The Home – All things hearth and home, from marriage to homeschooling!
DISCLOSURE: I received a complimentary copy of this book from Litfuse Publicity Group in exchange for my review. Opinions are my own. No compensation was received for this review. I really like sci-fi, and I like historical fiction quite a bit as well. When I saw this book that is supposed to be a pairing…
Do you give the best to others and the rest to your family? She wanted to read the textbook by herself. I worked a long day and felt the time slipping away. I needed to cook dinner and just didn’t have the energy to help her do it own her own. My first instinct urged…
I am Mom to six wonderful creations of Christ. Individually and as a group, they are funny, active, sensitive, creative, and often, a riot to live with. They’re also a lot of hard work. Our second son, Ben, arrived with numerous special needs, which really messed up my plans for parenthood. I had it all…
I waddled down the hospital corridor with a confident grin on my face. I was 40 weeks and 3 days pregnant with a 9 1/2 pound baby and headed to the operating room for a c-section. This wasn’t the birth method I had chosen, it was chosen for me, but by this point I was…
“Mom? I was just wondering…would you like to go out on a date sometime soon?” That was from my sweet young boy, who is growing up more and more every day. I can’t say my “little boy” anymore, as he already towers over me at the age of 12. But his heart is still young…
I’m very excited to announce that I have a monthly contributor post at my friend Jaimi’s blog, thestay-at-home-survivalguide.com! I’ll be posting a Christian parenting post once a month over there. This week, my post is about teaching children to obey. Please don’t get me wrong: I am in NO way saying that I have it…
Over the past decade, my working status has changed quite a few times. I was a working woman when I got married, became a stay at home mom when my son was born, went back to work after a year or so, and then became a stay at home mom again! Eventually, I found options…
It was a beautiful day at the lake. The sun was shining brightly, and the sky was clear of clouds. The water glistened like diamonds in the distance and gently lapped up against the shore, surrounding my ankles. My feet were buried in the cool, wet sand while I stood watching my baby girl play…
Face it, we all want to “put our best foot forward” whether meeting someone for the first time, on Sundays mornings at church and of course, on social media like Facebook. But, the fact is, our lives are far from perfect because we are not perfect and neither are our children. This can especially be…
I think we’ve all had those days when we just absolutely don’t want to be a mom. It may be because we have spent the day cleaning up messes, dealing with tantrums, and trying to teach obedience. It may be simply because we are tired and don’t want to play or talk or…
When I was a girl of 12 all I dreamed about being when I grew up was Mama. I was the kid who was always willing, and probably more demanding than I should have been, to take a baby off its mama’s hands. I loved how they smelled, how they felt all snuggled…
I am a terrible mother. Odds are, so are you. The other night my husband and I were in the family room, and I was complaining about having to tell our daughter to do the dishes approximately 6,352 times before she sighed with disgust and began plunging the dishes into the now-lukewarm water….
Between doing loads of laundry, checking off that college packing list and swiping at unbidden tears, I popped the disc from the top of my music stack into the CD player and was transported back 40 years to my one and only year in college. “You just call out my name, and you know where…
When I started to write this article, I was full of negativity. I hated myself. I disliked how I thought I was being treated by my husband, that my kids were not listening, and I just was down in a deep root of depression. So low, that the swirl of negativity and the…
Is today boring? Are things routine and mundane — monotonous, even? Life has plenty of excitement for any parent, both positive and negative, but in between are row upon row of those routine, remind-me-why-I’m-doing-this-again days. This morning during my devotion time I read from Exodus 13, which is copied below. The backstory here is that God’s…
Dear Daughter #1, I’m sorry. I really am. I’m sure you have noticed that your father and I do not exactly know what we’re doing. That we figure everything out on you, our lovely, gracious guinea pig. You see, you are our learner child. We’re feeling our way along, using you as our test case. We…
On a recent trip to a conference in Boise, Idaho I realized that I had once again fallen into a repeated bad habit. I had packed too many clothes. I knew when I zipped up the piece that I wouldn’t wear half of what I packed (and I didn’t). To compound my frustrations,…
My confession: I am the controlling mom. At least, I try to be. I am not a Tiger Mother, exactly. I am not standing over my children with a ruler while they practice piano. I just try to plan every single detail of the lives of my children in the future. I have picked out…
I remember growing up in a rural area, homesteading before it was the thing to do. Back then it wasn’t put forth as a fun and fantastic way to live—it was how we survived. Growing our meat, raising our vegetables, was how we survived on my father’s disability checks from injuries in WWII….
“Her children arise and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her” Proverbs 31:28. If I listed all of the bad parenting I have done over the years, you would probably be reading this article for so long nothing in your homes would get done. It hurts my heart to even…
I’m an imperfect mom in need of heaps of grace. There are many ways this is true and many confessions I could make, but as I was thinking about writing a post for this Imperfect Mom Confessional series, I thought I’d go straight to the source and find out what my eleven-year-old son thought. At…
We had a little password in our family which I would often ask for as any of our kids were coming into the house. And they all knew what it was – Sausages. I would then repeat it in a silly bass voice and kind of draw out the word A silly little thing…
I’ve been accused of being perfect. No, not of perfectionism. I’m almost an anti-perfectionist, if there is such a thing. Perfect. Can you imagine someone actually thinking you are perfect? I was dumbfounded. On top of that, it was an ACCUSATION. I quickly said, “No, I’m definitely NOT perfect. What I’m trying to say is…”…
Last night as I was getting dinner ready, my 19 month old toddled in to the kitchen from outside where she’d been playing with her older siblings, grinning from ear to ear with dirt smudged all across her mouth. I paused for a moment, deciding what to do, shrugged, and kept making supper as an,…
