Baton Rouge Flood

While 2016 wasn't without some challenges, we are looking forward to a bright future in 2017 with Red Stick Moms Blog! We truly appreciate each and every one of you and the community we’ve built together. Over the course of 2016, in addition to launching our community neighborhood groups, Red Stick Moms Blog had over 760,000 page views, reached 470,000+ unique readers and hosted six successful events. To cap off 2016, we wanted to share our 10 most popular blog posts from the past year. They are stories of faith, humor, loss, marriage, motherhood and so much more. We hope you enjoy re-visiting them as much as we did.  Top 10 Blog Posts on Red Stick Moms Blog in 2016 1. 10 Things NOT to Say to...

About four years ago a friend and I were discussing our childhood Christmas gifts, and I she challenged me to name 20 gifts I had received as a child. No problem! Or so I thought ... would you believe that I had a hard time getting past naming 10??!! As we discussed childhood and family memories, it became apparent to me that I could not remember many of the toys I had been given, but what I could remember were things we did together. I remember things like vacations, the family reunions, trips to the zoo, spending summers at the pool, or piling in a car to see all the Christmas lights in town ... MEMORIES became what I treasured. This change...

I'm sitting down to type this - and the fact that as I do so my keyboard is getting shinier from my Sour Cream and Onion Lays chip-coated fingers doesn't faze me. Nope, those chips are not baked. They're greasy and they taste just like Procrastination. I'm feeling procrastinate-ey. I'm going to open up another bag right now (they're individually sized). AND IF THEY WEREN'T? You'd nod your head in solidarity, Sister. Over the last several weeks, I've been joking about how I'm handling the most public of my issues, our post-flood life. That's sort-of how I tend to handle things - jokes. Inappropriate jokes, mostly. Uncomfortable and inappropriate. Sometimes it doesn't require much imagination because the maybe-I-shouldn't-say-that stuff is really...

I recently had a moment of parenting clarity that I am not sure any of us really ever “want," but now I am trying to be thankful for a new view on my parenting style. First, the back story. My husband, 11 year-old-son, and 5-year-old daughter recently took my mother-in-law out to eat dinner at a local restaurant for her 60th birthday. This was a Monday night after both parents have been at work all day and our kids were at school, you may ask what we were thinking. I am not sure…somewhere throughout the day we thought it would be a good idea. We had a relatively smooth dinner (or so I thought); my daughter and I worked on her letters...

Over the past few weeks I have learned how to accept help from others like I have never had to before. On August 13, 2016, my family of four, like many others in the Baton Rouge area, was evacuated from our home by boat due to rising flood waters. I rarely am at a loss for words but I have found that over the past few weeks, I have struggled to put into words exactly how I feel. As I began reflecting on the past few weeks, the one thing I kept thinking about is how thankful I am for people near and far reaching out to my family. So here are a few thank yous from me to...