Daily Thoughts
Crushing Time with My Teens
If I had a dime for every time I’ve said, I need to figure that out, I swear to you I would be a millionaire at the very least. Then, if I added the nickel I got for every time I woke up in the morning and the words, I’m sooooo tired, before my feet even hit the...
The Gardener
Today was an appointment day, and even though I knew that and was prepared for all the ways that factors into the day, still I experienced moments of unrest and frustration; not with my girls, just with the ways of the world and, well, the other drivers on the road...
Fledgling Eagles & Human Teenagers
In March, the girls and I started watching the Big Bear Valley Bald Eagle nest-streaming camera showcasing a pair of bald eagles, Jackie and Shadow, who had just laid their first brood of three eggs. At the time we started watching, the first egg just hatched and we...
The Questioning Phase
I remember when our girls were younger, especially those early toddler years leading into their childhood years and all the questions. If you’re a parent, you also are probably familiar with this pivotal time in a child’s life: The Questioning Phase. It’s the time in...
Escaping the Quicksand
When overwhelm settles over you and starts pulling you into its grasp, it can feel a lot like those old television shows where someone fell into quicksand and their efforts to escape only tended to make them sink faster. For those of you not quite as old as me, and so...
Don’t Wish It Away
At some point during the early weeks or months of parenting your new little one, someone will tell you that you will miss these days when they’re gone. At that same point during those early weeks or months (or first two or three years) of parenting your new little...
Do the Write Thing
Because of my husband’s church-related job—he serves as the Director of Traditional Music at a local church near where we live—he gets Fridays and Saturdays off as his weekend, and because of this, I have come to love Thursday afternoons as the lead-in to our weekend....
Don’t Should All Over Yourself
One of the most dangerous words in the English language seems innocuous enough, but, trust me, it’s a dangerous one: should. Despite its danger, I am fairly certain it’s a word many of use more regularly than we ought. And when we do, we use it to inflict some serious...
A Course of Breakfast Discourse
There are two questions I regularly have difficulty answering. The first is what do you do? This one is tricky for me because there is not one thing that I feel captures what I do, but, even more, I don’t like the idea of being defined by what I spend my time doing....