I asked on Instagram and boy, did you all deliver! I was in panic mode over how I was going to make 4 dozen different types of cookies for a holiday cookie swap (that I’m no longer attending because military life) so I asked you all on Instagram for your favorite cookies recipes! I also got a few family recipes that I left out but seriously, so sweet of you for sharing. I got a request to round up the recipe suggestions so I figured I’d plop them into this super simple post for ya. Let me know if you end up trying any of these recipes! The Hot Cocoa Cookies are definitely calling my name. Jamm ..read more

There are three things that are always on my goal list. Wake up earlier Journal every day Do more creative writing These are the three things that every year, without fail, I tell myself I’m going to do. When the kids were born waking up earlier became a way to survive, to wake up before them in order to get anything on my personal to do list done.  I’ve always wanted to journal more because it’s something my grandmother did every day. She was writing one line a day before that was even a thing. I can distinctly remember large black binders filled with printed out paper filled wit ..read more

  Do you know what the number one thing I could change about my life would be? In all honesty, I would change how inconsistent I’ve been in my almost 30 years of life when it comes to journaling. There are so many times in my life where I wish I had a journal to look back on so I could reflect on those experiences. Take my parents divorce for instance. I can recall some of the thoughts and feelings but I wish I had actually written them down.  My inability to journal consistently is part of the reasoning behind this post. We’re kicking off a 30 day journaling challenge on Septem ..read more

Marlow Maxine was born on May 7th, 2021 at 4:20 in the afternoon. But if you were following me on social media you already know that her birth was somewhat of a whirlwind. If her birth story has anything to say about what her personality is going to be like, Justin and I sure have our hands full. The funniest thing to me about Marlow’s birth story is not that it caught us by surprise, but that I had intended to do a “mini vlog” everyday on TikTok leading up to her birth and only ended up doing 5 posts because of my induction.  Marlow’s birth story really starts on a typical Wednesday afte ..read more

Infertility and Loss - Morgan’s story The word infertility used to never be a part of my vocabulary. If you would have told me 10 years ago that I would have to do fertility treatments to have a biological baby, I wouldn’t have believed you. Infertility was never something that I was taught about in school or knew much about until we started having miscarriages. I remember packing up baby items after we lost our daughter Ivy and just crying out, “Why Me?! Why is this my story??”. All I had ever wanted was to be a mom. It just felt like my body was failing us and failing me. The waiting was cau ..read more

A few weeks ago, my husband and I made a pretty big mistake. We joked about the possibility of him getting deployed this summer. Wouldn’t you know that just a few hours later we learned that that joke was most likely going to be our new reality? With our second baby due literally any day now, this was the last thing we were expecting and wanting to hear. But that’s the thing about military life: it knows how to throw you the unexpected curveballs, especially when you’re least expecting them. I did not handle the news gracefully. I sobbed, called my mom, and pretty much sent myself into a downw ..read more

I’ve kind of made it my mission since my first son to share my candid experience as a mom who hated breastfeeding as well as normalizing formula feeding and advocating for maternal medical professionals to consider the mother and mental health and not just endlessly push breastfeeding for 9 months.  So I plan on candidly sharing our experience choosing to formula feed from birth starting with how I’m preparing to formula feed from birth. My goal is to become a resource for others mamas who are struggling with finding information about formula feeding from birth because there’s truly a hug ..read more

On Tuesday I rang in my 29th year, stuck inside for the second year in a row, alone with my toddler. While it wasn’t originally the birthday I was envisioning, I realized how special these simple moments can actually be. But since this is the final year of my twenties, I figured I couldn’t let the defining decade pass without doing some sort of bucket list. So, here’s the 30 things I want to do before I turn 30! 1. Fly first-class somewhere (without kids) I’ve only ever flown first class once and that was with Jasper on a very short flight. While I enjoyed it, there’s just something about t ..read more

It’s hard to believe that we’ve been stationed in Fort Wainwright, Alaska for almost two full years now! We’ve spent two summers and two winters at Fort Wainwright so I felt that I was finally “qualified” enough to start sharing a little bit of information about living at Fort Wainwright. Naturally, I get questions all of the time about what Fort Wainwright is like and whether or not Fort Wainwright is a good duty station. I also get a lot of requests for post guides so I wanted to try and dip my feet into exploring the creation of more informative posts about where we’ve been stationed.  ..read more

As someone who prides themselves on being a planner, Jasper’s second birthday caught me by surprise. Maybe it’s a byproduct of not planning a first birthday due to the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 but I was not prepared to pull together an all-out toddler birthday party in two and a half weeks. That being said, I think I earned a pat on the back from myself for how this party came together! I have obviously never thrown a kids birthday party before and my party planning experience, in general, is pretty minimal but I am obsessed with how Jasper’s Disney Cars Radiator Springs inspired birthday ..read more