Encouragement

I homeschool my children and I never imagined that this would be my life, but I'm so glad that it is. I went to the same private school from Kindergarten to 12th grade, but it's not the same education as when I attended 20 years ago. The public school in our community is good; I mean, families move to this parish just to attend our schools. I know many of the elementary teachers personally and they are fantastic people who really love their job and their students. There are 2 more private schools within about 30 minutes of our house, but they have the same problems that my alma mater has. Here is the honest reason why I don’t send my children to...

The storm came in hard and fast rolling right over our yard and house and disappeared just as quickly. All that was left was the menacing cloud hanging overhead like in a cartoon. The afternoon sun was already peeking out from its edge, illuminating the last rain drops and rendering the world in HDR. (High Dynamic Range, i.e. super colorful and detailed, for all you non - photography nerds). Inside, Jake was giving me grief. His pitiful cries were not quite so pitiful after 30 minutes straight, and my frustration level had reached a climax. I snatched him up and walked outside to sit with him on the swing on our patio. I knew that being outside always calmed him...

If you know me, you might laugh at the idea of me writing a post about gray hair.  Mine certainly isn't too noticeable to anyone but me.  However, my mousey brownish blonde days are slowly but surely coming to an end.  I started noticing the random grays in my early twenties. I will never forget the stylist who was fixing my hair for my wedding making sure to pluck out a gray sticking straight up on top of my head (why do they always do that???). And between motherhood and entering my 30s, the ratio of salt to pepper has quickly moved closer and closer to salt.  Margaritas anyone? So, what's a girl to do? My original plan was to pick...

I’ve been seeing some…faltering shall we say, in the ways of my existence in general motherhood. Maybe some of you can relate. Or maybe you are all PPIEW (practically perfect in every way), in which case please teach me your secrets. Here are areas in my life that are below average at the moment: 1. Mealtime. I honestly can’t remember the last time I prepared a full-fledged home cooked meal. Mealtime sneaks up on me so often. Crap it’s time to eat again?! I’ve been through the Chick-fil-A drive-thru for lunch more often than I’d care to admit lately, but I can chock that up to driving to Baton Rouge everyday for swimming lessons for the past six weeks (and...

Thanks to the Internet and social media, we now live in a world where our lives are on constant display. It's a territory that our generation is navigating for the first time in history- raising kids in the era of the Internet. I can't help but think that this culture of show off, do more, glorify busy, and be picture-perfect doing it has an impact on our "IRL" (in real life) relationships too. Vulnerability is already hard enough. Allowing another person to see some of your faults and realities is overwhelming because it opens you up to judgement. But when we're used to being able to filter out all the junk, edit our image, and share only what we want on-line,...