Parenting + Family

There are very few of us who grow up with the dream to become a single parent one day. Rather, single parenting is often the byproduct of life taking us down a road that we hadn’t planned for. Each...

One of my favorite memories growing up was making and decorating Christmas cookies with my grandma. She would mix all the ingredients together, roll them into a perfectly formed ball of cookie dough and roll them out for us...

When we are dreaming of children, we wonder in anxious anticipation. Will my daughter look like me? Will my son love to read like I do? We might anticipate girls loving dance classes and boys playing baseball or boys...

I decided I cannot turn my head away. Because the killing doesn’t stop. The pain doesn’t cease fire. The hunger doesn’t flee when I refuse to look. When I flip the channel because the headlines makes me uncomfortable or...

This is my first Christmas as a mama and I am so excited! I can’t wait to have family Christmas traditions and make every Christmas morning special for Grace. One thing I want to instill in Grace, however, is...

Growing up, I was the kind of kid who was forever awkward, and definitely not in the Hollywood-perpetrated way in which a young girl doesn’t know her full beauty potential until she switches out her glasses for a pair...

{Photo credit: Paper Birch Studios} Having my first baby was definitely life changing. It was one of the best experiences of my entire life. I was a changed woman forever. I was meant to be a mom. Something I had...

The older I get the faster the holidays seem to fly right past my window in a flurry of fluffy white snowflakes. No sooner have I put away my pumpkins and scary ghost costumes than I’m inundated with turkeys...

Silent Night used to be one of my favorite Christmas carols.  Now that I have parented through three first Christmases, those tender lyrics sting a bit.  Nothing has ever been calm and bright for me in those first few...

It begins with Halloween, the costumes, the jack-o-lanterns, spider webs, witches, ghosts, and skeletons.  The pumpkins, leaves, pilgrims, cornucopias, and turkeys of Thanksgiving.  The numerous Christmas trees, stockings, holly berries, wreathes, nativity scenes, and mistletoe.  And the lights.  The...