Post-election thoughts. I know there’s been SO much out there about the recent U.S. elections. I don’t mean to add to the blah blah blah, but it’s like my brain won’t rest until it’s written. This is not a post expressing my like or dislike for either candidate. This is merely thoughts from a foreign national as I’ve observed this election from afar. I live in South Africa. Throughout this year, I’ve traveled to other countries. These musings come from…
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My family has been in need of a new car for awhile now, but I’ve been in denial. We have lived in and loved our car so well I’m genuinely having a hard time letting it go. I talked about this a few weeks ago, this feeling of losing a family member who is a central character in our family history. Do you feel this way about your car, or have you ever? I don’t want to say goodbye, I…
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Communism is real, and it’s very, very dangerous. Today I’m going to share something personal. I share personal stuff all the time, but this is different. And it’s only partly my story. Mostly it’s the story of my husband and his family and they don’t talk about it. Not ever, not with anyone. If you’ve been following my blog for any length of time, you know my husband is Polish. I talk about his nationality for a number of reasons,…
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Our Favorite Family Car: Saying Goodbye I’m getting ready to sell my beloved family car because my children have outgrown it, and the process has been a little more difficult than I expected. I’m really curious how all of you buy and sell cars, because I’ve never bought a new car before. Can you believe it? My husband and I have always bought used cars and repaired them ourselves as they break. Which actually means my husband and the kids…
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It’s Halloween again, and I’m so excited to share the costumes my kids chose this year. And just like last year, our friend and favorite local photographer Justin Hackworth, took pictures of the kids in their Halloween costumes. I’m so excited about how they turned out. As soon as we watched Stranger Things on Netflix, we knew my daughter had to be Eleven for Halloween. She looks so much like Millie Bobby Brown (the actress who plays 011 in Stranger…
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Gluten-Free goodnessknows Snack Squares I don’t know about you, but I try to eat as gluten-free as possible in my day-to-day life. I don’t have Celiac disease, but I just feel better when there’s less gluten in my life. Do you know what I mean? I have friends who do this as well. They don’t eat 100% gluten-free, but when it’s a possibility to eat that way, whether at a restaurant or buying food at the grocery store, they do. …
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I don’t know about you, but it’s so easy to get bogged down emotionally by all the sadness around me. I’m inundated daily by grief on all sides. The homeless people down the street looking for warmth now that the weather is turning cold. Hungry kids. Major war and disaster, the scale of which is so devastating, countries around the world are absorbing refugees on a scale we haven’t seen since World War II. It doesn’t take much to see…
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Parenting advice is usually like any other advice you get: totally unsolicited by strangers and family alike. But I promise you, if you listen to this one piece of parenting advice, (I know, I know) both you and your children will be happier because of it. Here’s the thing about parenting: it makes so much sense in retrospect. Once you’ve traveled down that broken road, you can see all the mistakes you made and what you’d do differently if…
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Character And Kindness A few months ago, near the end of my son’s 5th grade school year, he came home with an invitation to a birthday party in his backpack. I read the name on the invitation and asked my son who the boy was, because I’d never my son mention this friend when we talked about school. “Oh, he’s a friend of mine. He’s kind of awkward and weird, and he doesn’t have a lot of friends so I…
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