Community begins at home
November 21st, 2012
The snow crunched under my feet. I paused outside the heavy glass doors. The playground was eerily quiet, the lull before the storm of five to seven-year-olds about to invade. Slices of bread hung by yarn on a tree, flapping in the wind, awaiting hungry birds. I took a deep breath of the frigid, fresh ...
Filed under: faith in action, Family, Little Miss Sunshine
Learning to let go
November 14th, 2012
One warm summer day, Little Miss Sunshine asked me if I’d help her learn how to float on her back. Over the past couple summers she’s been eager to learn how to swim, yet she’s much more cautious than T-Rex who thinks he is part fish. She took her arm floaties off and we ...
Filed under: faith in action, Little Miss Sunshine
3 Tips For Surviving Life Changes
September 4th, 2012
Hello, friends! I hope you had a wonderful August and that as summer closed that you enjoyed many blessings with your family. I can hardly believe that my two little ones bounced onto the bus this morning. Where did the past 7 3/4 years go? More experienced mothers warned me that this day would eventually ...
Filed under: faith in action, Family
4th parade buckets
June 28th, 2012
No matter what happens today or tomorrow, I still love my country. I’m looking forward to a great holiday! I remember going to my hometown’s parades and collecting a t-shirt full of candy. One year during high school, my clown troupe from church entered the parade. We ran up and down the streets playing gags ...
Filed under: craftiness, Family
Wonder Bubbles
June 27th, 2012
If you haven’t entered the drawing yet for a copy of Cecil Murphey’s book Unleash the Writer Within, do so here! Nothing draws a crowd of neighbor kids like a giant tub of bubbles. Well, with the exception of juggling fire, but that’s a story for another day. I grew up in a family filled ...
Filed under: craftiness, Family, motherhood, recipes, summer
Growing Story-lovers
May 2nd, 2012
If you haven’t done so already, remember to enter the drawing to win a copy of “Do These Jeans Make Me Look Fat? Breaking the Cultural Mirror.” I recently read about a woman who said that upon taking a course in ancient Greek she discovered that the word logos, most often translated into English as ...
Filed under: cheap & fun, faith in action, Little Miss Sunshine, T-Rex
Staying Steady: Housework
January 23rd, 2012
I never struggled with housework until I had kids. As someone once told me, “It’s not that I mind doing housework. I just mind doing it over, and over, and over, and over….” Housework is one of the most challenging jobs for me because the sense of completion lasts for such a short length of ...
Filed under: motherhood, Story Girl
Asking for help
January 17th, 2012
I’d much rather give help than ask for it. I suppose it’s part pride, part not wanting to be a burden or a bother. Yesterday morning I had a mini-meltdown. I was overwhelmed with my book project, laundry, dishes, and a five-year-old who does not go to school everyday and especially misses his sister on ...
Filed under: motherhood, writing
Unlikely Motherhood
January 6th, 2012
I confess, I was never the girl who dreamed about having babies. I didn’t have names picked out when I was a twelve, nor did I imagine a day I’d have a houseful of kids. I wasn’t around many babies in my childhood, and I didn’t babysit much in adolescence. The rare times I did ...
Filed under: Little Miss Sunshine, motherhood, Story Girl
STOP the bullying
October 2nd, 2011
We were sitting at a high school football game a few weeks ago when Kedron stood up and walked over to the fence behind the bleachers. He yelled at a group of middle school boys, “BREAK IT UP!! NOW!!!” The group looked at him shocked, and then looked around as if asking, “Who? Us?” Four ...