Grateful for All of Our Spring Chaos

The past few weeks have been spring chaos around our house. Don’t worry. There were no fires or life threatening emergencies. Alan was out of town for two weeks. He traveled all over the place and had his own cool adventures, to include meeting a group of Rosie Riveters from World War II and ringing the gong at the European stock exchange, Euronext. But this chaos isn’t about him. It’s about me over here, eighteen years into parenting, still struggling like a fly in a spiderweb. Last week, I was wriggling all over the place. Things kept happening the past […]

10 Encouraging Bible Verses for When You Need a Pick-Me-Up

Do you ever feel knocked down and in need of encouragement? Maybe you need a few encouraging Bible verses to get you through the day? You open your Bible hoping to find just the right motivating words to help you go on, but you aren’t sure where to look exactly. I have a few I’ve collected over the years I’d like to share with you today. When my husband Alan went to Iraq the second time, I was left with a two-year-old and a one-year-old boy to bring up on my own for fifteen months. And by the way, I’m […]

Day 25 of the Decluttering Challenge: Foyer

For day twenty-five of our Thirty Day Decluttering Challenge, we are cleaning out our foyer. Do you have a foyer in need of decluttering? It may be a closet or a set of hooks in your foyer that you use the most. Whatever area you tend to use as a launchpad, that is where we are going today. At our house we have this beautiful hall tree that is probably about a hundred years old. It was my great-grandparents’, and I have memories of seeing it in their foyer my entire childhood. When I was a kid, I thought it […]

When You Don’t Know if You’re Moving Or Not

There are, unfortunately, times in life when you don’t even know if you are moving or not. It reminds me of a few lines of Dr. Seuss. “I’m sorry to say so, but sadly it’s true, that bang-ups and hang-ups can happen to you…” We are indeed in that dreaded place, “the waiting place, for people just waiting.” If you do not know these Dr. Seuss references you must read Oh, the Places You’ll Go! ***When you purchase through Amazon links on my website, I do collect advertising fees. But seriously, at least check that book out at the library.*** […]

15 Helpful Self Improvement Quotes Straight from the Bible

When it comes to inspirational quotes on things like self improvement, character, life choices, anything like that, I think your best source is straight from the Bible. Think about it. Who do you want your life to please? Yourself? Your sister? Or your judgy neighbor? Your parents? Or your kids? It cannot be done. We cannot live to please all these people we know. Only we know our own whole story. Only us, and God. All we need to please is God. Well how do we even do that? In what ways to do we even need to bother with […]

7 Encouraging Bible Verses for Women to Make Your Day Better

These are Bible verses, and a few whole Bible stories, that I find especially encouraging, as a woman. I hope you will too. Some of these are specific to women, and some of them are helpful for everyone. Being a woman can be an emotional roller coaster, it seems like all the time. When life is extra challenging, I also write some of these verses and others on post-it notes and stick them all over my house so I can get the encouragement I need just to carry on and keep trying. What I love about these particular encouraging Bible […]

Good Reasons Not to Fret Over all the World’s Problems

This article is the second part of my series on Handling Stress. As I mentioned in my last post, Psalm 37 has always been a huge inspiration to me when I am going through a hard time. The very first two verses of Psalm 37 remind us not to fret because of the evil we see in the world. Evildoers will soon fade like the grass. All these problems and people are temporary. Life on earth is temporary. I feel like this is God telling us to chill and to stop freaking out. This is funny to me because honestly […]

37 Tips for Handling Stress (The Stressed Out Series)

Welcome, to my new series on the blog: The Stressed Out Series. If you have been here before, you know the theme of our summer was moving. Actually, the theme of the whole first half of the year was moving. Now we are moving on to the theme of stress management, because as it turns out if the theme of your year is moving, stress is going to come along too. Most of the boxes are unpacked, but I still have not found JD’s clothes, the scale, or my Fitbit charger, just to name a few. School has already begun, […]

5 Reasons to Not Take Yourself so Seriously

Today I realized something important. I have been taking myself too seriously. Do you ever do that? Have you ever been in the middle of a personal crisis and suddenly realized, “Wait a minute. I need to chill.” Life does not have to be a serious, sad thing. Instead, let life be what you want it to be. Yes, we have had a hard summer, but I have to remember that it is also still funny. This week lots of funny things happened, and I did not laugh at any of them! Have you ever had a phase like that? […]