I've been a work-at-home mom since the moment I became a mom—by choice, by necessity, by calling. I've also known I wanted to homeschool my kids since I was 16 years old. Reconciling those two things has not always been so easy, though. Any homeschool mom will tell you that homeschooling is basically a full-time…
The first half of 2016 has been both full (in a good way) and busy (in a not-so-good way), and as we headed to Florida last month—on the heels of the Ultimate Homemaking Bundle, which had me work 12+ hour days for a week straight—I was determined to reprioritize, strengthen my boundaries, and regain focus…
It's funny, really, because when we decided to add "one more baby" to our family (to recap, that was two babies ago), I knew I wanted to soak up every moment. I planned for several months of maternity leave, and in a lot of ways I approached Jackson's birth as a do-over for all of my…
The last couple of weeks have ended up busier than expected, so I'm sharing some of my favorite posts from the archives. With the election heating up, this seems like an especially appropriate post this week! On most divisive issues—politics, health, parenting, food, vaccines—I tend to fall somewhere in the middle. For a long time,…
Like a lot of people, the "one word" movement for setting New Year's resolutions has been one that I've embraced wholeheartedly. I love the idea of approaching the new year with a theme that can be summed up in a single word, and I really feel like I've grown through the words I've chosen in…
Looking back at 2015, one of the biggest lessons I learned was to embrace the seasons—the seasons of my life as well as the literal seasons of the year. It took me three years of tracking my reading goals to see that my years follow a very specific pattern that includes lots of goal setting, personal…
I love the new year {I'm a huge fan of Mondays too}, and I think it's a lovely thing to turn the calendar page and take time to reflect back on the previous 12 months and set goals or intentions for the ones ahead. What I'm not a fan of is the pressure we put…
As a family, we love road trips. We drive 2-3 hours to various day trip destinations on a regular basis, think nothing of hopping in the car for the 6-hour drive to my parents, and made the 18-hour trip to Florida regularly before they moved to NC. We've been talking about a trip out west—specifically to St. George, Utah,…
Mother's Day is not very far away. Posts are starting to abound across the blogosphere about what mom really wants (sleep!), how to celebrate the moms in your life, the joy of motherhood, and so on. I'm not here with a gift guide or a sarcastic post about the amount of sleep I'm not getting or to…
I am just days away from officially welcoming the second trimester, and it can't come soon enough! This has been my hardest pregnancy by far...a sinus infection magnified all of my pregnancy symptoms, leaving me bedridden and miserable for almost two weeks; I've spent much time huddled on the bathroom floor, alternately anticipating and dreading throwing…