I turn 31 this week. Tonight, I’m thinking back on my 30th birthday, an evening spent surrounded by the dearest of friends in Washington, DC. I can’t even believe that was only a year ago, so much has changed. Yesterday, I boarded my one-way flight...
A few weekends ago we went hiking down the side of a pretty steep mountain. This picture doesn't do it justice but it was pretty steep. We watched some other "young" (I mean...
Some time last November, after the leaves had all fallen from the trees and the air seemed to hint of the coming winter, I stood on my front porch and looked carefully at two pumpkins. When we purchased them from a local farm the previous month...
We have four small (well, small and medium) babes that I stay at home to care for. A lot of days look like an endless hamster wheel built of laundry and dirty dishes and cleaning up rooms and whining sessions and screaming sessions. Throw in...
Twenty years ago, when I was still twenty-something and single, I was received into the Eastern Orthodox Church at St. George Cathedral in Wichita, Kansas. I had been in that small windswept city on a graduate fellowship, and had spent some ten months living in a...
Surfing Facebook? Pursuing Pinterest? Binge-watching Netflix shows? Pursuing Pokemon? While all these activities may indeed distract us from more meaningful investments of our time, I would like to propose that there is a hidden but deadly enemy we women often mistake for a friend to our...
Mastitis is the worst, right? My daughter is almost 17 months and we’re still breastfeeding. I enjoy it, she enjoys it, but we are finally in the process of weaning due to some upcoming travel and my tendency to get breast infections. We had a...
I can honestly, and maybe strangely say, grief is a topic near to my heart. My classroom has been walking through the trenches, crying buckets, feeling anxious, feeling fearful, despairing of life, feeling mad at God, putting one step in front of the other, experiencing trial after trial, falling...
I posted several weeks ago about my process to get my family eating healthy and some tools I’ve found helpful. You can read about it all here. I’ve had several follow up conversations with people about this blog post asking more detailed questions on how I...
Four years ago, I started homeschooling my eldest daughter. When we began, it was "a holy experiment" of sorts. We weren't yet sold on the schooling options in our area and a friend of mine suggested that I give homeschooling a try. It's four years later,...