This is the first Christmas where no one believes in Santa anymore in my house. It’s sad when the magic goes. There’s a hole left in its place. My 10 year old confided this year, “I know it’s you. You don’t have to pretend anymore that it’s not.” I...
Gratitude – Some days it’s harder to feel it than others; On the days when the kids are sick again, or your bank account is running low. I, for one, know I’d like to take my tax bill and drop-kick that thing. I’ve been struggling this week to...
We’ve all been sick around here for weeks. I guess I shouldn’t have made fun of my husband and his Man Flu last week, as the response to my teasing had a lightning bolt attached to it. For weeks it’s been one person then the next, one sickness...
I’m not saying it’s a Man Flu my husband has. I’m just saying that when I had the same illness two weeks ago, I painted the entire interior of a house, and helped my daughter move. I get it. I do. Some people’s bodies respond much worse to illnesses...
It’s the first day since I pulled my 15 year old daughter, Chloe, out of her high school. The first day after she begged me to, over the phone through unstoppable tears that have too often been coming. Between the pressures, and judgemental stares...
This week my youngest daughter, Paige, is out early every day due to parent teacher conferences at school. The anxiety she has felt over potentially being forgotten has been more than clear to see. I’m assuming she envisions going directly from...
After so many trips to the DMV I expected a bench in our name, my fifteen-and-a-half year old daughter, Chloe, finally passed her driver’s permit exam; For her, that white sheet is a ticket to ultimate freedom, adventure set to the soundtrack of...
My husband, Justin, had a dentist appointment several days ago to replace a broken crown. At dinner time that night, as I prepped the salad, he came up behind me and whispered in my ear words that would rattle any wife: “I have a confession to make...
My husband cannot, for the life of him, sing a correct song lyric. The extreme wrongness of the words he chooses instead of the actual ones are so shocking that I’ve given him a lay diagnosis of some sort of chromosomal abnormality. Today we rode...
I stared at this blank page for several minutes, realizing I feel the same about writing this week as I do about this phase of my life: Blank, not knowing where to start, not knowing what this next part will even be about. The kids are all in...