We rearranged our kids’ rooms last month with the goal of giving all of them more space. Sam and Elisabeth, our seven-year-old twins, still loved their Kura beds, and so did Nate, our four-year-old. But I wasn’t sure our ten-year-old, Catie, would want to keep hers. Part of the reason for the room redo was...Continue Reading
The well-meaning advice from strangers has haunted me as a mom. Especially when my kids were very small, these older women would stop me to say, “Cherish these years. One day, you will miss them so much.” These warnings are the worst because parenting is so hard, especially parenting newborns and toddlers. It’s hard to cherish when you’re in...Continue Reading
For the past few months, our family has tried to eat healthier. Organic instead of conventional, cooking at home instead of eating out, actual bananas and strawberries rather than the miniature, gummy imitations. But it’s hard to stay the course. Kids eat dozens of snacks and meals in a day, the nutritional fabric is destined...Continue Reading
When we bought this house, I called it our forever home. This was six years ago, when Catie was 3 and the twins were 1. We said this house would hold all the kids’ childhood memories. Teen years and first boyfriends and girlfriends and hundreds of sleep-overs would happen between these walls. When we were empty-nesters, Mike...Continue Reading
Camps for this summer are filling up and we need to get our kids registered. But the summer I plan in February is never the summer I want to live in July. In February, we’re in work mode. Spring is the long second act of our year. During these months, the plot of our lives is moving forward...Continue Reading
I’m not sure how this happened, but we’ve become the last-minute project family. I’m not proud to admit we are the people who do science fair projects in one weekend, book reports the night before they’re due, and decorate family turkeys an hour before bedtime. These are not good habits to start so early in our kids’ academic...Continue Reading
We have reached the point in Houston winter when we are DONE with the cold weather. We are summer people. We are so much more comfortable with 99% humidity and triple-degree temperatures than these frigid days in the low 40s. We will bravely fight mosquitos over Christmas break and sunburns over President’s Day weekend....Continue Reading
Notice anything? I mean besides cutie-pie Lanie Ward reading Elisabeth a book. Maybe you also notice Nate photo-bombing in the background. And the snazzy-dressed City Centre crowd strolling past to their fancy lunch. Maybe if you looked longer and harder, you’d also see the Ward and Hergenrader girls are really sitting on AstroTurf, not actual grass....Continue Reading
Dear Lord, Give me a heart so peaceful, I can look at this picture and not cringe. Help me not to see the wrinkles on my forehead, the fine lines around my eyes, the dark roots, desperate for some highlights. Let me look past the poor photography skills that make my kids’ heads look like they’re...Continue Reading
This has been one of those weird weeks where everyone in our family is dancing to their own rhythm. The kids had President’s Day off of school, and then Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday were big work days for Mike and me. As a creshendo to our weird week, the kids only had a half of a day of...Continue Reading
