A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.The advent season is upon us. I love it. One of my favorite traditions we have as a family is to place all our Christmas picture books under the Christmas tree and all month, those...
We are entering the busiest season of the year for activities, school, special occasions, and family get-togethers. I love Christmas and Thanksgiving and family time. The business of it all can sometimes get to be just too much. Here's a simple reminder from Louisa...
Is it really October already?
I feel like time is rushing past me these past several months, with my recovery from surgery (if you missed that story, read it here.) and all the appointments and school activities with the kids. I am feeling pretty good these days, although I am still not back to my old self. When I start doing physical activities, I don’t usually last longer than a few minutes before my stomach reminds me that I just had surgery and I need to stop.
This last month has been unexpected in a bad way. We were planning one more family trip before school started to Lake Tahoe, Yosemite National Park, Sequoia National Park, and King's Canyon National Park. One week before it was time to leave, I found myself in...
It’s been a summer. Pool time. Lazy reading time. There was a lot of cleaning up after three children and feeding them and ALL the things.
I even missed my newsletter last month because, well, summer.
But I’m back and ready to get to work. I’ll be dropping kids off at school in a few weeks, and suddenly — or finally — I can take a whole hour in a row and do some work.
June is here, and it's good to talk to you again. Thank you for being a reader of my monthly newsletter! It’s no secret I love children. I want the children I interact with to be better for the experience of meeting me. I taught preschool for six years and have...
Welcome to May! How can it be May already? I don’t know. I have a busy month ahead, with my youngest graduating preschool this year, and my oldest moving out of elementary into intermediate school (which is just the other side of the school building, thank goodness!...
So, why create? Besides the joy of making something that came from your head and hands, we create to connect with other people. How do people make connections with other people? By sharing truth with them. It could be a personal story or a passed-on story that we have seen proven, or even a made-up story that proves the truth we have seen in our own life. We share these things with each other and suddenly, there it is, connection.
The best arguments in the world won’t change a person’s mind. The only thing that can do that is a good story.I’ve been listening to a new podcast (not new in general, it’s actually from 2018, but new to me). It is called You Are A Storyteller. It is two screenwriters...
January was not what I expected. I was anticipating being home again after the bustle of holidays and settling down into a routine of regular life, including continuing to work on picture book projects and illustration.
Instead, I had my first task handed to me of mothering my sick children. From before Christmas until just a few days ago, someone in our home has been sick. There were a few days in there of wellness, where kids all went to school and I did sit down to do a little bit of the other work I am trying to do.
Hello friend. Another year has blasted by! I hope your holiday season was filled with love and family, friends and memories to cherish in the future. Around here, however, we don't look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing...
We hail the merry autumn days,When leaves are turning red;Because they're far more beautifulThan anyone has said, We hail the merry harvest time,The gayest of the year;The time of rich and bounteous crops,Rejoicing and good cheer. Being thankful for hard things...