fighting for Fun in a Hormone Induced Hurricane
I wrote this post very shortly after coming home from the hospital last month- before the COVID-19 pandemic had really escalated. In light of that I debated taking a break from posting, but then I wondered if maybe my anxiety coping mechanisms could help people out as we all go through this anxious time… I certainly find myself needing to use them again as I struggle to get through the fear of how long this will last, how bad it will be, and how uncertain everything feels- no clue what is next. So I’m publishing it today and hoping it doesn’t sound too tone deaf given how quickly our world seems to have changed…
In my last post, I wrote about how in all three of my pregnancies I struggled with prenatal anxiety, but the way I dealt with that anxiety changed as I learned more about what prenatal anxiety was, what it meant for me, and how I might deal with it given my choice to have more children. This post talks about some of the ways I “dealt with it” during this last pregnancy…
*Just like in my last post, I do list some specific fears and anxieties in this post so it could be triggering for others suffering from anxiety or those who have been through miscarriage or infant loss* Continue reading
2019 Wrap Up: Part 2
Well, here it is, my final blog post of 2019 and I am finishing up my yearly wrap up as I close out the year of F and get ready to move on to focusing on the letter G… Continue reading
Shared Absurdity- Friendships that make you laugh until you can’t breathe
IN talking about my year of more FUN, I’ve talked a lot about how my kids and husband have helped me focus on this goal and taught me new ways to have fun this year. But I’d be remiss if I didn’t talk a little bit about having more fun in friendships. So I just wanted to write a post celebrating all the shared absurdity that comes with close friendships and some of my favorite ways friends bring more fun into your life: Continue reading
Family Fun: Anniversary Edition
Earlier this month, my husband and I celebrated seven years of marriage! Since May is the month of ALL THE THINGS we took some time last month to head out for a special day date together before the chaos of may set in. Continue reading
Alphabet Resolutions 