Let’s be honest for a moment, ok? Motherhood is hard. Parenting is hard. It starts with sleepless nights and crying babies and morphs over the years to sleepless nights as you worry over out-late college students, sassy teenagers, and more laundry than you could ever have imagined. As moms, we have to manage it all. I’m not always good at it. If I ever manage to keep all the balls in the air, I probably hurt everyone’s feelings in the process because the stress of keeping things moving ends up breaking me down. And, I don’t always pay enough attention to my kids. There. I said it. I need to be ..read more

When I was pregnant with our first child, my husband was routinely working several hours away and often had to stay overnight for meetings. It was just the two of us, so the distance was easy to manage until I found myself admitted to the hospital in preterm labor while he was on the road. Living in south Mississippi, I have several friends whose husbands work offshore, and I’m always amazed by how they manage their homes and families while their husbands are away. Being a parent is comparable to being the logistics coordinator for a small organization. Who has practice this afternoon? Where i ..read more

As the last of our kids inch toward the teen years, it’s easy to forget how hard the early days of motherhood can be. Long days and often longer nights lead to days chasing toddlers without the energy required to do it well. I wish I had realized with my first two children how vital a good nighttime routine is to a smooth daytime one. After all, a good bedtime routine helps ensure babies have a good night’s sleep, which helps them thrive and grow, while enabling parents to get some sleep and peace, too. With adequate rest, parenting life becomes a lot easier. Yes, you might still be tired, but ..read more

There isn’t much more exciting than moving into a new home…or anything quite as stressful. While we were staying in Houston for my husband’s radiation last year, one of my sisters was settling into a new home with her family. Day by day, there were hiccups to deal with and design decisions to make. I enjoyed watching (and hopefully helping a little) as she turned a beautiful new house into a lovely new home. Because there’s a difference between the two, you know. A house is bricks and mortar, paint and plumbing. A home is so much more. It’s the place where hospitality becomes holy. To ease th ..read more

The day my husband was diagnosed with cancer, I didn’t even go to the doctor with him. The thought that he might have cancer hadn’t even crossed our minds. We had no clue the bump on his forehead was one of the rarest and most aggressive forms of skin cancer. We didn’t know. After he came home and explained what the doctor had told him, we sat in our bedroom, hugging and crying, when his phone went “Ding!” A friend and coworker who had no idea he had even had a doctor’s appointment that day or that he had even had a biopsy done texted: “No matter what unexpected thing you are facing today, jus ..read more

His faith was tested. Our hope was born. See His Only Son in theaters this Easter!   Spring is such a busy time. With track season well underway and my daughter’s high school graduation approaching, my family hurries from one event to the next, eating on the go and barely stopping to breathe. With Easter just around the corner, I really want us to slow down a bit and remember the significance of the holiday that goes far beyond pastel-colored candies, which is why I jumped at the opportunity to review His Only Son, a new film  that recounts one of the most controversial moments in th ..read more

Indescribable Devotional Books for Kids by Louie Giglio focus on God and science! If there is one thing we do in our homeschool, it’s science. My kids have always loved learning about the world around them, and the topics they can study are endless. When my son was younger, we studied dinosaurs and fossils. Our twins will read anything about animals. Our oldest went through a horse-loving phase. Now, our home library is full of books about all of these topics. It’s one of the reasons I’ve always loved homeschooling. No matter what the kids are interested in, we can find a way to study it! It’s ..read more

Sitting and waiting at doctors’ offices or riding long hours to visit new doctors hundreds of miles away has given me a little time for reading, and one of the books in my bag this week is Revived & Renovated: Real Life Conversations on the Intersection of Home, Faith and Everything in Between by Victoria Duerstock and Paige Rien.   Being able to review books is one of my favorite parts of blogging, and when the opportunity to read and review this book came up, I jumped at it. Why? Well, to be honest, I live in an ongoing renovation. Literally and figuratively. My home is older and i ..read more

It’s the season of Thanksgiving, but giving thanks isn’t always easy. Is it really possible to give thanks in all things?     If ever there was a blog post I didn’t know how to begin, this is it. A year has passed since I wrote my last post a month ago. At least it seems that way. Two years of caring for my father-in-law came to an abrupt end a few weeks ago when he went to the hospital and never came back. He went home. A week later, my husband came home from a doctor’s appointment and said the “C” word. The world has been spinning in slow motion ever since. And the people I pass o ..read more

A caregiver planner designed for caregivers like me!   A month or so ago, I sat in an ER trying to remember my father-in-law’s health history and struggling to understand what he was trying to tell me so I could relay that information to the nurse. As I sat right beside the “No Cell Phone Use” sign, I texted and called my husband for help repeatedly because I simply didn’t know all the answers. Being unprepared only added to the stress I was feeling as I sat there wondering what they were going to ask me next. A week or two later the exact same scenario played out with my mother-in-law ..read more